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Meng Wanzhou
TechBig Tech

A year since the arrest of Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou, US-China relations remain frayed and strained

  • US sanctions on Huawei are not expected to ease off amid the slow progress in hammering out an interim trade deal with China
  • The arrest proved to be the flashpoint that generated wide international attention to the US-China tech war

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Huawei Technologies chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, who is out on bail and remains under partial house arrest after she was detained in Canada last year at the behest of American authorities, leaves her home to attend a court hearing in Vancouver on September 24. Photo: AP
Li Taoin Shenzhen

When Meng Wanzhou stepped off a Cathay Pacific plane in chilly Vancouver on December 1 last year, little did she know that she was about to become a new pawn in a widening US-China trade war.

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Having originally boarded in Hong Kong, Meng – chief financial officer of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies and company founder Ren Zhengfei’s daughter – was switching flights on her way to sunnier climes in Mexico and thought her stop in the coastal Canadian city would only be a short one.

Three hours later, after being detained and interrogated by Canadian immigration officials over her role at Huawei and having had her luggage searched, Meng found herself arrested at the request of Washington.

While that arrest was not made public until December 5, authorities in Beijing were already making strident calls for Meng’s immediate release. Court proceedings later showed that the US issued an arrest warrant against her a few months earlier on the grounds that she covered up attempts by Huawei-linked companies to sell equipment to Iran, breaking US sanctions against that country.

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