Huawei, the world’s second-biggest maker of mobile telecommunications network equipment by market share, made a big concession to transparency this week, revealing for the first time the names of its board members.

Unfortunately, the effect was somewhat undermined by the company’s failure to address issues such as the suggestion, reported in the Chinese media, that Sun Yafang, the chairwoman, used to work for China’s Ministry of State Security.

For a company that complains about being unfairly demonised in the US for alleged but unproven links to the Chinese security apparatus, that is a significant omission. But is it enough to explain Huawei’s failure to win a single network equipment contract from major US networks? Or is there, as the Chinese whispers have it, a plot in Washington to keep the company out of the US market?