China pressures US, Canada ahead of Huawei hearing

BEIJING (AP) — China raised the pressure on the United States and Canada as a bail hearing for a top Chinese technology executive was set to resume yesterday in Vancouver, British Columbia.

A headline in a Communist Party newspaper called Canada’s treatment of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, “inhumane.” The editorial published on Monday’s Global Times followed formal government protests to the ambassadors of both Canada and the US over the weekend.

Meng was detained on Dec. 1 while changing planes in Vancouver. The US wants her extradited, alleging that Huawei used a Hong Kong shell company to evade US trade curbs on Iran.

Meng’s arrest could fuel US-China trade tensions at a time when the two sides are seeking to resolve a dispute over Beijing’s technology and industrial strategy. Both sides have sought to keep the issues separate, at least so far.

“This is a criminal justice matter,” US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

“It is totally separate from anything that I work on or anything that the trade policy people in the administration work on... We have a lot of very big, very important issues. We’ve got serious people working on them, and I don’t think they’ll be affected by this,” Lighthizer added.