It would be great if instead of rallying for boycotts, they could rally for the release of the two Canadians that disappeared.

I'm sure that it's retaliation over the Huawei arrest. But those two aren't exactly innocent tourists.[0] And I'm sure that the Chinese could make passable arguments for their detention. Espionage is a difficult charge to disprove.

0) https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/biographical-...

This is what a lot of people don't realize, no matter what country you are in, you are always guilty of something.

I'm an American, in America, and I'm 100% certain that I'm in violation of at least one of the over 40,000 laws and regulations that exist on the federal level. (And that doesn't even count the state and local laws and ordinances.)

Here's the thing though, I have no idea which laws and regulations I'm currently in violation of.

So all a country has to do is pick someone. Just arrest them, and assuming a sufficiently complex legal system, whoever they arrest will be in violation of some law. As regular people we just can't help it. We have no ability to maintain an awareness of every law and regulation we are subject to and stay in compliance with them.

So if you're Canadian or American, and you're not someone with the resources or clout to protect yourself from all of this, I'd strongly urge you to consider business models that allow you to operate at a distance from Asia. No one wants to be the dumb patsy sitting in a Chinese prison for 10 years because China and the US want to throw temper tantrums with each other.

That's a viewpoint of a bullshit legal system of thugs, based on the accused being guilty until proven innocent.

Actually, that's a pretty common standard. It's more or less a part of legal systems based on the Napoleonic Code. Defendants are basically treated as guilty until proven innocent. Don't get arrested in Mexico, for example, unless you can pay good bribes.

And actually, now in the UK you can be jailed for refusing to provide decryption keys or passphrases. We just saw the new policy in India. And things are heading that way in the US. Also, those charged with politically incorrect offenses are more and more treated as guilty until proven innocent.

So anyway, claiming moral superiority is an iffy proposition.

I'm not as well educated on these events as I'd like to be. Can anyone point to some unbiased (as much as possible) sources on what charges the Huawei CFO was arrested for, and what charges the Canadians in China were arrested for?

On the face of it the arrests read like blatent retaliation from China, but I'd like to know more about the full circumstances.

China have introduce very strict rules for NGO last year: http://www.chinafile.com/ngo/latest/fact-sheet-chinas-foreig...

Basically, a foreign NGO need to register with the government to continue their work in China.

Some of the NGO is still working on getting the approval. These two Canadians were working with one of those NGO.

>Can anyone point to some unbiased ... sources ...

"No", is the short answer.

You simply have to read the position of all sides, and then make your own decisions. Any source that people will point you to, is going to be biased in some fashion.

From a Canadian viewpoint, the CFO has not committed any crime. She was arrested at the request of the US, for fraud charges related to export restrictions. As far as I know, no exact charge has been specified, either in Canada or in the US.

In Canada she is attempting to prevent getting extradited.

>As far as I know, no exact charge has been specified, either in Canada or in the US.

it's fraud https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/7/18131188/huawei-cfo-fraud...

Technically the canadians are in jail for working illegally in China.

The US obsession with huawei is at best, a corporate witch-hunt. Its a case of wanting to have your cake, and eat it too.

You cannot spend 40 years outsourcing manufacturing for near-term profit, and expect to maintain longer term revenue as a market leader. Sooner or later, your cheap manufacturers will outpace you in quality, price, and features.

Just ask Harley Davidson. Their solution to high quality competition from Yamaha and Honda was, albeit less aggressive than this, protectionist legislation.

It is not a witch hunt-All Five Eyes countries have independently come to the same conclusion.

There is very little reason to trust corporate China, they have a horrible track record of breaking rules, cutting corners, cheating, hell even the regulators don't trust their own numbers.

It's not far fetched that a country which steals IP because they don't have the means to produce people that come up with these valuable IPs, would do everything in their power to subvert, infiltrate and manipulate to achieve their objective.

It's like this. China has really bad street cred. People buy their product because its cheap, but that's about as far as the trust from West goes.

Don't act surprised when China comes under extra scrutiny and fails the test. It's already happened to steel, ship building where companies no longer trust Chinese quality, and the trade war has largely benefitted the Korea and Japanese as a result.

The us involved Canada in this trade war on purpose by issuing this arrest warrant that we had to execute because of our legal agreements with the us. Now the Chinese is retailating against us and we will have to respond. Great.

It would be one thing if we had willingly decided to get involved but this is us being forced to get involved.

The bigger problem is that someone your economically locked to retaliated with kidnapping Canadian citizens over the arrest of the owner of a company. It'd be like Canada arresting Salena Gomez just because justin bieber did illegal things in the US. It's a slippery slope to just allow countries to pressure each other in that way.

I sense an argument that it would be easier for everyone to simply let Meng walk away. What, is she more special than another bloke who lies to the bank about transactions? If yes, let us flush rule of law down the toilet.

Whoosh! Now the only rule is Darwinism.

The problem here is not that China retailated against Canada coz the US.

China has retailated against South Korea, Japan and Sweden, Canada is just waiting in the line, it's just a matter of when, they will find the cause.

The problem here is not China acted now, is that they can and will act like this successfully and without consequences. CCP just love to stoke and ride this hatred, they need moments like this to cement themselves.

You don't see China and Chinese threatening to retaliate agaisnt and boycott America (they just did and basically failed), coz they know they can't yet, but any other country? it's really just when.

This is us choosing to help enforce sanctions against Iran, when we have sanctions against Iran ourselves. The only reason she's being extradited instead of charged locally is that she was dealing with American companies instead of Canadian companies. It's entirely consistent with treaty, and the rule of law. As such it is the right action regardless of any trade war with China. (As I understand it... I would like a more in depth analysis of the legal situation than any of the news articles I saw had)

If China can't handle us following and enforcing our laws, we should stop trading with them, not stop enforcing the law.

The feds don't care about that, the Iran shit is just the technicality they called her on so they could use Wanzhou as a bartering chip in their trade war.

Like when Julian Assange was charged with rape, they just needed an excuse to try and have him extradited to America, it's not the real reason they were out to get him.

I don't think that's the case this time.

We generally take our sanctions against Iran pretty seriously, and from what I've read it sounds like she was pretty blatantly involved in working around them.

That warrant was out for a long time, which isn't something I'd really expect out of something for this trade war.

I'd generally like to think that most of the US government is still above actions like that.

I could be wrong of course, in which case I'd probably agree that we shouldn't be doing this, I just think the evidence weighs in the other direction. (And yes, I'm aware of what the madman in charge has said).

I mean, like, yeah, America doesn't want China doing business with Iran, but that's been going on for a long time and if that was what America wanted to get serious about addressing there are much bigger fish to fry than Wanzhou.

With the Huawei witch hunt it's all highly suspect, and I'm still waiting to see some evidence of these secret spy chips supposedly implanted in all this Huawei equipment.

Bigger fish to fry than one of the richest people in China who has (allegedly) been directly involved in transferring the technology? That we can actually get our hands on?

Just looking at how the Chinese government has reacted, I think it's clear that this is a pretty big fish.

All the events targeting Chinese telecom manufacturers are tightly orchestrated. First it is ZTE, then it is call from US to have their allies drop Huawei, now it comes to arrest their CFO. And everything happens amid the trade war.

So it is just natural and intuitive conclusion that Trump administration is trying pretty hard to find evidence they can to indicate Huawei to drive them out of business, which is obvious.

Typically US carried those tactics pretty well, all under seemingly unrelated charges, like bank fraud, it is just sad that Trump can't control his big mouth, or he can't help but being honest.

Examples of such plays. And why getting Trump in this ?

>It would be one thing if we had willingly decided to get involved but this is us being forced to get involved.

Are you trying to say the US didn't start this? lol

I think OP is Canadian.

When Trump said this: https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/11/politics/trump-china-huawei-c...

Canada should've jumped on it and used it as an excuse to let her go as she would not be receiving a fair trial in the US. In general the extradition treaty that Canada has with the US needs revision badly as it forces Canada to turn over anyone to the US without much process. There should be a lot more process involved before Canada turns over anyone to the US.

The point of an extradition treaty is you beleive the other country has a reasonably fair and just justice system, or at least one roughly comparable to your own. If you force a full trial for extradition, there is no point to treaties like that to begin with.

This is unrelated to the China thing in my opinion. No one sensible is claiming things like "the US justice system will be unfairly stacked against her" or "she won't be properly guaranteed her human right against <X>". In general though I disagree and wish our extradition system worked differently.

It doesn't seem fair to the accused to send them to a country with different (in some cases lesser) protection than our own for various rights for their trial. In fact, doing so seems like a direct violation of human rights and thus (in Canada's case) the charter of rights and freedoms.

It's also not necessary. If we want to save on legal costs, we should simply run a single trial in the extraditing country which complies with both countries standards of human rights, proof, evidence, law, and so on.

Yes and statements by President Trump as noted above throw that whole notion out of the window. There are plenty of other cases out there as well. The US justice system is often used as a tool by corporate interests to bully people and make examples of them. It leaves much to be desired in terms of being a fair judicial system that serves everyone equally.

Even the point of contention is ridiculous. Don't export anything to Iran while we continue to export weapons used to kill thousands and starve millions to Saudi Arabia.

The executive branch is not the judicial branch. Unlike China, the US actually has an independent judiciary. And, in this case, what “corporate interest” is driving this? This is a case concerning Iranian sanctions — American companies would love to be able to sell to Iran (or anyone for that matter.) how does it support US corporate interests to prosecute sanctions violations (involving US manufactured equipment?)

And millions aren’t starving in Saudi Arabia. Saudi’s Arabia is also ostensibly an ally that doesn’t point potential nuclear weapons at its neighbors. Saudi does have plenty of problems, but the Iran situation is one of a hostile regime threatening the region with nuclear weapons. A regime that actually promotes “death to America” and promotes the total destruction of Israel. The Saudis and the Israelis don’t publicly get along, but they tend to leave each other alone and cooperate under the radar, while Iran is a state sponsor of Hezbollah and pursuing nuclear weapons. A state sponsor of terrorism mixed with nuclear weapons? A pretty dangerous combination. There is no comparison with Saudi Arabia.

Your last point is out of context

Trump doesn't control the judiciary.

He controls the prosecution, which is in the executive branch. He could achieve all of those in your parent post without controlling the judiciary.

I am not saying that your parent post is correct, only possible.

Couldn't he pardon her?

Not until after a trial

But everyone knows he can't and the fact that he didn't know she'd be arrested is proof. Making legal matter political is how you get corruption

The prosecution represents the executive branch, they can drop the case at any time. He can tell them to drop the case. He has the power to do so and no one can stop him from doing that. They all in the end answer to him. The judges are independent, but it's the prosecution which brings the charges, and can drop the charges at any time.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/05/president-trump-prose...

Has he been able to do that in the Russia elections issues ?

Trump can pardon a guilty verdict, but he cannot force charges to be dropped.

Canada can choose to walk away, which would be smart. But apparently there is some miscalculation, now they stuck in between two superpowers.

>Canada can choose to walk away

What is "walking away" in this context? Releasing Meng, and in the process, reneging on the extradition treaty?

Based on the context of the two comments you replied to, my interpretation of “walking away” would be Canada declining to further escalate retribution toward China.

Presumably retribution drags them in on the side of the US, but abstaining pins them between two superpowers.

Your claim makes it sound like Canada has to do whatever US told it to do under any circumstance. I had hard time to believe that is the actual situation here.

>Your claim makes it sound like Canada has to do whatever US told it to do under any circumstance

No, Canada has to do whatever the US-Canada extradition treaty says, not whatever the current US administration tells it to do.

>I had hard time to believe that is the actual situation here.

How so?

Canada is not stuck in between, they know exactly which side they are on. It's pretty obvious.

They are not stuck. They are adhering to the principle called rule of law, where the accused are extradited, tried in court, and guilt is based on evidence instead of family status.

> Other companies are boycotting Apple, which is battling with Huawei for second place among the world's smartphone producers.

> A machinery maker in Shenzhen, where Huawei is based, threatened to confiscate Apple devices from employees and fire those who did not comply. Menpad, a Shenzhen-based tech company, said it would punish employees who buy Apple products. Finally, Shenzhen Yidaheng Technology said it would fine staffers who bought iPhones the equivalent amount of their device, while other companies threaten to withhold bonuses.

They are boycotting Canadian brands.

The boycotts are hollow when Chinese airlines continue to buy Boeing and Bombardier jets.

It’s become apparent that in the world of technology you cannot trust China. Rightfully earned or not, instead of arresting people, I think the Chinese communist state should do more to instill trust in people.