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House of Huawei

On sale

14th January 2025

Price: £25

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Selected: Hardcover / ISBN-13: 9780349146478

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The untold story of the mysterious company that shook the world



‘Groundbreaking’
Dan Wang
‘Essential reading’ Chris Miller, author of Chip War

On the coast of southern China, an eccentric entrepreneur spent three decades steadily building an obscure telecom company into one of the world’s most powerful technological empires with hardly anyone noticing. This all changed in December 2018, when the detention of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ female scion, sparked an international hostage standoff, poured fuel on the U.S.-China trade war, and suddenly thrust the mysterious company into the international spotlight.

In House of Huawei, Washington Post technology reporter Eva Dou pieces together a remarkable portrait of Huawei’s reclusive founder Ren Zhengfei and how he built a sprawling corporate empire – one whose rise Western policymakers have become increasingly obsessed with halting. The book dissects the global web of power, money, influence, surveillance, bloodshed and national glory that Huawei helped to build – and that has also ensnared it.

Based on wide-ranging interviews and painstaking archival research, House of Huawei tells an epic story of familial and political intrigue that presents a fresh window on China’s rise from third-world country to U.S. rival, and shines a clarifying light on the security considerations that keep world leaders up at night.

House of Huawei holds a mirror up to one of the world’s most mysterious companies as never before.

Reviews

Kirkus
A timely, clear and undeniably worrying account
Edward Fishman, senior research scholar at Columbia University
A revelatory deep dive into the company that sparked the US-China battle for technological supremacy. Vividly written, exhaustively researched, and packed with riveting inside-the-room details, House of Huawei is the most comprehensive account yet of China's leading tech giant. An indispensable resource for understanding Chinese state capitalism and how it fuels geopolitical competition
Matthew Campbell, co-author of Dead in the Water
Eva Dou's House of Huawei is an extraordinary feat of both reporting and historical research, providing an unprecedented look inside one of the world's most important companies. Huawei is now a central player in the technological contest between the US and China, and this book is a fascinating account of how it became so powerful-and so controversial
Lionel Barber
A gripping read charting the ascent of Huawei, China's tech powerhouse. Meticulously reported, Eva Dou's narrative combines geopolitics, spying and technological innovation with the human story of a former People's Liberation Army engineer who became a global business titan
Paul Triolo, partner for China and technology policy lead at Albright Stonebridge Group
In House of Huawei, journalist Eva Dou has written a fascinating and sweeping history of the company and the key individuals behind the firm's success... Required reading for any serious student of US-China relations and the race to dominate the technologies of the future. A superb and nuanced summary of the good, the bad, and the ugly that characterizes the firm's history, and shows how the sausage was made with unflagging balance and fairness
Dan Wang, fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center
A groundbreaking work on China's most important company. More than online shopping or video apps, the Communist Party is obsessed with telecommunications networks, semiconductors, and surveillance systems. At last we have a book that unveils Huawei's deepest mysteries
Chris Miller, author of Chip War
In House of Huawei, Eva Dou uncovers how Huawei has become China's most successful tech company-and a lightning rod for geopolitical competition. Based on unique interviews and deep research into the company's history, House of Huawei provides the most in-depth account of Huawei's rise and its complex and controversial connections to China's security state. House of Huawei is essential reading for understanding China's tech sector and the China-US tech competition