House of Huawei

Shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2025

By: Eva Dou

Narrated by: Nancy Wu

The untold story of the mysterious company that shook the world

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

'Explosive' Sunday Times

'Groundbreaking' Dan Wang

'Riveting, robustly researched' TLS

'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.

Critic reviews

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

Riveting, robustly researched

Explosive

Authoritative... a tale that sits at the heart of the most significant geopolitical relationship today

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

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

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

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

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

A timely, clear and undeniably worrying account

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

A technology-policy reporter has parsed decades' worth of documents to piece together how Huawei's enigmatic founder rose from poverty to lead what is probably China's most powerful company

Hero

Ren is a great hero which help china achieve by defeat USA unreasonably government sanctions