House of Huawei: The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company

"As many will know, Huawei is a vast Chinese technology and telecoms company which has come to prominence in the last 20 or so years. Despite the fact that its products have traditionally competed with those of Western firms, it’s probably more of a mystery to the outsider than even the quite secretive Apple or Samsung. There is also a crossover with the Chinese state. There have been suggestions that the founder of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei, had links with the Chinese military, which Huawei denies. But clearly there is a story to unravel there. Eva Dou does a great job of looking at all the available evidence of what’s to be said about Huawei. She’s done countless interviews and a lot of archival research. As our Financial Times reviewer wrote at the time, it’s probably the best version that you can get of what we know about Huawei, even if it leaves some of it still seeming rather mysterious. And, of course, as the book points out, in the last four or five years, Huawei has become much more of a tool of China’s relations with the US and the West. There’s lots of pressure on Western countries not to use Huawei equipment because of fears of espionage and there has also been a lot of pushback from the Chinese. So it’s a fascinating story that brings together the geopolitics as well as the microeconomics and commercial success of this company. Yes absolutely, and that makes it similar to another book on the shortlist that we’ll talk about in minute, The Thinking Machine . Mr. Ren is very much the front man, but also the mystery at the heart of Huawei. The book goes back and looks at how he put together this empire. Also, from my point of view—as a writer interested in management and leadership—you get a fascinating insight into how a company that was nothing becomes something. I’ve actually visited Huawei in Shenzhen, and I remember thinking at the time—long before it became more controversial—that it had done a very good job of milking Western expertise and engineering excellence by employing Western consulting firms and so on to advise it, which then allowed it to build its own brand and power on those foundations."