City profile

Meng Wanzhou

The Huawei executive whose detainment in Canada became a flashpoint of US-China tensions, “returned to the corporate stage” this week at an earnings presentation, said Michelle Toh on CNN Business. As US sanctions “continue to slam” the Chinese tech group, her message was mixed. Huawei made record profits in 2021, yet sales slumped by nearly 29%. Its declared goal is still “survival”. Meng, who was held for nearly three years under house arrest for alleged fraud at the behest of the US government, alluded briefly to her ordeal, saying the world had “changed so much” during her time away. “Over the past six months, I’ve been learning and trying to catch up,” she said.

The daughter of Huawei’s founder Ren Zhengfei, Meng was greeted as a hero at the company’s Shenzhen HQ on her homecoming. State media hailed her release “a diplomatic victory for China”, said Vincent Ni in The Guardian. The battle now is to turn Huawei’s isolation into commercial success. The group’s smartphone business has been hard hit by its inability to obtain chips, but improved product lines, such as wearable tech, have partly compensated. Meanwhile, Huawei claims its HarmonyOS software – used in more than 220 million devices in 2021 – is “becoming the world’s fastest growing operating system”. The privately held group was mainly silent on Russia, where it launched a 5G project last year. But its own travails have provided a useful crash-course in pragmatism, said The South China Morning Post. As Meng observed, Huawei is now “more capable of dealing with uncertainty”.