Speaking as a Canadian, this is already old news for us. There have been lively debates over on /r/canada, which went very one-sided (understandably) after China arrested two Canadians as leverage. [1]
As someone who likes to follow geopolitics, I can't help but wonder if the timing of this extradition request was strategic. When Meng was arrested, Canada was in the middle of NAFTA/USMCA re-negotiations and our Prime Minister was publicly musing about diversifying our trade partnerships, specifically focused on engaging with China. The automatic arrest of one of China's "royals" per our extradition treaty with the US was an extremely effective way of erasing our only major leverage on that negotiation.
IIRC the charge of bank fraud for business dealings in Iran was largely unrelated to Huawei's (sketchy) telco business. Kind of like how they got Al Capone on tax evasion.
Can't argue with that. Thanks for correcting my fuzzy memory! In the same vein, this still removes the "we can always take our business over there" card that our PM was waving around.
It seems extremely unlikely that China would refuse to do business with Canada over one persons arrest. The way they need their economy to continue growing they can't turn down a major source of revenue like Canada.
This is the first release of the details of the US case. It's hard to see how a significant new release of information in the case could be "old news"?
If you read the story, the major event is the case against Huawei CFO Wanzhou Meng. She was arrested in Vancouver per a US extradition request back in December. Most of this new article is providing background on the charges against her and then talking generally about potential cyber risks of Made-in-China silicon.
That has since ballooned into a huge diplomatic crisis for Canada, which has had it's citizens arrested in China and subjected to sleep deprivation interrogation and who knows what else (can't find source. read somewhere). There are active calls for our national telco's to ban Huawei's tech in our 5G infrastructure. The latest round of controversy was when Telus, one of the three major cellular providers, publicly endorsed Huawei and confirmed it will be moving ahead with their hardware purchase.
Nothing in the article is substantially new, as someone who's been following this story closely. Perhaps coverage of this story for you as (presumably) an American is lighter than it has been for us up here. That's okay, and I wasn't speaking for you when I meant "us Canadians." Sorry.
Since there's some redaction (and the flurry of posts on this exact same topic), I'm guessing it took until today for them to be publicly released.
Another thing that's new (to me at least) is that they indicted Huawei itself, not just Mrs. Meng. A lot of the previous reporting that I read focused on her actions exclusively (probably due to extradition hearing).
My understanding (perhaps wrong) is that this was the first instance of the US issuing a formal charge. Previously, the executive was arrested and prevented from leaving Canada. The new development is that the US has specified what they are accusing this executive of, whereas previously that was not public.
The significance is that before they formally charge her, there is room for face saving maneuvers. For example the US could have agreed to press lesser charges as a result of a backroom deal with China. After this new development, that is not an option for the US.
The whole situation is somewhat baffling. It makes sense if US considers Huawei a major future competition to US interests ( not an unreasonable assumption ) given recent arrest in Poland[0]. The main difference there though was: no royals in that case though so Huawei just fired the guy.
Counter-thought: the pro-diversity trade position might've been an intentional diplomatic measure to pre-empt the blowback from the arrest. "We're pro-trade; it's the PRC/Chinese who goofed."
> The automatic arrest of one of China's "royals" per our extradition treaty with the US was an extremely effective way of erasing our only major leverage on that negotiation.
That's not the only leverage, the other one is PM's extradition veto, which they seem to be so quiet about.
If I were the chairman, I would've jumped out of the bed to fly to Canada and propose a trade pact the very moment Trump threw a tantrum at Canada, and EU.
Sealing off US trade access to their two biggest trade allies, that's priceless. Xi's passive, paralysed by fear, stance from the start has doubled the damage China took.
As someone who likes to follow geopolitics, I can't help but wonder if the timing of this extradition request was strategic. When Meng was arrested, Canada was in the middle of NAFTA/USMCA re-negotiations and our Prime Minister was publicly musing about diversifying our trade partnerships, specifically focused on engaging with China. The automatic arrest of one of China's "royals" per our extradition treaty with the US was an extremely effective way of erasing our only major leverage on that negotiation.
IIRC the charge of bank fraud for business dealings in Iran was largely unrelated to Huawei's (sketchy) telco business. Kind of like how they got Al Capone on tax evasion.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/world/asia/michael-spavor...