Telecommunication giant Huawei has spent some CNY 10 Billion (GBP 1.1 Billion) building a massive fake European town from the ground up in Dongguan in southern China to house its new offices and labs.

According to Chinese news outlet China News Weekly, the campus has around 12,600 employees. Every morning, dozens of shuttle buses take them from downtown Shenzhen, where Huawei is headquartered, to Songshan Lake, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) away, to work.

The Southern Metropolis Daily reported that currently, Huawei's Songshan Lake site is still under construction and that the European town was in the final stages of construction. Once the Songshan Lake base is complete, Huawei will have departments embedded in the base.

According to a report from ThePaper.cn, Huawei originally planned to move relevant departments of Huawei terminals to the Songshan Lake base, but the company later made new arrangements , determining that R&D departments that do not directly face customers may move to the Songshan Lake base one after another.

"Shenzhen still needs to be more convenient than Dongguan. Departments directly facing customers may stay in Shenzhen, while departments not directly facing customers such as R&D may go to Songshan lake. But everything is still up in the air,” said a Huawei insider.

At one time, there were rumors that Huawei decided to move its headquarters to Dongguan because of the high housing prices in Shenzhen and inadequate government facilities. However, Huawei has since repeatedly stressed that its headquarters in Shenzhen will not change.