Foreign Media Gets A Peek At Huawei Factory

Telecom giant Huawei insisted on Wednesday its products feature no security "backdoors" for the government, as the normally secretive company gave foreign media a peek inside its state-of-the-art facilities.

Huawei has kicked off the year with an aggressive PR campaign to counter US warnings that it could be used by Beijing for espionage and sabotage, with reclusive founder Ren Zhengfei denying the fears in a series of foreign media interviews.

The charm offensive went into another gear Wednesday as Huawei welcomed news organisations to its facilities in southern Guangdong province.

That included a stop at Huawei's Independent Cyber Security Laboratory, whose director Wang Jin waved off the US fears.

"Our most basic red line is that our products cannot have any backdoors," Wang said.

Journalists also toured a huge factory floor with 35 highly automated assembly lines in the city of Dongguan, where an array of robotic arms put together a Huawei P20 smartphone every 28.5 seconds.

Foreign journalist visits are hardly routine at Huawei's facilities in Guangdong, where high-tech labs and manufacturing facilities employ more than 60,000 people, but these are unusual times for the company.

Washington is urging governments to shun the company just as the world readies for the advent of ultra-fast 5G telecommunications, an advancement that Huawei was expected to lead and which will allow wide adoption of next-generation technologies like artificial intelligence.

Huawei's Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, Ren's daughter, also faces a court hearing on Wednesday in Vancouver on a US extradition request.

During the tour, journalists were served coffee in cups featuring an image of a lighthouse and the words: "Lighting a beacon for Wanzhou's early return."

Its Shenzhen headquarters – near Dongguan – has cutting-edge laboratories, hotels, swimming pools and fitness centres, a dozen cafeterias, and a Huawei University where it trains staff as well as foreign customers and partners. (AFP)