Huawei: 'trust us, we are being transparent'

In an environment that's increasingly hostile to Chinese tech companies, Huawei has put forward its case for attitudes to be revised.

Speaking to the CeBIT Australia conference in Sydney, the company's global cyber security officer John Suffolk said there's little difference between Huawei and any other major vendor: its products come from a host of suppliers in a huge number of countries.

Seventy percent of the hardware found in Huawei's equipment comes from outside China, Suffolk claimed, and 32 percent of it comes from American suppliers. A similar tale can be told for software, he said, with contributions from around the world. “We go, as all companies do, to where we can find the best researchers, the best talent around the world,” he said. “We go where we have talent, where the economic conditions are right.”