Shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2025. The definitive inside story of the world's most controversial tech giant.
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 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.
Praise
"Explosive." — The Sunday Times
"A tale that sits at the heart of the most significant geopolitical relationship today." — Financial Times
"Essential reading." — Chris Miller, author of Chip War
"Riveting, robustly researched." — TLS
"At last we have a book that unveils Huawei's deepest mysteries." — Dan Wang, fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center
"An extraordinary feat of both reporting and historical research, providing an unprecedented look inside one of the world's most important companies." — Matthew Campbell, co-author of Dead in the Water
About the author
Eva Dou is a journalist at The Washington Post. A Detroit native, she previously spent seven years reporting on politics and technology for The Wall Street Journal in Beijing and Taipei, Taiwan. She lives in Washington D.C.
