I could be considered quite a fan of Huawei phones, for some years (been using their devices on and off for around 20 years I'd say - from when they made things for other companies/networks, especially mobile data products).
I think the various forums and communities would have spotted code that was sending material back to China. Not least the fact you'd see excessive use of data that couldn't be explained and would have people seeking to find out what it was. It isn't feasible for such rogue code to be installed on every device, and in any case you'd have to consider what the benefit would be to China. What data would it wish to collect?
On the infrastructure side, surely the bigger risk would be China being able to, say, shut down communications in the event of a conflict, rather than somehow inspecting all data being sent/received (which I'd assume was mostly encrypted anyway).
Today it's Huawei (and ZTE) and as part of Trump's trade war I am sure he'll go after others. What he wants is to do a great deal and use these threats to get China to cave in. Huawei is however standing firm.
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