House of Huawei - by Eva Dou (Hardcover)

About the Book

"The epic story of Huawei, China's most powerful company, and its reclusive founder, Ren Zhengfei"--

Book Synopsis

"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.

Review Quotes

PRAISE FOR HOUSE OF HUAWEI

"Authoritative... a tale that sits at the heart of the most significant geopolitical relationship today."
- Financial Times

"A comprehensive and instructive account of [Huawei's] rapid ascent to become 'China's most powerful company'... 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

"A timely, clear, and undeniably worrying account."
- Kirkus

"Dou's command of her subject is indisputable and her book is determinedly even-handed... The intricate reporting of Huawei, in all its ambiguity and complexity, sheds much light on the murky nature of modern geopolitics. The people who shout the loudest about Huawei don't know more than anyone else about it. Eva Dou does."
- The Guardian

"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."
--Chris Miller, author of Chip War

"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."
--Dan Wang, fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center

"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."
--Matthew Campbell, co-author of Dead in the Water

"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."
--Edward Fishman, senior research scholar at Columbia University and author of Chokepoints

"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."
--Lionel Barber, former editor of the Financial Times

"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. Unlike most contemporary accounts of the company and its relationship to the Chinese government, [Dou's narrative draws] out the contradictions in Huawei's status as a reluctant national champion that founder Ren Zhengfei once complained was not trusted by either the Chinese or the US government. Dou provides a particularly rich story fabric that captures the company's complex evolution over several decades as it has become the poster child of US-China technology competition. 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."
--Paul Triolo, partner for China and technology policy lead at Albright Stonebridge Group

About the Author

Eva Dou covers technology policy for The Washington Post. A Detroit native, she previously spent around a decade covering international politics and technology for the Post and the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, Seoul and Taipei. She is currently based in Washington D.C.