I remember talks here on HN about Chinese made IOT devices phoning home to servers in China. There have also been discussion on HN about Huawei's telecom equipment being backdoored or simply rigged to siphon information back to china.
Lots of people talking about Huawei backdoors, none providing credible evidence of them actually existing. They have their share of security vulnerabilities but no worse than competitors such as Cisco[1].
Random Chinese made IOT devices phoning home to servers in China is definitely a thing, but has nothing to do with Huawei.
Naiveté and a bit of corruption and/or blackmail. More people need to watch this recent interview with a former CCP insider on the Chinese threat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cwXifDaCjE&t=3s.
I also feel amused that huawei smart phone are quite popular, and you are only able to find claims from mainstream media outlets instead of users with Huawei phone, which have been proven to lack the ability to verify tech details...
> which have been proven to lack the ability to verify tech details
Sorry are you saying that Huawei users are thick or something?
(If you have evidence of Huawei phones having software preinstalled that uploads a user's whatsapp conversations and whatnot to some IP then be my guest! But I don't think you do...)