National security adviser said US had long been concerned about role of Chinese tech companies in theft of technological knowhow
The US national security adviser, John Bolton, has said he knew in advance that a top Chinese telecoms executive would be arrested in Canada to face extradition to the US, in what is escalating into a major diplomatic incident.
Beijing is calling the release of Meng Wanzhou, the the global chief financial officer of the vast Huawei corporation, and demanded Ottawa and Washington provide reasons for her arrest in Vancouver on Saturday .
Bolton would not give a specific reason for the US request, saying it was a law enforcement matter, but in a radio interview on Thursday he said the US had long been concerned about the role of Huawei and other Chinese tech companies in the theft of US technological knowhow.
“We’ve had enormous concern for years about… the practice of Chinese firms to use stolen American intellectual property to engage in forced technology transfers and to be used really as arms of the Chinese government’s objectives in terms of information technology in particular,” Bolton told National Public Radio .
“So not respecting this particular arrest, but Huawei is one company we’ve been concerned about, there are others as well,” he said, adding that the issue would be the subject of negotiations between the US and China over the next 90 days, the deadline laid down by Donald Trump at last week’s G20 summit in Argentina for both countries to resolve trade disputes, before he ordered a significant ratcheting up of trade sanctions.
“As the negotiations proceed I think we’re going to see a lot about what Chinese companies have done to steal intellectual property, to hack into the computer systems, not just of the US government, although they’ve done that, but into private companies as well,” the national security adviser said.
