US forces smartphone giant ZTE to fire its CEO and leadership team

Enlarge / Trump with Chinese president Xi Jinping in 2017. (credit: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images)

The Chinese smartphone giant ZTE has completely replaced its corporate leadership, naming new people to be CEO, CTO, CFO, and several vice presidents. The new CEO of ZTE will be Xu Ziyang, a former head of ZTE’s German operations who has worked at the company for two decades.

The move comes a week after ZTE named a new board of directors. The US government demanded that ZTE make these changes as a condition of lifting a crippling export ban against the company.

That export ban was the culmination of a years-long conflict between ZTE and the US government over the company’s sale of US technology to Iran and North Korea in violation of US sanctions rules. The US negotiated a settlement deal with ZTE last year, but early this year the US government said that ZTE had failed to keep its promises under the deal.