Diane Francis: China is an enemy of the West, and Canada needs to act like it

Canada has endured attacks from China since the arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou. HOLLIE ADAMS/BLOOMBERG

Canada should have — as Australia has done — outed China’s behaviour as equivalent to acts of war, then joined the trade gang-up with the United States

Huawei Technologies Co. is not a tech corporation. It is a weapon, created and subsidized by Beijing that ruthlessly gobbles up and spits out competitors and countries. It’s also pushing a technology that will spread China’s surveillance ability around the world.

One of Huawei’s early victims was Nortel, Canada’s busted technology champion. Nortel had become a world pioneer in 4G and 5G networks before Huawei was even a twinkle in its founder Ren Zhengfei’s eye. Eventually, its intellectual property and talent became Huawei targets and a recent investigative piece in Bloomberg recounts the tragic story. This is not the only example of Chinese corporate predation in Canada and around the world in the technology sector.

Bloomberg’s headline said it all: “Nortel was once a world leader in wireless technology. Then came a hack and the rise of Huawei.” To be fair, the company also went under due to the incompetence of its Canadian management.

Today, Huawei’s biggest victim is Canada itself following the arrest in 2018, on behalf of the United States, of Meng Wanzhou who is Zhengfei’s daughter and Huawei’s chief financial officer and deputy chairwoman. She is accused of fraud and sanctions violations.

This has unleashed attacks against Canada because Huawei’s enemies are the People’s Republic of China’s enemies. Ergo, the detention of Meng is considered “an act of war.” Her father, Zhengfei, had been a big shot in the People’s Liberation Army (as was China’s dictator Xi Jinping) before he launched the company. As a result, he is royalty inside China’s military dictatorship and his daughter, a princess.

This is why billions in trade contracts have been abrogated by China and two innocent Canadian businessmen have been held hostage in anticipation of a prisoner swap for Zhengfei’s daughter.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a weak, naive leader who has bungled most foreign policy files. He has neglected the military, damaged the energy and resource sectors, and concentrated on converting the country into a Polar Bear park and bribing dictatorships in Africa to get a useless seat on the United Nations Security Council.

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Source: Diane Francis | Financial Post