HONG KONG—Western countries are building more barriers to Huawei Technologies Co. equipment in their 5G network rollouts. But that won’t change an underlying truth about the next-generation communications networks: Technology developed in China will be at the center.

Huawei, and its crosstown rival ZTE Corp., have put forth vastly more proposals—and are among the biggest owners of key patents—underpinning the coming wave of 5G technology. That is in contrast to Western firms, which played a comparatively smaller role in the...