The arrest of one of China’s leading tech executives by the Canadian police for extradition to the US has unleashed a combustible torrent of outrage and alarm among affluent and influential Chinese, posing a delicate political test for President Xi Jinping and his grip on the loyalty of the nation’s elite.
The outpouring of conflicting sentiments — some Chinese have demanded a boycott of American products while others have expressed anxiety about their investments in the US — underscores the unusual, politically charged nature of the Trump administration’s latest move to counter China’s drive for technological superiority.
Unlike a new round of tariffs or more tough rhetoric from American officials, the detention of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of the Chinese telecom giant Huawei, appears to have driven home the intensifying rivalry between the US and China in a visceral way for the Chinese establishment.
It may force Xi to adopt a tougher stance against Washington, analysts said. In part, that is because Meng, 47, is so embedded in that establishment herself.
She is one of China’s most prominent businesswomen — well-travelled, fluent in English, the heir apparent to a global technology firm that is a source of pride for both ordinary Chinese and the ruling Communist Party.
She is also the daughter of the company’s legendary founder, Ren Zhengfei, who built the company after a stint in the People’s Liberation Army.
That makes her corporate royalty in China — the equivalent of someone like Sheryl Sandberg, if Sandberg were also the daughter of an American tech pioneer such as Steve Jobs.
Now Meng is in police custody, after being detained during an airport layover in Vancouver on Saturday, and the outcry has put the Chinese leadership on the spot. Xi faces competing pressures — to show strength, perhaps by retaliating against the US, but also to limit the cost of rising tensions and the trade war with Washington on China’s ruling class.
“Her arrest will have phenomenal repercussions in China,” said Tao Jingzhou, a corporate lawyer in Beijing.
“The wealthy have already been worried for a long time about their safety and their wealth in America,” he added.
“If the US is going to pursue corruption and extraterritorial laws, that will increase.”
Though Xi’s status as China’s paramount leader is unchallenged, his management of the economy and relations with the US had come under criticism before Meng’s arrest, with some blaming him as pushing overly ambitious policies that aggravated the Trump administration and provoked the trade war.
And the timing of Meng’s detention may mean more pressure on Xi. It occurred as he and Trump were discussing a truce in the trade war over dinner in Buenos Aires. Aides said Trump was unaware of the arrest at the time, but some Chinese are already saying the American side’s failure to raise it at the summit meeting amounted to a loss of face for Xi, and perhaps a deliberate attempt by hawks in Washington to embarrass China.
Others said Meng’s arrest would embolden those who have long suspected that the US is determined to block China’s rise. “This will just confirm everyone’s worst suspicions about the US,” said one retired businesswoman with family ties to the party leadership, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Deng Yuwen, a political analyst in Beijing, said conservative forces in the Chinese government and society could use Meng’s arrest to resist concessions as trade talks unfold in the next few months.
“If the US makes an example of Huawei, the conservative nationalist forces in China and also the military will be very unhappy, and that will make it even more difficult to make compromises with the United States,” he said. “In the short term, the US might gain from playing this card, but in the longer term, it doesn’t gain from this,” Deng added. “This will make it harder for the reformers to speak up.”
New York Times News Service
