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.
