Chinese telecoms equipment makers Huawei and ZTE have denied US charges that their equipment has been installed with code that allows sensitive information to be sent back to China, reports the BBC.

Senior executives from both companies yesterday denied the accusations that their technology enables spying, in front of a House Intelligence Committee in Washington DC.

Huawei and ZTE have struggled to expand in the US due to concerns about their links to the Chinese government and military.

Committee chairman Mike Rogers said that there had been reports of ‘backdoors’ and unexplained beaconing – a process in which networks self-repair – from equipment sold by the two companies.

During the hearing, Huawei senior VP Charles Ding said: "Huawei has not and will not jeopardise our global commercial success nor the integrity of our customers' networks for any third party, government or otherwise."

ZTE’s Zhu Junyun also denied the charges, saying that the reported backdoors were actually software bugs, common with such equipment.

US political news site The Hill quoted Rogers as saying he was a “little disappointed” with the responses of Huawei and ZTE during the hearing, and that he hoped for more transparency and directness in the testimony provided by the executives.

The BBC said the two companies have agreed to supply a list of the members of their organisations that are members of the Chinese Communist Party.

The committee has been investigating the Chinese firms for nearly a year and plans to publish classified and unclassified findings of the probe at the beginning of October. Rogers did not provide details of the action the committee would take if the companies were found to have behaved improperly.

Huawei has likened the US government’s efforts to block it from trading in the country to the ‘witch hunts’ of the McCarthy era.