"I doubt many in the West would happily use a Chinese phone in 2018."
I disagree.
After your review singing it's praises (other than price) I brought myself a Huawei Mate20 Pro on Saturday. My S8, whilst having lovely hardware, has been terrible on the software front (lag, freezes etc.). Due to shitty insurance (give to us for 3 weeks and we'll consider sending you a refurb) the screen cracks on the S8 were too much to take, so needed a decent phone "now", and the latest Huawei ticks every box other than SD card slot (NM instead) and 3.5mm socket.
And to be honest, now I've changed the launcher to Microsoft Launcher (I know, but it's really rather good) I can truthfully say that in fact I now prefer the Huawei UI to Samsung.
Early days, but my first look at a Chinese handset is a very positive one.