The arrest and request for extradition of a top executive of one of the world’s biggest tech companies is scarcely business as usual. But that is what happened to Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, in Vancouver last Saturday. The US wants to try her on charges of busting its trade sanctions against Iran. If the extradition is successful – the case is adjourned until tomorrow – and she is found guilty, she could serve a 30-year prison sentence.
It was not an act calculated to calm the tense relationships between the US and China – a rivalry that Donald Trump characterises as opening a new era of great power competition. Even as Trump sat down for a working dinner with President Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires to accept China’s request for a 90-day truce in the tariff war, his aides will have known that hours earlier the Canadians had successfully carried out the US request. The news will not have gone down well in Beijing.
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