A fairly innocuous photo has been circulating on social media, showing a man opening his bag at an airport security line, while a security officer inspects an iPad.

This photo is nothing out of the ordinary -- except the man happens to be Huawei's CEO Ren Zhengfei.

Huawei's CEO is a huge fan of Apple

According to South China Morning Post, Huawei declined to comment whether the iPad belonged to Ren.

However, there is a good chance that the Apple tablet did belong to him, given Ren's widely publicised admiration of Apple.

During a recent Bloomberg interview, he opposed plans to ban Apple products in China, referring to Apple as his "teacher".

Ren said: "As a student, why go against my teacher? Never."

This was in response to calls within China to boycott Apple products, after the US blacklisted Huawei from buying American technology.

He also openly told Chinese media that his children prefer Apple products over Huawei, when asked whether the Chinese people should show their patriotism by supporting Huawei.

"My children prefer Apple products over Huawei's. Does it mean that they don't love Huawei? Of course not," said Ren.

"We cannot simply say that one is patriotic if they use Huawei products and they are not if they don't use Huawei products. Huawei's products are ultimately commodities. People use them if they like them. Politics should be left out of it."

Using iPads are fine, tweeting official messages on an iPhone is not

However, while Huawei may be fine with employees using the products made by competitors, they are not quite as keen to allow employees to tweet corporate messages with an iPhone.

Thanks @Huawei for making iphone your device of choice. Even you guys dont like your own interface. pic.twitter.com/PqpGFjtw3K

— Asyraf HighTech (@exploreasyraf) January 1, 2019

Reuters reported in January that Huawei punished two employees for a New Year greeting on Huawei's official Twitter account sent using an iPhone.

The tweet was quickly removed, but not before screenshots of the tweet, marked "via Twitter for iPhone," were shared across social media.

According to an internal memo by Huawei, the two employees were demoted and had their salaries reduced.

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Top image from Cult of Mac/Weibo.

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