That's just Chinese hardware with extra steps. If you don't believe me, feel free to look up the list of CEOs that are in China right now as a part of the US delegation.
As for the R&D part, Huawei is still pretty much indistinguishable from any other phone. I could buy one right now if I wanted to. It has shittier software though.
Curious where Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc are in your "cheap Chinese hardware"?
And by "role", do you mean doing the majority of the R&D behind the modern hardware we all use?