Huawei expat employees that marry westerners faced being forced to leave Europe or be sacked, investigation reveals

Huawei expatriate employees that marry westerners faced being forced to leave Europe or be sacked, an investigation by the Telegraph and international media partners has revealed.

The controversial telecoms giant, which has been classed as a national security threat by the US government, stated in its HR handbook that Chinese employees who have married Europeans or applied for citizenship must leave Europe “as soon as possible”, or be sacked from the company altogether.

Several sources confirmed that the policy was in place at the company, and one said that marrying a local in Europe is informally viewed as an act of betrayal.

Professor Anthony Glees, a national security expert at the University of Buckingham, said: “These are stipulations that no normal commercial company would make of its employees and that is alarming and disturbing. It would seem to me to contradict the market interest of the company which is to sell its kit, not give people the impression that it’s some kind of state agency.” 

When the Telegraph approached Huawei for comment a spokesperson initially made no mention of the policy being dropped, but days later he said the policy is “no longer valid”. He was unable to give a date for when the policy was dropped.

He added: “If any assigned employee elects to personally apply for permanent residence in the local country this is their personal matter.”

The spokesperson also said that Huawei in the UK “has not adopted the policy”.

The Chinese telecoms giant has been at the heart of a heated political row after the United States banned the use of the company’s equipment claiming it is a security risk amid claims the company has close ties to the Chinese government, and the UK government announced it would remove the company from its 5G network by 2027.

According to an internal Huawei document seen by The Telegraph, working with international media partners who are part of The Signals Network, Chinese employees who are sent to work in European countries can only work in a country for a maximum of five years.

However, if the employee applied for, or had obtained, permanent citizenship in the country or if they were married to a permanent EU resident then they must leave the country “as soon as possible”.

The document, entitled ‘West European Region Chinese Expatriates Assignment and Mobility Management Regulation’, states that Chinese expatriate employees who do not wish to move because they have permanent residency in an EU country or because they have married someone who is local have “breached their employment contract and shall resign from the company or its subsidiary”.

It adds: “Those who’ve obtained residency in an EU country or whose spouses are permanent EU residents and those who have voluntarily applied for permanent residency in the EU must leave Europe ASAP. If they don’t follow the order, the company will terminate their employment.” 

Several former employees confirmed this policy was in place and said that by moving Chinese expatriates to a new country every five years the company prevents them from settling down.

One Chinese former expatriate employee told media partners from The Signals Network that in 2019 he was forced to resign after more than a decade working for the company when he refused to leave the Western European country where he had been posted for the last two and a half years. His manager found out he was in a relationship with a European woman who he planned to marry and ended his assignment in that country early. He was told he could only continue working for Huawei if he moved out of Europe. 

“In my opinion the company try to stop people from using the company as a tool to emigrate to Western Europe, so if they find out you want to settle down in Western Europe they will tell you to leave,” he said.

“It’s my opinion that the reason they don’t want you to marry someone local is to stop you getting local residence and getting legal status in Western Europe.”

The company has previously been criticised for the treatment of its employees. Huawei faced a fierce backlash last December when it emerged a former employee had been wrongfully imprisoned for eight months in China after the company accused him of blackmail.

Li Hongyuan, who worked for the company for 13 years, was arrested in January last year over charges of extortion, but prosecutors freed Mr Li after 251 days in custody after finding insufficient evidence to support Huawei’s claim.

Another Chinese former expatriate employee said: “The internal atmosphere at the company is that if you marry a local person and get citizenship rights then this is seen as a betrayal.”

The former employee said the company wanted to keep Chinese expatriate employees bound by Chinese law to try and prevent them from leaking confidential information about the technology it produces.

“The company doesn’t want confidential information to be released. They have some core technology which is highly confidential, so this information might be known about by different staff in different departments and the company don’t want this information to be leaked to external competitors or external governments in the countries where they operate,” he said. 

“They have to ensure all these employees are regulated by Chinese law only. As long as they are regulated by Chinese law this will keep everything secret, that means they will not leak the company information to anyone external."

A Huawei spokesperson said: “In line with many other international companies, there is a process of rotation in which expat employees are moved through a number of overseas assignments after a set time typically agreed in advance. This is a system which is very popular with employees who value the rich mix of experience.  At all times, employees are free to discuss their future career moves with their local managers and department heads.”

This article is the result of months of investigation on documents reviewed by the media partners of The Signals Network including The Daily Telegraph (United Kingdom), El Mundo (Spain), netzpolitik.org (Germany) and Republik (Switzerland). The Signals Network coordinated the collaboration of this international investigation.

The Signals Network is a European-American non-profit organisation founded by Gilles Raymond and led by Delphine Halgand-Mishra. It partners with a dozen media organisations representing a cumulative audience of 165 million readers in six languages. The Signals Network also provides support to selected whistleblowers.