A fascinating insight into a Chinese telecoms giant and its detractors

Huawei is not exactly a household name. If you’ve heard of it, you either follow the smartphone market closely – it is the main China-based manufacturer of high-end phones – or else consume a lot of news, because the company is at the centre of an ongoing US-China trade war.

But this enormous business is one of the world’s biggest producers of behind-the-scenes equipment that enables fibre broadband, 4G and 5G phone networks. Its hardware is inside communications systems across the world.