HOUSE OF HUAWEI

A respected reporter looks behind the curtain at a corporate behemoth.

It can be a surprise to learn that Huawei is possibly the largest telecommunications company in the world, dominant in China and powerful elsewhere. Dou, a technology journalist with the Washington Post, tackles the daunting task of documenting its story, amassing a huge amount of material from official records and expert opinions. Ren Zhengfei, who founded Huawei in 1987, is a somewhat reclusive figure, although Dou is able to piece together a picture of him (providing a useful timeline of events as well as a cast of major characters). An engineer by training, his real strength has always been strategy, and he was quick to grasp the need for a reliable phone system in China. Ren was adept at navigating the shifting shoals of Chinese politics, and when the cellphone boom came, he was in good position to take advantage. There were continued allegations that Huawei was, in tandem with the government, building eavesdropping and malware bugs into its “pipeline” systems, both at home and abroad, which eventually led to the company’s being banned from the U.S. and other countries. Dou acknowledges that it is difficult to track the connections between Huawei and the government; it seems to be a matter of personal connections and agreed objectives. In fact, now that Ren has stepped back from an active role, it is difficult to establish where the real power within the company lies, although several members of Ren’s family hold crucial positions. Dou holds the lengthy and complex narrative together, untangling the webs of money and politics that underpin China’s tech giant.

A timely, clear, and undeniably worrying account.