(CNN) — It must have been one of the most humiliating moments in the life of the so-called "Princess of Huawei" when Canadian authorities arrested Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of the Chinese telecommunications giant, on December 1 at Vancouver International Airport.
Canadian agents detained Meng at the request of the US, which claims Huawei, through the use of the Hong Kong company Skycom Tech, dodged sanctions on Iran. After 10 days in a corrections center and an unusually long bail hearing, Meng is under house arrest in Vancouver on $10 million Canadian bail ($7.5 million US). She faces extradition to the US, as well as a possible 30-year prison sentence if found guilty of defrauding banks to circumvent American sanctions.
Arresting Meng is no small matter -- imagine if China detained Apple CEO Tim Cook. Huawei, the world’s second-largest smartphone manufacturer after Samsung, is the poster child for China’s commercial might, and Meng is the daughter of the company’s founder Ren Zhengfei.
Canada simply may have honored a routine extradition warrant, but it finds itself in an unenviable tug of war between the US and China amid a trade war between the two superpowers. Canada reportedly reached a "new level of frustration" with US President Donald Trump after he expressed a willingness to politicize Meng’s case and use it as a bargaining chip to protect his country’s economic and national security interests. Ottawa is also bearing the brunt of Meng’s arrest after China detained two Canadians in apparent retaliation.
The consequences for Canada could be painful. The situation threatens to turn into yet another long-term foreign policy disaster for the relatively young and inexperienced government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. It is still bruising from Saudi Arabia’s harsh retaliation after Canada criticized its human rights record in August.
To make matters worse, the imbroglio comes when the Trudeau government is trying to rev up trade and investment with China, partially to benefit from Beijing’s deteriorating economic relationship with the US.
