Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping enjoyed a ''truce'' dinner at the G20 in Buenos Aires, where dinner Guests broke out into spontaneous applause thereafter.
At the same moment, Canadian authorities were making the arrest of Wanzhou Meng, chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies at the request of US Authorities. The US is seeking extradition of Wanzhou Meng after convincing Canada to arrest her. Canada confirmed she was in custody shortly after the Globe and Mail reported she had been arrested in connection with violating sanctions against Iran. Meng is the daughter of the founder of Huawei, a national champion in China. Bloomberg said ''While the US routinely asks allies to extradite drug lords, arms dealers and other criminals, arresting a major Chinese executive like this is rare -- if not unprecedented''.
“This is sending a signal that there is a new game” said Dennis Wilder, a former CIA China analyst and senior director for Asia at the National Security Council under President George W Bush. In the hiphop World, this would be called a [geopolitical] ''diss''.
A diss track is a song intended to verbally attack someone else, often as a response to someone's diss track. While musical parodies and attacks have always existed, the trend became increasingly common in the hip hop genre fueled by the hip hop rivalry phenomenon.
"Huawei used an unofficial subsidiary named Skycom to transact business in Iran for Iranian telecommunication companies," Crown attorney John Gibb-Carsley alleged in a Vancouver courtroom. Wanzhou Meng is being charged with conspiracy to defraud banks. Meng was said to have been a director of Skycom at one point, Reuters reported in 2013. Skycom tried to sell S$2.03 million worth of Hewlett-Packard computer gear in late 2010, according to Reuters. Former employees of Skycom have stated that it was not distinct from Huawei, and that Skycom employees had Huawei e-mail addresses and badges, according to the Canadian court filing. Documents obtained through an investigation by the US authorities show that multiple Skycom bank accounts were controlled by Huawei employees, the filing said.
Canada will face "grave consequences" if it does not immediately release Meng Wanzhou [Xinhua]. The Vancouver real estate market which boomed for decades on the back of Chinese demand looks horribly exposed.
It is worth noting that Huawei is in the crosshairs. New Zealand banned Huawei networking equipment from 5G communication networks, citing "national security concerns". US security officials have reportedly reached out to European and Asian countries where Huawei equipment is already in use - including the UK, where Huawei hardware forms a key part of BT's 21st century network - warning them about the "national security risks" posed by the company. The US is mulling a subsidy for the purchase and maintenance of non-Chinese equipment by its allies, the WSJ reported noting that one of the government's main concerns surrounds the use of Chinese telecom equipment in countries that host US military bases, such as Italy, Japan and Germany.
An important market for Huawei has been Africa. In fact, Huawei is the bloodstream of Africa's telecom infrastructure. How this plays out in Africa is now an ''above the radar'' issue.