JEFFREY BROWN: All right. Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger, thanks so much.

DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER: OK. Got it.

JEFFREY BROWN: And now a response from Huawei. William Plummer is the company's vice president for external affairs.

Welcome to you.

WILLIAM PLUMMER, Huawei Technologies: Thank you.

JEFFREY BROWN: So, you heard the congressman. Let me ask you flat out about this question of espionage and ties to the government.

Is your company tied to the government, and has it practiced spying?

WILLIAM PLUMMER: No and no.

And the committee has not provided any information to suggest otherwise. We—when this investigation was launched last November, Huawei met with the committee staff in December in Washington. We hosted committee staff in China in February for a daylong visit.

We hosted members and staff in Hong Kong with our CEO in May. We received a list of questions from the committee via The Wall Street Journal in June, and we responded in July. We made a witness available for the hearing in September and responded to subsequent questions after that.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, let me walk through that, because the report says specifically that the company didn't answer questions about the role of the Communist Party in the company.

It didn't provide data or information on previous board of directors that might have past ties.

So it is saying—and you just heard the congressman say again—that they don't feel like they have enough information to know whether your company might be a risk.

WILLIAM PLUMMER: It's a fair point.

In fact, actually, we did give them information in terms of what the Communist Party Committee does within the organization, which is the same that it does in KFC China or Wal-MartChina or Cisco China. It's required by Chinese law to allow for the existence of such an entity. It has no interaction with the business whatsoever.

This company—two key points. We're a $32 billion company doing business across 150 different markets; 70 percent of our business is outside of China. Our financing is not from the government. Our financing is from 33 different regional and commercial banks across the globe, 23 of which are outside of China.

We have over 500 operator customers globally, including the national carriers in virtually every OECD country. The quality and the integrity and the security of our solutions are world-proven.

Those facts were willfully ignored by the committee.

But more disturbing, whether you're Huawei or Ericsson or Alcatel-Lucent or Nokia Siemens or Cisco that's building this gear, you're all global companies. You're all building globally. You're all developing, coding, and building in China.

There are cyber-vulnerabilities, but they're borderless.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, so what do you think is going on? You see this one or two Chinese companies being picked out.

WILLIAM PLUMMER: In November, when this investigation was launched, a press release was issued.

If the committee's intent had been to better secure our networks, then the press release wouldn't have focused on the two companies with headquarters in China, but rather the six companies that are competing for this business globally that all have operations in China and elsewhere.

On that point, which was willfully ignored, Huawei, as a global leader, $32 billion in sales last year, is not just an innovator, but an integrator.

To fuel our supply chain last year, we spent $6.6 billion procuring goods from U.S.-based companies. That's one-third of the components that go into our solutions. Those are tens of thousands of American jobs and quality and secure American technology that is going into our solutions.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, just briefly, because we have—you're planning to fight this.

Is that the argument you're going to make publicly to the American public, publicly to the government? You're planning to fight this?

WILLIAM PLUMMER: The report that was issued earlier this week was a book-long version of the press release that was announced last November.

From Huawei's perspective, it's an unfortunate political distraction. If the committee has issues—if one government has issues with another government, take them up via diplomatic channels.

Don't hold hostage an independent employee-owned company that is world-respected and a leader in its field.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right.

William Plummer of Huawei, thanks so much.

WILLIAM PLUMMER: Thank you.