The “Cyber Security Evaluation Centre” set up in England by Huawei, a Chinese telecom giant, in 2010 marks a new way of persuading purchasers, and the British government, that equipment from the manufacturer that runs it can be trusted, The Economist reports.

It operates in close cooperation with GCHQ, Britain’s signals-intelligence agency. Its security-cleared staff, some of whom used to work for GCHQ, are responsible for making sure that the networking equipment and software that the Chinese firm wishes to sell to British telecoms companies are reliable, will only do what customers want them to do, and cannot be exploited by cybercriminals or foreign spies — including Chinese ones.