Why Canada Will Bear the Brunt of the American War on Huawei
thediplomat.com
thediplomat.com
They probably understand strongarm tactics won't work on us and are counterproductive. But, I'm sure other small countries are taking notes.
Beijing doesn’t care about the average Chinese. But its elites? It cares as much as any other government.
Aside from the fact that it's morally reprehensible...
Beyond enforcement of multilateral sanctions (especially the NK ones), the US and Canada (and the UK) could make it much more difficult for the elites to move assets out of China. Ban anonymous ownership of property, and start enforcing Chinese currency-control laws on government-connected individuals. Sure, President Xi might be able to evade Chinese law in China, but good luck convincing the Southern District of New York to look the other way.
Any ethical concerns aside, why would we break our own laws when enforcing them (and China's as written) is much more effective?
For example, we should be subjecting Americans to the TSA bullshit that they dole on others.
When significant powers want to send each other messages without escalating to full out war, they use smaller satellite states to deliver their messages. This is what happened during the cold war between the Soviets and the US. It's what's happening between the US and China.
If china or the US or russia or any major power wanted to send a message to small countries, they'd do so directly. Like we do with canada or China does with north korea or russia does with the smaller ex-soviet nations.
If the American (or, I'd guess, Canadian) foreign policy arm had its way, this arrest wouldn't have happened. Unfortunately, rule of law. An independent prosecutor issued warrants which were confirmed by a court and executed by police.
The concept of independent agencies doesn't exist outside a small number of countries. It can be difficult for an elite in Beijing to believe the American president has no power to halt the proceedings against Huawei's CFO. This is, at its core, the mis-understanding. Not Cold War proxy war dynamics.
There is no misunderstanding. Everyone involved knows exactly what is going on. It's international politics. The only question is how this is resolved. Will it escalate or will the US and china achieve a compromise?
Not talking about the EU in the first place that's just a union of interests where the stronger eat the weaker for breakfast and bend to China whenever they hear mandarin.
I believe China to be a mercantile culture, that was helped by the more developed states. But instead of valuing the relations, China only values them if it can see profit.
Also China values the relations if the profit of China is bigger that the profit of the other state.
In the mercantilist others must be loosers, as opposed to mutual benefits when all play nice.
“Mercantilism is a national economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports of a nation” [1]. This is what China used to be. (Starting, mostly, with Deng Xiaoping.) Xi prioritising force projection and jingoism is a shift away from mercantilism.
They are nationalist, and want to gain things at the expense of others all the time (I don't have first-hand experience but I believe it to be so).
So when I say China is mercantilist, I am referring more to their approach to relations as a zero-sum game.
The bit I don't understand is how can US impose laws that apply to non-US companies/individuals? Lets even assume this is all legal under US laws and hence Canada has no choice but to extradite this person given their bilateral extradition treaty. What I suspect we will continue to see more going forward: 1) US will continue to introduce laws that effectively apply to everyone everywhere and use extradition treaties to enforcement them 2) These laws will be exercised selectively in cases where US economic or political interest is at stake. 3) Other countries will follow. 4) This sets bad undemocratic precedence where law introduced in one country is used to prosecute people that never stepped foot on that country soil. 5) Cost and risk of doing business will increase.
Huawei stole a Canadian company's technology [1], markets products in America [2], has issued dollar-denominated debt [3] and then went and violated sanctions in dollar-denominated transactions. This is a far cry from extraterritorial enforcement for either the U.S. or Canada.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-ag...
[2] https://www.huawei.com/us/
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2018/04/26/huawei-...
I can believe that. But how is this related?
> markets products in America
> has issued dollar-denominated debt
> and then went and violated sanctions in dollar-denominated transactions.
I don't believe any of this is true for Huawei incorporated in China. US subsidiaries of Huawei most likely follow the US law or otherwise their execs would get arrested.
American criminal law, like most criminal law, pierces corporate veils. Sanctions law, in particular, is an absolute responsibility law that traces liability to decision makers.
The analogy would be an American company violating Chinese laws while selling products in China and borrowing in renminbi and then getting pissed off when their executive is arrested by a neighbouring country. "The other entity broke the law" would be as silly a defense in that case as it is here.
And if we don't want to use American sanctions laws as a baseline, the alleged violations all happened while U.N. sanctions were in effect.
UN sanctions cover mostly military and nuclear equipment - I don't believe that either ZTE or Huawei participated in arms sales to Iran. US accuses both of integrating and reselling modem chipsets made by companies like Broadcom.
This looks to me like trade war where law is used instrumentally and public opinion is shaped to make it look differently to what it actually is.
Say what you want about Trump but he knows when he has leverage.
It can hardly be lost on the Chinese that Canada, a rule of law country, is simply carrying out contractual obligations
Authoritarians don't believe in the rule of law.
Not just in the sense that they don't have respect for it and wouldn't implement it. They don't believe other governments actually don't have influence over the judiciary. Often for good reasons because courts are sometimes willing to bend the rules for the benefit of the government.
This doesn't strike me as a reasonable generalization. It implies too much stupidity. I think Mr Putin and Mr Xi are well educated and have a grasp of how the world works well beyond what we lay people think we know.
And, in truth, as we've learned with Trump, in many cases they do because it's harder to undo or punish his actions as fast as he can keep doing things. When there are no clear rules for enforcing the rules, we lose.
They’re dictators. But no man rules alone. Irrespective of how well they understand the situation, they are constrained by their sources of political power. There is no evidence those sources understand the rule of law or separation of powers.
This is a common failure mode for authoritarian regimes, by the way. A competent leader forced to make incompetent decisions by an elite corroded by years of corrupt rule.
They don't believe there isn't some backchannel for the regular government (the executive mostly) to influence a court ruling when it really needs to.
But they will sadly use it as a weapon on others. They call it weakness.