House of Huawei

The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company

By: Eva Dou

Narrated by: Nancy Wu

“Authoritative… a tale that sits at the heart of the most significant geopolitical relationship today.” – Financial Times

“There’s probably no better account of China’s rise to economic dominance as seen through the prism of a single company.” – The Wall Street Journal


ABOUT THE BOOK


The untold story of the mysterious company that shook the world.

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 US-China trade war, and suddenly thrust the mysterious company into the global 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. Based on wide-ranging interviews and painstaking archival research, House of Huawei dissects the global web of power, money, influence, surveillance, bloodshed, and national glory that Huawei helped to build—and that has also ensnared it.

How the history of Huawei intertwined with history and politics.

It feels like a very well researched account of the company. A fairly amazing story

Be ready to fast forward

Good info and interesting intel but way too much minutiae about background details and personal info that is just filler and fluff.

Fascinating parallels with the TikTok ban and Deep Seek

The writing was dry and the narrator uninspired but the story was incredibly interesting. There isn’t a conclusive position taken regarding Huawei; only a thorough deep dive into the evidence.

Hard to recommend but I am very glad I read it.

Comprehensive but can't help but let bias creep in

The book appears to try to provide a balanced history of Huawei yet lets existing bias slip in, as if the author was always thinking about what Huawei would say about the book once it was out. All criticism is handled with a velvet glove and with added comments as to how other companies have done the same thing. Still, it does give a pretty good job of telling the story of the House of Huawei as the title very directly says.

Phenomena research; masterful narration

Both the content and the narration are excellent. This is a very important book regarding Huawei, China and the telecom industry in general.