I think the whole thing is just really, really disappointing. It's very frustrating.

What I can say is that we have never engaged in any cyberhacking, malfeasance, or other nefarious activity on behalf of the Chinese government or any government.

We are an international company. Seventy percent of our revenue today comes from outside China. If we were ever thought or proved to be doing that kind of nonsense, we would lose 70% of our business overnight. And we don't want to do that.

Are you seeing much return on your lobbying and public relations efforts in Washington?

I think it is having an impact. For many years, we were terrible at telling our own story, and that has contributed to misunderstandings. There is still a lot of room for improvement, but in the past five years we've gotten much, much better.

The reality is that in the last 10 years, cybersecurity has become a major concern. And countries are beginning to see telecom infrastructure as a national asset.

But all vendors need to be looked at the same way under exactly the same kind of criteria. Every vendor's source code should be tested. If that's going to be the criteria for Huawei, it should be the rules for everybody. Let's be fair.

Is there a risk that, despite your investments and lobbying, the U.S. market will never open to Huawei?

The tone is slowly changing. I think the fact we are engaging is helping, and telling our story is helping.

We are doing everything we can think of. We are engaging, talking and giving our perspective. We are sharing information about our company financials, our corporate governance structure and our executive leadership.

We are hopeful that, while it might take some time, our situation will change. Part of it is that relationships and comfort take time to develop. There are still people in the United States who have never heard of our company. It will take some time.

Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei is notoriously media-shy. Would more openness on his part help improve the company's position with U.S. lawmakers?

It is true that he has never given any media interviews. And I would speculate that he probably never will, at least not in any prolific way.

You can point to a number of reasons to explain that. His generation -- he is 68 -- this is the way things were done. He has built this business from nothing to a $32 billion company in the space of 25 years. He has never done media interviews, and the company has done exceedingly well.

It's kind of like: "Tell me why I should?"