China‘s official Xinhua news agency has attacked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for not telling Beijing in advance and “letting this nasty thing happen.“
This story is being published for POLITICO as part of a content partnership with the South China Morning Post. It originally appeared on scmp.com on Dec. 9,2018.
China has ratcheted up the pressure on Canada to release the detained executive of Huawei Technologies over the weekend by threatening “grave consequences” and accusing Canada of “hurting the feelings of the Chinese people,” escalating the case into one of the worst diplomatic rows between Beijing and Ottawa.
Chinese foreign vice-minister Le Yucheng on Saturday summoned Canadian ambassador John McCallum to lodge a “strong protest” against the arrest of Sabrina Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver and urged Ottawa to release Meng immediately, according to a brief foreign ministry statement.
Meng, the chief financial officer at Huawei and a daughter of the Chinese telecom giant’s founder, was arrested in Vancouver on Dec. 1 and faces extradition to the United States, which alleges that she covered up her company’s links to a firm that tried to sell equipment to Iran in defiance of sanctions.
The arrest of Meng in Canada, which took place on the same night that Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump dined together in Buenos Aires, has infuriated Beijing.
The official Xinhua news agency published an editorial on Sunday morning condemning the arrest as an “extremely nasty” act that had caused “serious damage to Sino-Canada relations,”
“According to the words of the Canadian leader, he had known of the action in advance,” Xinhua said, referring to the fact that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — whom it did not did name directly — had a few days’ notice of the arrest.
