1. A netizen in a UK-based political forum believes the arrest of Meng Wanzhou is "just a smokescreen, the real aim being to damage Huawei which is seen as a competitor to US and European telecom equipment providers". Furthermore, he thinks "basically, it is part of a trade war". 2. I feel it informative to post a copy of my reply here as follows: I agree that it "is just a smokescreen, the real aim being to damage Huawei which is seen as a competitor to US and European telecom equipment providers". However, I don't agree that "basically, it is part of a trade war”. In my opinion, it is more than a trade war. It is a tech war, or worse, a geopolitical war in which the US tries to stem the rise of such would-be competitors as China. As an analogy of the paradox of Meng's illegal arrest, some years ago I heard from my friend that a policeman of a certain country went all the way to a school to handcuff a teacher who had punished his son without first informing him. There is a parallel between this story and Meng’s arrest. The US has been trying all sorts of stealthy ways to stalk, trap, ambush and arrest Chinese nationals in US allied nations for extradiction to the US without prior consultation with the Chinese government. This is a downright violation of China's sovereignty. It has created a paradoxical situation in which China has the legal right to demand the US to send all officials involving in Meng's arrest to China to be punished for violation of China's sovereignty. However, the ultimate factor in determining the outcome of the geopolitical tug-of-war will not be any government but the economic power of 1.4 billion Chinese. When one fifth of mankind views the US as the "new hegemonic imperial Japan" of this century, there will be tremendous backlash in the form of a silent boycott of American goods. In such circumstances, Trump can hold a thousand trade talks with his Chinese counterpart or tweet a thousand times about his Trumpian friendship with the Chinese leader or tweet a thousand times claiming that “China talks are going very well!", but all these will come to naught. Even if the Chinese government buys a lot of agricultural products from America, it won't find much demand from the general public. In the end, tons and tons of rotten US agricultural products will be dumped into the choppy waters of geopolitical conflicts, followed in quick succession by the plunging Dow and US economy. It will be a similar case for Canada whose Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to have been cowed into US submission by Peter Navarro's threat of a "Special Place in Hell". He seems to be so frightened now that he has willingly become Donald Trump's equivalent of Dracula's Renfield. Like the US economy, the Canadian economy could face the full wrath of one fifth of humanity. P.S. One thing for certain that could set Justin Trudeau's mind at ease is a “Special Place in Heaven" reserved for him by Peter Navarro. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/who-is-peter-navarro.html
