Meng Wanzhou had been groomed for decades to join the ranks of China’s business royalty.
Meng Wanzhou had been groomed for decades to join the ranks of China’s business royalty.
She started in the early 1990s on the switchboard of her father’s company, Huawei Technologies, the world’s largest maker of telecommunications network equipment. So began a quiet, but steady, rise that was widely viewed as a bottom-to-top apprenticeship to one day take the helm of Huawei from her father, Ren Zhengfei.
Meng’s carefully built world is now caught in a showdown between China and the United States with potential economic and diplomatic ramifications.
Meng, Huewei’s chief financial officer, is set to appear in court Friday in Vancouver, Canada, for a bail hearing after being arrested while changing planes Saturday. US prosecutors have been investigating since 2016 whether Huawei violated US export and sanctions laws by shipping US-origin products to Iran.
But the specific targeting of Meng – rather than the company in general – has raised speculation by some trade analysts that the case could cast a shadow over attempts by Beijing and Washington to end their trade battles.
On Thursday, China sent twin messages: demanding Meng’s release but also expressing hope that the incident would not derail possible fresh momentum on trade talks started by President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jingping last week.
Yet an editorial in the pro-government Global Times newspaper, which often reflects the foreign policy views of the Communist Party, decried the United States for “resorting to despicable hooliganism” in seeking Meng’s detention.
