Actually, ZTE's history isn't spying. Huawei hasn't either. In fact, both of them have 'kept their noses very clean' in their US retail products.
Cannot say the same for US-based Blu Products, as well as some of the US carrier's "partners" that outsource and off-shore. Even a few corporate and government 'distributors' of US branded retail phones have been caught with Chinese spyware that was a result of 'off-shore' support. The same goes for any 'refurbished' and 'gray market' phones that come into this country, including ZTE and Huawei. Unless you buy US retail, non-carrier, sealed from the factory, you're at a risk of spyware by someone along the channel.
No, the problem is that ZTE sold US equipment directly to Iran. Period. That's a violation ... and then they did it ... again! Sorry, death penalty.
Now Huawei is a different story. In Huawei's case, they had a partner that tried to sell to Iran, and when they were caught, Huawei cut them off, and their partners. Huawei is big enough, they cut off Google. For those that didn't know, the Google Pixel (1st gen) is the HTC Ceberus. Why? Because the Huawei Mate 9 was the Google Pixel ... until early 2016, when Huawei's CEO cut Google off, completely, as Google reneg'd on terms in their contract.
Huawei is about power. The US government fears the size of Huawei. They are the leader in 5G backend equipment. The US is trying to build a more 'domestic' base for national security reasons. In that regard, it's not an unwise move to try to not give more infrastructure Huawei, unlike Europe, where Huawei has major infiltration. They own the 'backend' stuff, and are #2 on the 'consumer' side.
Understand Huawei, unlike ZTE, is huge. They make everyone's equipment, household name US companies, with lots of 'partners' everywhere, especially when it comes to US branded products. They might be #3 in phones, but they have long been #1 in backend equipment. Huawei had also been the 'new darling' of developers, because as Google has been overcharging for products, Huawei's phones were ideal for developers.
Huawei's Silicon (HiSilicon) Kirin is usually the first chip to the market with the latest ARM cores, as well as their Mali GPUs. And Huawei makes everything end-to-end, so theirs no risk of a 'middleman' adding spyware. So if you want a cheap, leading edge phone with an unlocked bootloader, Huawei -- not Google -- had been preferred. Especially with Huawei releasing the full source code several years back, and good about releasing it within months of the new phone's release. Nearly all carrier phones never do that. That also meant you could always load your own firmware if you didn't trust Huawei.
But Huawei announced they are ending the bootloader unlock this past week, to take effect immediately for future phones, and 60 days for existing. So I've had to drop my recommendations for them as a developer phone.
I personally carry Honor (Huawei's youth brand, typically 6-12 month old technology from their prior flagship), because I can unlock the bootloader and install my own firmware. But I won't in the future.
