Rotating Chairman of Huawei Technologies Co. Xu Zhijun holds an AI chip Ascend 910 in Shenzhen, China, on Aug. 23. (Naoyuki Fukuda)

BEIJING--Confronted by mounting suspicions its products could be used for espionage, Chinese tech behemoth Huawei Technologies Co. is showing its cards.

The company revealed Sept. 4 it has offered to share its source code with Japan for a security assessment, in an overture meant to allay such concerns in one of its key markets.

The U.S. government recently requested its allies to effectively ban Huawei products on grounds they risk being used for spying activities by China.

The source code is a core computer program component for the company's products.

Typically, companies are reluctant to make source code available, as it could be copied.

However, the U.S. government's suspicions run so deep that the company decided to make the offer to Japan. The company said it has already made it available to Britain and Canada.

Huawei said it also offered its cooperation on security measures for the latest 5G high-speed telecommunications standard being pursued by the Japanese government.

The government last December requested its ministries and agencies to take appropriate steps to reduce security risks in their procurements of information communications equipment.

While it did not single out Huawei, the move was widely considered to be an effort to push the company and others out of the market.

In accord with the policy, four Japanese carriers that the communications ministry allocated frequencies to 5G networks in April indicated they have no plans to adopt equipment made by Huawei in their communications infrastructure systems.

Concerned about the move, Huawei said the Japanese government was welcome to verify the source code and render a judgment.