Analysts say Meng Wanzhou’s arrest at the request of the United States is politically motivated and ‘could get ugly very quickly.’
BEIJING — China called Thursday for the immediate release of a top executive at Huawei Technologies, the world’s largest maker of telecommunications network equipment, amid fears that her arrest in Canada could shatter the fragile truce in the trade war between Beijing and Washington.
Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer and the daughter of Huawei’s founder, is set to appear in court Friday for a bail hearing after being arrested in Vancouver while changing planes Saturday.
Meng was arrested on a U. S. request because Huawei is suspected of trying to evade American sanctions on Iran, according to multiple news reports. U. S. prosecutors have been investigating since 2016 whether Huawei violated federal export and sanctions laws by shipping U. S.-origin products to Iran.
The arrest, made on the same day that President Trump and China’s Xi Jinping sat down for dinner together in Buenos Aires to negotiate a way out of their trade war, is being viewed in China as politically motivated.
The United States is “resorting to despicable hooliganism,” the nationalist Global Times wrote in an editorial published Thursday. “Anybody can see that the United States is maliciously picking holes in Huawei, trying to give it a hard time using the American legal system,” said the paper, which often reflects the foreign policy views of the ruling Communist Party.
The “persecution” of Huawei is “clearly contrary to the spirit of the consensus” forged between Trump and Xi, it said. The two sides are now entering talks to try to find a way out of the tit-for-tat tariff war within the 90-day time frame set by Trump.
