Huawei is an International Threat

Both Canada and the US botched the extradition case against Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the founder of Huawei that’s still pending. You don’t have to like anything about China to know that the case for extraditing Meng to the US compounds tensions for no useful purpose. Here’s a summary of what happened. On December 1, 2018 Canada Border Services officers detained Meng on arrival by air in Vancouver, where she owns sumptuous homes. The RCMP then formally arrested her on a provisional US extradition request. The US alleged that she was involved with multiple financial institutions in breach of their sanctions against Iran. The first thing you have to know about dealing with Asians is the culture of face. Losing face, or incurring public humiliation, strikes at the core of identity and honor. In all cultures, a favorable personal disposition and mutual respect between leaders helps to enable good outcomes in international affairs. Similarly, antagonism exacerbates challenges. It’s especially risky to humiliate a powerful adversary from a position of weakness, and Canada stands against China as a mouse against a carnivorous dragon.

Canada’s Extradition Act

Given the symbiotic relationship between Huawei and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), it was foreseeable that China would regard Meng as having quasi diplomatic status, and would deliver reprisals following her arrest. That connection threatens security throughout the western democracies. And that relationship is why the CCP wants to maintain it. The imprisonment without charges of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor could hardly have come as a surprise. Nor the trade reprisals. 
Canada’s Extradition Act provides for the political oversight that China evidently expected to work in Meng’s favor. It says this, under the subhead Minister’s approval of request for provisional arrest:

The Minister [of Justice] may, after receiving a request by an extradition partner for the provisional arrest of a person, authorize the Attorney General to apply for a provisional arrest warrant …

What the Minister may do, the Minister may also decide not to do. The Act also says “the Minister is responsible for the implementation of extradition agreements.” Although it might be problematic to abort the process once started, implementation could presumably end at any time during the process. Violating US sanctions against Iran is not an offence under Canadian law, and not therefore a valid reason for extradition under the Act. But it was only on January 28, 2019, eight weeks after her arrest, that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) additionally announced financial fraud charges against Meng. In February DOJ came up with the further charges that Huawei had stolen trade secrets from the US company, T-Mobile.

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Both the US and Canada have better ways to deal with Chinese assertiveness

Arguably, the US put Canada in a jam with the extradition request. Nevertheless, what could Canada have done? And was China entitled to expect Meng’s release after her arrest? As happens in Canada’s slow-moving justice system, the extradition process has been delayed for a year and a half and counting. Why didn’t Meng appear before a judge for a summary disposition within a week, or two at the most? Evidently, the Americans didn’t have their case ready by then for offences that would have been criminal in Canada. So the court could have thrown out the claim for extradition summarily. Then she could have left Canada and stayed away. After the US produced the new charges, and given Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s love-in for China and all things Communist, the CCP could have expected that Meng’s case would be amenable to pressure on the justice system—as in China. With politics, big business and the justice system so closely aligned in Canada, the CCP will have known that the SNC Lavalin case was only a rare instance when a few honest people couldn’t stomach the corruption. (There are obvious self-serving reasons why Canada’s lawyers and judges uphold self-regulation so strenuously and resist credibly independent oversight.) Instead, last month BC’s Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes almost certainly ruled correctly in law to sustain Meng’s extradition. But that’s not the point. Both the US and Canada have better ways to deal with Chinese assertiveness than proceeding with her prosecution. Even if the US extradited her and sentenced her to life imprisonment, what good would that do?

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Reallocation of capital investment and reducing reliance on the supply chain from China

Reallocation of capital investment and reducing reliance on the supply chain from China comprise the primary recourses for countering real and prospective hostile action by Huawei and the CCP. Whatever Meng’s prominence, she’s only a cog in the machine. Faced with increasing pressure from the US government, last year Huawei announced that it was moving its entire research operations to Canada. But given China’s predations, do we need that? What about Canada standing solid alongside the US against Huawei in parallel with their withdrawal from the extradition process for Meng—and, presumably, to obtain the release of Kovrig and Spavor? Since Huawei began expanding into Canada in the late 2000s, the company received $22 million in corporate welfare from the cash-strapped government of Ontario, as well as tax credits from the federal government. For the future, however, the recourse available, and clearly necessary, is for the US and Canada to rein in Huawei and, especially, to exclude it from involvement in the 5G network. Having won a significant victory in court, the US is now in a position to be magnanimous from the high ground by reversing an unnecessarily provocative action against Meng that serves no purpose. Recognizing that there’s a not-so-cold trade war with China, it’s important to fight battles that are winnable and effective. Meng’s case is not one of them, neither for the US nor for Canada.