Technological Trade Impasse
"Her arrest will have phenomenal repercussions in China. The wealthy have already been worried for a long time about their safety and their wealth in America."
"If the U.S. is going to pursue corruption and extraterritorial laws, that will increase."
"If the U.S. makes an example of Huawei, the conservative nationalist forces in China and also the military will be very unhappy, and that will make it even more difficult to make compromises with the United States."
"In the short term, the United Sates might gain from playing this card, but in the longer term, it doesn't gain from this."
"This will make it harder for the reformers to speak up."
Tao Jingzhou, corporate lawyer, Beijing, China
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| Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou |
Federal Crown prosecutor John Gibb-Carsley has urged Justice William Ehrcke at B.C. Supreme Court to deny bail to Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, daughter of the technology giant's founder, a former intelligence officer with the Chinese military. She is accused of having committed acts of fraud in a scheme meant to trick financial institutions to engage in transactions violating American sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear aspirations. The prosecutor described her as a flight risk with no connections to Canada.
"At the starting point, there is an incentive to flee. Ms. Meng is charged with conspiracy to defraud multiple international financial institutions. It is a serious offence, with each offence carrying a maximum of 30 years in prison", he charged. "She has the means to flee and to remain outside Canada. Her ordinary home is in a country without an extradition treaty with the United States", he continued in a packed courtroom where international media and Chinese-Canadian community members sat side-by-side as markets responded negatively to the news.
Ms. Meng's father, Ren Zhengfei, is a fabulously wealthy man as the CEO of the most influential and prestigious tech company in China. Huawei Technologies has a vast clientele and a wide reach across the world, although its technology is outlawed in the United States as well as Australia. Suspicions are that embedded in its wares is spyware. Huawei is viewed by the U.S. as an arm of the Chinese Communist Party for intelligence-gathering purposes.
The very same time that Presidents Xi and Trump were negotiating a relaxation of their trade war in Buenos Aires, Meng was arrested on a stopover at Vancouver International Airport en route to Mexico. Were she to be granted bail she has two homes in Vancouver she can choose to stay at; both homes valued at a total of $15-million. It appears that the stress of her arrest triggered a visit to a hospital in Vancouver for hypertension.
China is outraged at her arrest and has called in the U.S. Ambassador to Beijing to discuss the warrant for her arrest which Canadian authorities had actioned for extradition.
Ms. Meng, 46, is one of China's most prominent businesswomen. She is well-travelled and cosmopolitan, fluent in English, and heir to a global technology company, the daughter of founder Ren Zhengfel, now in police custody over a week since last Saturday. Markets are on tenterhooks anticipating President Xi Jinping's response. Some in China now blame him for over-ambitious policies that had the effect of irritating the Trump administration to launch a trade war for technological superiority.
Professor of international studies Wu Xinbo at Fudan University, feels Chinese will see the arrest of Ms. Meng related to an attempt by the U.S to force China back into its traditional role of manufacturing low-end consumer goods, to prevent China from moving upward in producing advanced, valuable technological products challenging American superiority in the field.
Labels: Canada, China, Huawei Technologies, United States
posted by Pieface @ Monday, December 10, 2018
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