Maclean’s Details Extradition Fight for Huawei’s CFO, “The World’s Most Wanted Woman”

The February cover story of Maclean’s released today details the extradition fight for Huawei’s CFO, Meng Wanzhou, calling her “the world’s most wanted woman”.

The story provides a detailed account of the extradition saga, which has put Canada stuck between China and the United States, with diplomatic tensions between the countries at an all-time high.



Maclean’s argues “why Canada’s relationship with China may never recover”, while examining the extradition case from the beginning until present day. An excerpt:

As China demanded that Canada pick a side, it would become glaringly obvious that the U.S.—the closest of this country’s allies by dint of both geography and long precedent—was more interested in nabbing Meng and Huawei than any repercussions Canada might face as a result. Equally apparent was that Ottawa had been caught flat-footed, seemingly unprepared for the forces Meng’s arrest would unleash. At the centre of the saga stood Huawei, telecom behemoth, striving avatar of China’s global ambition and—many critics charge—an instrument of state surveillance whose tentacles reach far beyond China’s borders. Meng would spend months out on bail, swathed in luxurious semi-confinement in her Vancouver home, surrounded by neighbours who barely knew her, occasionally sending plaintive and oddly hammy PR missives to the outside world.

Through the ratcheting international tensions, Canadian politicians and government officials would return again and again to the phrases that are supposed to lay out how things work—rule of law, international order, apolitical process—as though by repeating these words like a mantra, they will suddenly matter again. Instead, the blunt fury with which Beijing reacted to the arrest of one of its most prized and prominent citizens would make that belief look like starry-eyed naïveté.

If you’ve just started following the Huawei CFO extradition battle, or want to read more details about the diplomatic headache for Canada, it’s worth the read. Check it out here.

Also—last week, Huawei Canada’s president, Eric Li, wrote an op-ed in the National Post to proclaim, “Huawei is no threat to Canada or Canadians.”