Tech company Huawei has been accused of spying on behalf of the Chinese state – allegations it denies. So what is the evidence for this claim, and how do the rest of Huawei’s ethics stack up?
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Learn more about our company profiles →Our research highlights several ethical issues with Huawei, including working with oil and gas companies, taking a poor approach to tech sustainability, and investigations suggesting that the company is involved in Chinese state surveillance of ethnic minorities - allegations the company denies.
Below we outline some of these issues. To see the full detailed stories, and Huawei's overall ethical rating, please sign in or subscribe.
In recent years, many international leaders have questioned whether Huawei is a threat to public security, given its links to the Chinese state.
The company was previously involved in building telecoms infrastructure in countries including the UK, leading to questions about whether its role could lead to information leaks or espionage on behalf of the Chinese government – allegations that Huawei rigorously denies.
As a Chinese company, Huawei is subject to China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, which requires “all organisations and citizens” to “support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence efforts”. This means that Huawei is legally obliged to hand data over to the government if it asks for it.
Huawei says it has never been asked to hand over customer data to the government and would not do so even if required by law (but it doesn’t seem like it would have an option). No definitive evidence of Huawei leaking data to the government has ever been found.
In 2019, US president Trump prohibited Huawei from doing business with any organisation operating in the country. In 2020, the UK government also banned the purchase of new Huawei 5G equipment and committed to removing Huawei from the UK’s 5G networks by the end of 2027. Canada, New Zealand, and Australia have some bans on Huawei.
In 2021, Lithuania’s Defence Ministry said consumers should throw away Chinese phones.
Some journalists and academics, however, have questioned whether the widespread concern is fuelled by xenophobia. In an article in Investigate Europe, journalist Harald Schumann pointed out “President Trump’s propensities to see virtually any activity in China from Huawei’s 5G innovations to COVID-19 as nefarious threats aimed directly at the US, its allies and the entire world.”
The US ban on Huawei also happened to coincide with an escalating trade dispute between China and the USA.
Huawei is a major developer of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, including facial recognition. Investigations have raised major concerns that its software may be designed to help the Chinese government identify members of the Uyghur people – an ethnic minority group facing major violent state repression, including imprisonment in forced labour camps.
In 2021, the BBC reported on a Huawei patent which mentioned “a system that identifies people who appear to be of Uyghur origin among images of pedestrians”. The patent, filed in 2018, raised concerns that the software could be used to alert government authorities when its system identified members of the minority group.
A spokesperson for Huawei told the BBC that the company “opposes discrimination of all types, including the use of technology to carry out ethnic discrimination.” He said that "Identifying individuals' race was never part of the research-and-development project. It should never have become part of the application. And we are taking proactive steps to amend it.”
The same year, the Washington Post obtained marketing presentation slides that also suggested Huawei played a role in Chinese state surveillance of citizens. According to the post, more than 100 Huawei PowerPoint presentations showed the company pitching the use of its technologies to help government authorities identify individuals by voice, monitor people of interest, and manage ideological re-education and labour schedules for prisoners.
Huawei said it had no knowledge of the projects discussed in the Washington Post investigation. “Huawei does not develop or sell systems that target any specific group of people and we require our partners [to] comply with all applicable laws, regulations and business ethics,” it said in a statement.
Ethical Consumer rates all tech companies on sustainability issues, including whether they use recycled materials, build tech to last, and ensure easy repairs. Huawei scores poorly.
Huawei received an average of just 5 out of 10 on the iFixit website, which researches tech brand repairability, looking at issues including whether items are easy to disassemble and reassemble, and whether it can be fixed using inexpensive, widely available tools.
The company was also not found to be using a significant amount of recycled materials in its tech products. It stated: "As of 2021, we have processed over 8,600 tons of electronic waste, thanks to our ambitious trade-in plan and a global recycling system" but provided no information on its use of recycled materials.
Despite taking some steps towards addressing its own emissions, Huawei provides tech for the oil and gas sector.
In its 2023 Sustainability Report, Huawei reported on all its emissions, including those from its supply chain, and discussed actions it had taken to cut these, for example decarbonising its energy supply and improving the energy efficiency of its products.
However, a page on the Huawei website appeared to outline how the company supported new fossil fuel development.
For example, Huawei stated that it had worked with China’s state-owned oil and gas company, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), and its subsidiary the Bureau of Geophysical Prospecting (BGP). Huawei technology had enabled “leaps forward in both exploration accuracy and efficiency”, the company said.
Huawei also stated that it had worked with China National Offshore Oil Corporation, the largest offshore oil and gas producer in the country, “to deploy digital solutions in its core oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) services” and improve production efficiency by 30%.
The company therefore scored very poorly in Ethical Consumer’s climate rating overall.
This article was written in June 2026. The majority of the research was conducted in August 2024.
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