Why have US prosecutors labelled China’s Huawei a criminal enterprise?

Chinese exertion elephantine Huawei is facing a landmark transgression proceedings successful the United States amid Washington’s long-running tech rivalry with Beijing.

The proceedings began successful national tribunal successful Brooklyn, New York, connected September 9, with US prosecutors portraying Huawei arsenic a transgression endeavor that spent 2 decades stealing exertion from US companies, deceiving banks and circumventing sanctions connected Iran.

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Huawei has pleaded not blameworthy and says the US authorities is attempting to crook mean concern disputes and the actions of idiosyncratic employees into grounds of a company-wide conspiracy.

The proceedings is expected to past astir 3 months and overlaps with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s September 23-25 sojourn to Washington, wherever trade, artificial intelligence, tariffs and entree to captious technologies are apt to beryllium connected the agenda.

Here is what you request to know:

What are the allegations against Huawei?

US prosecutors person accused the institution of racketeering, wealth laundering, slope and ligament fraud, sanctions violations, obstruction and conspiring to bargain commercialized secrets from 5 US exertion companies.

Prosecutors accidental the alleged wrongdoing stretched from astir 1999 to 2020.

“Theft, lies, cover-up,” Justice Department lawyer Taylor Stout said successful his opening remarks.

Prosecutors allege Huawei stole technology, including internet-router root codification from Cisco and a robotic limb utilized by T-Mobile to trial phones.

They besides impeach Huawei of concealing the quality of its operations successful Iran to determination US dollars done the fiscal strategy contempt US sanctions.

The authorities besides alleges that Huawei supplied instrumentality that could assistance Iranian authorities show protesters during demonstrations successful 2009.

How has Huawei responded?

Huawei, a large shaper of telecommunications equipment, denies immoderate wrongdoing.

The tech giant’s lawyer Brian Heberlig told jurors the lawsuit was astir “competition, not conspiracy. Innovation, not theft. Ordinary concern dealings, not transgression conduct.”

Heberlig accused prosecutors of “cherry-picking isolated events” to conception a conspiracy that did not exist. Huawei’s defence says immoderate incidents progressive idiosyncratic employees whose actions were dealt with internally, alternatively than reflecting institution policy.

He told jurors that prosecutors volition picture regular activities by planetary tech companies “but volition twist those mean activities to effort to marque them look criminal”.

Huawei separately described the broader prosecution arsenic an effort to undermine its competitiveness, saying the US government’s “overarching communicative is demonstrably false” and that it had “the utmost respect for intelligence property”.

The lawsuit originated during Donald Trump’s archetypal presidency. His medication placed Huawei connected a US commercialized blacklist successful 2019 and pushed allies to exclude the institution from 5G networks, arguing its instrumentality could contiguous nationalist information and espionage risks.

Huawei has repeatedly denied that its exertion is utilized for spying.

What has China’s effect been?

Beijing has powerfully criticised the prosecution, which has travel weeks up of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s sojourn to the US.

On Thursday, a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said “the Chinese authorities firmly opposes the US side’s suppression and containment of Chinese enterprises”, erstwhile asked astir the lawsuit and the American prosecutor’s “criminal enterprise” description.

China “firmly supports Chinese enterprises successful safeguarding their morganatic rights and interests”, the spokesperson said astatine a regular quality conference.

What is Huawei, and has the tech elephantine faced investigations before?

Huawei is 1 of the world’s largest telecommunications instrumentality manufacturers. It besides produces smartphones and has go progressively important to China’s semiconductor and AI industries.

Its activities person drawn scrutiny good beyond the existent US trial.

Belgian prosecutors launched an probe successful 2025 into suspected bribery involving the European Parliament allegedly for Huawei’s benefit.

The European Parliament subsequently suspended entree for Huawei lobbyists. Huawei said it had “zero-tolerance” for corruption and would cooperate with authorities.

Huawei main fiscal serviceman Meng Wanzhou made worldwide headlines successful 2018 erstwhile she was arrested connected a US warrant aft landing successful Vancouver, straining some US-China and China-Canada relations.

The warrant was filed aft a sealed indictment accused her and the institution of slope fraud for misleading HSBC and different banks astir Huawei’s concern successful Iran.

She returned to China successful 2021 nether a deferred prosecution agreement, and the charges against her were aboriginal dismissed.

Admissions Meng made arsenic portion of that statement can, however, beryllium presented arsenic grounds successful Huawei’s existent proceedings aft a US justice ruled them admissible successful June.

They are legally abstracted but signifier portion of a overmuch wider economical and technological contention betwixt Washington and Beijing.

Huawei became 1 of the astir salient targets of US restrictions during Trump’s archetypal term.

Since then, the rivalry has expanded from telecommunications and 5G into semiconductors and AI, with Washington restricting China’s access to precocious US chips and chipmaking technology.

Last week, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, warned that a “Chinese pb successful AI would airs sedate information for the US and the world” and urged Washington to support restrictions connected cutting-edge AI tech. He besides called for enactment against alleged “distillation” of US models by Chinese AI laboratories.

China’s Foreign Ministry connected September 14 accused the US tech elephantine of “fearmongering”.

“Fomenting assorted threats, engaging successful confrontation and malicious contention volition lone disrupt the process of planetary governance of artificial quality and is not successful the interests of immoderate party,” said ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun.

The state-backed Global Times paper went further, describing Amodei’s connection arsenic a “Cold War playbook” whose existent intent was to curb Chinese AI improvement and sphere US technological dominance.

China and the US were engaged successful a tit-for-tat tariff warfare astatine the opening of Trump’s presidency successful 2025. The commercialized warfare ended successful a truce, but the world’s 2 largest economies person failed to onslaught a commercialized deal.

Beijing, meanwhile, has utilized its dominance of captious minerals arsenic leverage and accelerated efforts to physique home alternatives to American technology.

Currently, China controls astir of the world’s uncommon world minerals, including metals that are indispensable for the manufacture of galore technological items, from smartphones to combatant jets. The world’s second-largest system has 60 percent of these minerals and processes 90 percent of the world’s supply.

In October, Beijing announced plans to necessitate overseas companies to get support to export Chinese uncommon world instrumentality oregon material.

This meant companies anyplace successful the satellite would request a licence to export uncommon world magnets and definite semiconductor materials that incorporate adjacent hint amounts of minerals sourced from China oregon produced utilizing Chinese technology.

China’s Ministry of Commerce said its export controls connected uncommon earths, which Trump had labelled “surprising” and “very hostile”, were introduced successful effect to a bid of US measures.