Arrest tarnishes image of Chinese telecom giant,
Canada, once a safe harbour for tech giant, is echoing concerns
It is one of China’s proudest corporate success stories, a colossus in cuttingedge technology that elbowed out Western rivals to become the biggest supplier of the hardware that connects our modern world.
Now, all around the globe, the walls are going up for Huawei.
The United States, which for years has considered the Chinese telecommunications giant a security threat, aimed a straight shot at the company’s leadership when it secured the arrest, in Canada, of Huawei’s chief financial officer.
But lately, Huawei’s setbacks have come on multiple fronts, from Canada and New Zealand to Australia and Brit- ain. China sees the company as a pivotal driver of its ambitions for global technological leadership. Increasingly, much of the rest of the world sees it as a potential conduit for espionage and sabotage. The Canadian government said Wednesday that it had detained Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng
Wanzhou, on Saturday in Vancouver, while she was transferring flights. The United States is seeking Meng’s extradition but has not said what prompted the arrest. The news ignited anger and astonishment in China on Thursday, mere days after leaders of the United States and China announced a reprieve in their trade battle.
A “declaration of war” against China was how Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of Global Times, a state-run newspaper known for its nationalist tone, described Meng’s detention on Weibo, a Twitter-like service.
Gavin Ni, chair of Zero2IPO Group, an influential research and consulting firm in China’s investment industry, wrote on his WeChat social-media account: “The China-U.S. competition is not merely a trade rivalry, but a rivalry on all fronts. Carry on, our motherland!”
Geng Shuang, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, said it had asked U.S. and Canadian officials to give a reason for the detention and to immediately release Meng. “To detain someone without giving clear reason is an obvious violation of human rights,” Geng said.
Huawei said Thursday that it was not aware of any wrongdoing by Meng, who is a daughter of the company’s founder. The company has long denied that it spies on behalf of Beijing.
For many years, the fog of distrust surrounding Huawei was a problem that was largely confined to the United States. Large American mobile carriers such as AT&T have avoided using Huawei’s equipment in their networks ever since a 2012 congressional report highlighted the security risks.
In response, Huawei focused its business efforts elsewhere. Of the more than $90 billion (U.S.) in revenue it earned last year, more than a quarter came from Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Now, a wider patch of the world appears to be siding with Washington against Chinese technology. A turn en masse against the company, led by governments in many of its most important markets, would have grave implications for its business.
Australia barred Huawei earlier this year from supplying technology for the country’s fifth-generation, or 5G, mobile networks. New Zealand last week blocked one of its leading mobile carriers from buying Huawei’s 5G gear. Britain’s in- telligence chief, in a rare public appearance this week, said that the country had a difficult decision to make on whether to allow Huawei to build its 5G infrastructure. And Canada’s top spy echoed those concerns, without naming Huawei or China, in a speech Tuesday. Huawei has tested 5G equipment with major mobile carriers in both Canada and Britain.
Behind the tariff fight that has engulfed Washington and Beijing lies a deeper contest for leadership in future technologies such as supercomputing, artificial intelligence and 5G mobile internet. For many people in China, the contest feels not merely commercial, but civilizational. At stake is the country’s ability to claim its rightful place as a superpower.
Huawei has tried to avoid being pulled into this fight. In an internal memo from January that was reviewed by The New York Times, Ren Zhengfei, the company’s founder, outlined a strategy for navigating these uncertain times. The key, he wrote: Keep adapting. But do so quietly.
“Sometimes, it’s better to find a safe place and wait for stormy weather to pass,” Ren wrote.
Europe was one such place, Ren said. Huawei has cultivated political friendships and invested heavily in places like Britain. “Eventually, through years of effort, our goal is for Europeans to perceive Huawei as a European company,” Ren wrote.
Canada seemed to be another safe harbour. “The Canadian government is very sensible and open, giving us enormous confidence in our investments in this country,” Ren wrote.
This was all before Washington nearly put out of business Huawei’s main Chinese rival, called ZTE.
In April, the Commerce Department banned ZTE from using components made in the United States after saying the company had failed to punish employees who violated U.S. sanctions against Iran and North Korea. The move was effectively a death sentence because ZTE relied heavily on American microchips and other technology.
Eventually, the Trump administration decided to ease its punishment of ZTE, in an effort to cool tensions with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, before a historic North Korea meeting.
But the power that Washington wielded over the fates of Chinese tech companies had been made very clear to people on both sides of the Pacific.