Canada has arrested Huawei’s global chief financial officer in Vancouver | Hacker News Reader

Canada has arrested Huawei’s global chief financial officer in Vancouver

theglobeandmail.com

1,081 pointsericzawo586 comments

Many are lost in technicalities here, if Canada has the right to arrest a businesswoman, if the US can stop a foreign company to do business with another country. Who cares?

I'm partial to Iran because a multi-lateral treaty was signed. Iran stopped nuclear enrichment. In exchange, western countries pledged to provide economic relief and stop sanctions.

It is said that Iran has been developing various weapons, but these weapons do not fall under the treaty, and experts and controllers all agree the nuclear program has been stopped.

It is wrong for the US to walk away from this treaty, in the same way it was wrong to walk away from the Paris accord agreement. You agree on one thing, you have to follow. That is the honourable thing to do.

A few will say that Iran is threatening Middle East Peace. What is obvious is that its Saudi Arabia who's bombing its southern neighbour or sending tanks to Bahrain. If you want peace, you have to impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia as well.

What is even wrong for the US is punishing foreign companies wanting to do business in Iran. Perhaps there are technicalities to demonstrate a law in the US is broken. This makes sense for bureaucrats. For the rest of the world, it's just abuse and plain wrong. History will judge.

> It is wrong for the US to walk away from this treaty

The Iran Nuclear Deal and the Paris Accords were not treaties. We have a process to ratify treaties in the US. The president approves a treaty and sends it to the senate to approve or reject.

It's easy for president to make executive order agreements because it doesn't require approval from the senate (something Obama knew he couldn't get for either deal). But all parties should know that these non-treaties can be undone without a second thought by a new president.

The nice thing about the American system is that while treaties are difficult to pass, they are more or less permanent.

> The nice thing about the American system is that while treaties are difficult to pass, they are more or less permanent.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed in 1987, it is now dead. so by your definition, 30 years is now called permanent? To me, a far better definition of the term permanent can be concluded from the matter of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea - US permanently refused to join that convention.

How is the INF dead? Trump announced he is withdrawing the US from it but he has no authority to do so unilaterally and requires the approval of the Senate to actually withdraw. That approval has not happened and, as far as I am aware, the Senate has not even discussed the matter yet. It's just being used to strongarm Russia into complying with the treaty after they violated it at least once (that I am aware of, anyway)

What I read from this is: "the US has a convoluted process, which nobody understands, in order to commit to international agreements". It seems everybody, including head of states, thought the US had agreed to the treaties, but they had not (?), because of a technicality. I assume these technicalities can be applied to anything, any time, in order to justify pulling out of international agreements.

Worse, instead of owning to this change of mind, the rationale of technicality is used in order to justify pulling out. This is done in bad faith.

> The nice thing about the American system is that while treaties are difficult to pass, they are more or less permanent.

You say this now. This experience shows that, once you want to pull out, you will find a nice loophole to pull out. That is the "more or less" part.

And there is another aspect: once excuses for pulling out have run out, we know that the US will simply break, whenever and for whatever reason it wants, existing, ratified, seal-proof treaties.

The US is simply untrustworthy. And sneaky.

Oh come on. That is just plain insulting to all the other parties of the agreement. They knew full well that they did not have a ratified treaty with the US and they were explicitly warned of that fact ahead of time.

Just because people on the internet did not understand that doesn't mean the parties involved did not know that.

This argument reeks of "not my fault you were conned, you should have known I'm a conman"

Iran got their pallet of cash, they knew Obama was making the deal without the support of congress thereby giving the middle finger to US citizens. It would be diplomatic malpractice to not forecast the deal getting revoked, especially if they violated it (and they did)

How did they violate it?

It is not insulting what so ever. Every single agreement that two parties enter is a temporary agreement that will be broken. The only question is when. The history is littered with the agreements/treaties between countries that were tossed.

Every single diplomat knows it, which is why diplomacy is about horse trading. Parties want to "sort of" maintain the status quo, even if it means giving up some of what is "rightfully their" by the agreement.

Seriously? And China is more trustworthy? Look at what they are doing with 1MDB scandal in Malaysia and Hambantota port in Sri Lanka. US is no saint - but it is the best of the worst out there.

Pulling out of a loophole in a treaty is something any country can do. Why is US especial in this?

What are they doing with 1MDB?

Jo Low is evading arrest, and they say is hiding in China. Makes sense.

Wasn't 1MDB to blame on Goldman Sachs, a US company, and Jho Low, a Malaysian?

This is the problem. 1MDB was a money laundering scam. Where do you think the money was laundered from?

https://www-bbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.bbc.com/news/...

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [0] is not a treaty. That's not a matter of technicality, but of fact. I don't state this intending to defend the actions of the Trump administration. But when you get the basic facts so patently wrong, you do not do your argument any favors.

The staggering amount of these untruthful statements I read on a daily basis here and elsewhere on the internet is extremely disconcerting and increasing at an alarming rate. Please do not try to criticize Trump unless you are able to do so effectively. Posts like yours only make Trump's deceit and dishonesty harder to challenge, by damaging the credibility of anti-Trump individuals. Worse yet, they do nothing to further the cause of promoting positive change. Because if you want to do good, you do have to get things right.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...

They were sold a false bed of goods by Ben Rhodes and he bragged to the NYT about how he duped people into thinking it was a ‘treaty’

If you find requiring the president to sign and congress to approve a treaty convoluted, what DON'T you find convoluted? Putting together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is more conceptually complex, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't baffle international leaders, or you.

I don't find convoluted when you say that you take part into an international agreement, and then you stick to your word.

You expect the whole world to be familiar with the intricacies of the US Government. I assume that you have taken the same interest in familiarizing yourself with the technicalities of the Serbian government agreeing to international treaties.

I expect the people who make agreements with the Serbian government to have. That's why they do the job instead of me.

The United States of America has a population over 300 million, we did not agree to take part in the international agreement. Obama knew that the American people would not support the agreement which is why he did it with the stroke of a pen rather than through congress.

Aha you think the American people has the facts and experience enough to be able to make good judgements in foreign policy and even that YOU actually now what their voice is and can represent them completely?

What you now is the same as everyone else what’s being sold in the media (even social media). There are lots of hacks like Thomas Friedman being given lots of page space in papers such as NYT to even spread propaganda for powerful interests. In aggregation these hacks represents alignments of powers which even a president cannot surmount in the long term. Obama of course understood this but didn’t give up on what he thought was right, and now Trump does not care about was is right instead he simply surf the waves of narratives spewed by the conservative/alt-right to both winning the presidency and keeping his hold on power and enrich himself in the process, while he claims he’s being backstabbed by the deep state. But it’s clear his bet on the wrong horse is becoming a hazard as more Republicans in Senate are realizing this and changing course to avoid the risk of complete collapse of their party and American morals.

I guess another Vietnam has to happen so that the American people will again learn the real news, but given the assymetry in military power and outsourcing of it to allies like SA I’m not sure if they will learn this time.

No, by international law [1] (and U.S. law [2]) they are treaties [1]. U.S. is not the only country with the notion of ratification [3][5] (not a surprise). Generally, the U.S. distinguishes between "treaties", executive acts or acts of Congress agreements internally, but externally they are treaties.

U.S. treaties are not permanent, and while the statement as ratified, it is law, the U.S. has broken a lot of treaties treaties. See Native American section [4].

I can agree that statements like "It is wrong for the US to walk away..." are strictly moral, with no legal ground, as it was not ratified. Yet this is a treaty that was signed. In the eyes of the world and U.S. law, this is a "broken" treaty. And it doesn't help if we go around breaking treaties. It is not illegal, but you are not building credibility right? It might be only fair if other States start breaking their treaties when convenient. (And some of them do.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_of_the_United_S...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratification#Ratification_of_a...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_treaties

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_on_the_Law_o...

Edit: This is a nice interesting read, in case you are interested: https://www.asil.org/insights/volume/2/issue/5/international...

Not to go Godwin but a lot of massacres were also wrong on moral not legal grounds. When it comes down to that non-defense things get even uglier very quickly as it turns to "there is no law here against heading there and breaking your face". Even if they thought it was firmly in their domain.

"Their word is law." is a primitive framework but it expresses that enforcement backs laws.

From that link, it is not a treaty in US law. The article uses the blanket term "treaty-related law", but the Iran agreement falls under the "Executive agreement" category. This is in part a long-standing presidential workaround for the similarly-long-standing Congressional unwillingness to bind the US to treaties. But it does come with a bit of deception of foreign partners, because it does not bind the US in the same way that treaties bind other countries under their own domestic law. One of many ways in which the US system is a bit dysfunctional.

Then the US should change their procedures: first get the treaty ratified then get their head-of-state to go and sign the treaty. Otherwise, in the eyes of the rest of the world the treaty has been signed and the US is bound by it, whatever their internal politics. Optics matter. The way it looks now because of this - and many other recent examples - that the US is not trustworthy.

A non-trivial number of countries have separate signing and ratification procedures. This is common enough that no reasonable observer in international politics automatically equates the two. Most of them have procedures that mirror those of the US!

It's worth considering that changing this process from one widely understood to one widely not understood is likely to lead to more confusion about weird internal political processes rather than less.

In any case a US president could always make up a story why the other party has violated a treaty if there’s enough interests which are aligned.

Remember Iraq WMDs?

1. Iran had an election shortly after JCPOA. If that election would have led to a change in government, and under the new president, Iran had decided to abrogate from the agreement, would the argument then be "hey, fair enough, it was not a a treaty"?

2. The senate passing it makes no difference. The Republicans, controlling the House and the Senate, may well have been successfully in passing legislation withdrawing from the treaty. Except - that isn't even necessary. Trump can withdraw from any treaty he likes whenever it pleases him: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/05/0...

All of these are simply internal American processes, and it is up to the Americans to consider wether they want their politicians to run a foreign policy that projects stability, where the decisions of previous presidents are maintained because, being legitimately elected it was their decision to make, and American's word should stand for something - or whether they want their country to be perceived as erratic - which is in fact the case now, whether or not it causes allies such as the EU to ultimately make real changes in the relationship.

Strong political polarization in the US guarantees that going forward there won’t be continuity between presidents because there’s likely to be rapid shifts back and forth across the political spectrum

So,you agree with USA being unreliable partner now? (it might have been always that way, but it really looks different now)

This means that rest of the world can't trust the US on any issue...

This decreases US power. Everyone knows that they just have to wait for the next president and everything will be reset.

> A few will say that Iran is threatening Middle East Peace.

That is widely agree upon largely due to Iran's shipment of weapons and financing of external militant groups actively engaged in various conflicts. I am currently in the Middle East due to one or more of these conflicts.

I am not stating any opinion for or against the recent (now ignored) agreement.

> What is even wrong for the US is punishing foreign companies wanting to do business in Iran.

That is a gross over simplification of how the complexities of global trade does not always align with the interests of international politics. It is within the capabilities of one nation to impose laws that forbid trade and supply to another nation while trading with third party nations trading contingent upon that awareness.

> That is widely agree upon largely due to Iran's shipment of weapons and financing of external militant groups actively engaged in various conflicts.

Where is your proof on this? Where is all of the proof on any of the things claimed about Iran? Just like there were mass destructive weapons in Irak?? Sure, we know how that turned out. It's time for big ol' USA to just stop meddling in affairs it has no business in. They just want to get their hands on all the oil in the world so they can play the boss, and it most likely is not going to stop there either, next it's water, the market, and so on. The USA is just a big bully, it's their way or not at all. And Europe is like the bully's accomplice, too scared to stand up so just joins along in the bullying. Pathetic, more more more, it's always more they want. Protecting the peace, ha, joke. And while we are at it, let's forgive Saudi Arabia for obviously brutally murdering a journalist, afterall, they just invested millions on some of our weapons.

Farce.

If you were really interested in evidence I am sure you wouldn't have any trouble finding it yourself.

I'm asking evidence of people claiming things without any proof. And yes, I can find my own evidence, hence my question. How is your comment any relevant?

Then just say you disagree.

The evidence exists if you care to look. Most of it is in the way of first-hand accounts, however. Seeing as how this particular forum lacks a subpoena power over defected Shi'ite militia members, I have no way of directly presenting you the evidence.

Indirectly, however, you'll find the Internet is pretty replete. You can start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_terro...

Given the strident tone of your post, I suspect you'll dismiss those sources. No doubt you'll suspect them of being self-serving. Very well. Evidence of Iran's doings also exists in forms which cut against the U.S. military's interest, such as the fact that they duped the U.S. military into violating U.S. law by providing them weapons.

https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Is-the-US-supporting-Irani...

https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/indepth/2017/9/4/how-iraqi...

https://abcnews.go.com/International/dirty-brigades-us-train...

The fact is that Iranian-sponsored terrorism is so prevalent in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, that just defeating Daesh is a moral problem... it's become a logistical nightmare to not only perform Leahy vetting but to actually carry out operations without a Shi'ite militia taking part and committing atrocities in the name of the Coalition.

And those Shi'ite militias? "All are directly backed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and are notorious among the Sunni minority population for carrying out extrajudicial killings, torture and ethnic cleansing."

https://www.thedailybeast.com/iraqs-shia-militias-accused-of...

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You are entitled to your opinion that the "USA is just a big bully," although I personally don't think it's a well-founded opinion. However, the next time you feel inclined to start calling things a "farce" before you've examined any evidence, I'd encourage you to reconsider.

And you think it’s just of US to sell weapons to a authoritarian murderous regime like SA? Previously Saddam in Iraq? And also the Afghan fundamentalists during Russian and Afghanistan war? Eventually US went to war with both Iraq and Afghanistan with the same leadership they supported earlier.

The Shia militias your talking about is no better nor worse than the kind of people both US and SA and other gulf countries have supported in the region. You think ISIS could have existed without certain external help in the ME?

The question is not if Iran is bad they clearly are, but they are not worse than the rest of the regional powers also not worse compared to US given it’s track record in both supporting totalitarian leaders and fundamentalists.

My understanding is that the topic of this subthread is whether there is evidence to support the idea that Iran has done something for which sanctions are appropriate. I think there is sufficient evidence of that.

If you want to debate whether the U.S. should sell arms to Saudi Arabia, I think that is a different topic.

I think the debate is whether you think that Iran has done something that warrants the sanctions and if yes, whether you think sanctions should also be imposed on Saudi Arabia, who has unquestionably done much worse, or is this not an objective standard that the U.S. follows and only select 'rouge' states fall under them, whereas other rouge states do not, as long as they maintain sufficient trading relationships?

Sure it’s a different story. Because it explains everything. How come one country is sanctioned while the other is treated like good friends. This is not a new trend with Yemen and Khashoggi affair either. Saudi Arabia has spread it’s ideology both to Pakistan, Afghanistan, South Asia and also in parts of Africa. That ideology is behind groups such as Al-quaida, Al-shahab, ISIS, Taliban who knows who else. This started in the 80s. Yet because they were allied with US they were treated like friends. Reagan even took a couple of pictures with some of them.

But history and context does not suit a soldier who is only looking at the “facts” given by his superior.

But yes, of course I know Shiite military are active in the middle east. I mean, it is their region, right? I can sense militarism in your terminology. Shiite militia, sunni militia? How about state-sponsored violence in the name of oil? You would not call that ‘militia’ would you? Since you copy pasted some news articles as evidence, here is some articles that argue otherwise for you: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-irrationality-of-am...,

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/08/tehran...

https://www.mepc.org/nuclear-terrorism-iranian-perspective

But none of these articles would be enough for you either. I will dismiss arguments that talk about Iran one-sidedly, not the evidence. You can also see more scholarly articles that talk about the complexity of the military and political affairs in the middle east. Not from an over-militarized point of view, but also from a justice, social and anthropological perspective:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1035771060069611... https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.2968/065001004?src=r...

the point is, you throw Iran and nuclear and militia around like they are not connected to a people, and the best of you just reduce the situation to a state vs. people point of view. Iranians have the right, just like any other people, to defense and safety. The evidence to Iran being a terrorist state does not exist and what you sent me is a list of politically motivated accusations. The evidence for Iran meddling in the region, yes. I think there is plenty of that, and yes, that’s bad, as long as we don’t compare it to other countries around the world that do a million times worse but are left alone because they are western allies. I don’t think I have to convince anyone about the chaos Western intervention has created in the region. Iran is evil because it does not comply to bullying. O I hope you can also find the time for nuancing your view.

Well, since you accuse me of "throw[ing] nuclear . . . around" when I said no such thing, I hope you'll forgive me if I'm not convinced that it is I who should improve the nuance of my position. Particularly since none of the links you've posted support your position.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

You are right, you did not throw that around, you is used in plural as well. While you personally didn't throw it around it's just a statement I make to the general public, like I said, it's not all about you and/or I, it's about people, the Iranian people, not trying to generalize or single out.

I'm not attacking anyone or arguing with you in person, just trying to show that I too find evidence and not base my views on personal feelings alone. Enjoy the rest of your day as well.

Saudi Arabia is known to finance Wahhabism groups around the world, its books for children say it is ok to kill non-Muslims and even Muslims of the “wrong kind”, the terorist behind 9/1/1 were from the country, ISIS got its money from SA and the country is engaged in mayor war in the Middle East. Yet SA is a friend of US and many western countries.

I don't believe this thread is about Saudi Arabia.

So does imposing sanctions have any consistent basis or framework in the U.S? I believe that is very relevant here, because if not, it's basically being a bully.

Reducing international relations to schoolyard concepts like “bullying” leads to a child’s understanding of something that’s actually quite complex.

The U.S. has a history of regime change and subversive actions in every country that does not completely open its markets to it. Whatever you want to call it, it often punishes such countries by imposing sanctions, backing coups etc. because as the world's sole superpower it knows it can do so.

When a significantly more dominant part uses the power it knows it has over other parties to try to get its way, it is indeed buying, or any other synonym describing the same principle you may want to use.

Attempting to impose much greater intricacies to every single issue is rarely the right call.

Just because someone doesn’t agree with a law doesn’t mean that they should be able to break it without consequences. If she knowingly tried to export to Iran knowing it was forbidden by law, then she got what was coming to her.

> What is even wrong for the US is punishing foreign companies wanting to do business in Iran. Perhaps there are technicalities to demonstrate a law in the US is broken. This makes sense for bureaucrats.

Sanctions are powerful tools that benefit the country applying them in the same way that you benefit by not handing over ammunition to your enemies.

> Just because someone doesn’t agree with a law doesn’t mean that they should be able to break it without consequences.

I'd argue this is not as self evident as you imply for such "worldwide" laws. It's at the very least debatable whether a country should have the ability to make laws that apply to foreigners in foreign countries.

> It's at the very least debatable whether a country should have the ability to make laws that apply to foreigners in foreign countries.

That's a fair point. However if Huawei has a physical presence as a business in the US (which it does) then it should certainly be subject to obeying US laws. The one responsible for violating that law should be held responsible for breaking the law, whether they are a foreigner or not, in the same way that a tourist traveling to another country is still subject to that country's laws.

She is a citizen of a foreign country. She is not subject to US law.

Extra-territorial application of law is a nightmare.

How would the US react if a US businessman was arrested for trading with Israel in Turkey?

> She is a citizen of a foreign country. She is not subject to US law.

If a tourist travels to another country and breaks that country's laws, they will be subject to the consequences of breaking those laws. So why should a foreigner that willingly conspires to use Huawei's US business to break the US laws be free from punishment? The fact that they are a foreigner is irrelevant.

She was arrested in Vancouver.

It's not completely unusual that criminals get arrested in allied countries through mutual cooperation, then get extradited for trial. This is happens with other countries as well besides the US.

As to whether or not that's right, I personally think it's reasonable. Most all countries seek to enforce their laws regardless of location, especially when they deem a serious crime was committed against them.

No, most countries don’t try to enforce their laws like that. If she has “committed” these acts while in China, obeying Chinese law, there is simply no crime.

This is not “robbed a bank in country X and then fled to Y”, which is what international law-enforcement cooperation was built for. This is like “copied Windows in a country where piracy is legal”. It’s a massive overreach by US and Canada, but then again, they are not new to this (see Kim Dotcom et al).

If you commit a major crime against Chinese law, and then visit China, they are within their rights to arrest you for it.

Similarly, if you commit a major crime against Canadian law and visit Canada, they can arrest you for it. And if you also committed a crime against US law, the US can petition for you to be extradited after the Canadians arrest you.

I fear I don't understand where the overreach is. I've clearly missed an important and nuanced detail. Can you help me?

How can you commit a crime under US law when you are not under US law at all? If I pass a law that bans eating cornflakes, you then have breakfast and enter my country, am I justified in putting you under trial?

International law is never simple - although I suppose having the biggest stick might drive people to ignore certain nuances.

You're absolutely right! That's an absurd scenario and it makes no sense in any way under a basic understanding of how laws work.

It may be worth considering that laws are not always strictly confined to physical borders in what actions they can apply to. In this case, there are nuances that could be worth paying some attention to about Canadian laws and trade embargoes.

> How can you commit a crime under US law when you are not under US law at all?

What makes this complicated is that Huawei does have a registered company in the US (with multiple offices), and therefore at least some part of Huawei ought to be subject to US laws. By making the choice to establish a US presence they ought to be willing to comply to the local regulations.

> If I pass a law that bans eating cornflakes, you then have breakfast and enter my country, am I justified in putting you under trial?

Yes, though the problem is that this example is trivial. If I pass a law that bans cyber attacks on my country's infrastructure, and you perform attacks in a country where it is legal and travel to my country, I'm well in the grounds to arrest you.

If cornflake eating were against the law, the solution would be to avoid traveling to that country in the same way that some people might not travel to North Korea for fear of being arrested unfairly.

> If a tourist travels to another country and breaks that country's laws.

For god sake Huawei did business with Iran as "China to Iran" not "USA to Iran" why they had to comply with US stupid laws? the business never occurred in USA. US is shooting it self with stupid laws that try to sanction the wrong nation while still supporting Saudi and Israel a clear terrorists nations.

And the funny thing that Israel and Saudi regime are the ones that pushed Trump to cancel Iran deal with the US.

She's been arrested for circumventing US laws by exporting items _made in the US_ to Iran (via intermediate countries).

While I don't agree with the US sanctions, she is not being charged with shipping goods made in China to Iran. Obviously the US has no say in that.

It was not on US soil. The world is not American.

it should be Iran not Turkey , trading with israel is not forbidden in Turkey

sanctions always benefit the oppressor (read the dictator). While sanctions (in theory) make it harder for a regime to earn money - in practice it leads to more poverty and hardship among the poor people (who don't care about politics). Sanctions usually lead to more anti-foreign sentiments and a boost to the radical power-bases within the sanctioned country. Walking a country (society) back from the effects of sanctions is incredibly tricky and requires more than just undoing the sanction.

Ask the Apartheid states how sanctions benefited them. Always is a bit of a strong word.

I think "justification" internally matters for the internal role. If the people view the actions and its consequences as unjust nothing changes to benefit opinion wise.

However even if (they think) it is totally unfair that they are being sanctioned want to just because they burnt a few evil witches/abolished slavery they are still weakened internationally.

> Just because someone doesn’t agree with a law doesn’t mean that they should be able to break it without consequences.

Like those charged under the Russian laws living in Europe? Do you see how problematic this idea is?

Yes, the US was wrong to abandon the nuclear deal with Iran.

But that's not the whole story with the Huawei CFO arrest.

China and their state-owned and state-controlled companies are stealing trade secrets and military technology instead of developing it on their own.

Chinese companies enjoy open access to Western markets, but Western companies are highly restricted in their access to Chinese markets.

If Huawei illegally sold technology to sanctioned nations, and the US can use that to pressure China on trade and espionage, more power to them.

> China and their state-owned and state-controlled companies are stealing trade secrets and military technology instead of developing it on their own.

Do you have any evidence for this? Have we arrested any US citizens for selling/leaking military technology to China?

While there is definitely good reason to believe that is happening, it should be noted that multiple Chinese-American scientists have been subjected to meritless witch-hunts. See e.g. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/feature-chinese-amer... and https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/17/technology/sherry-chen-na... for examples.

I’m as opposed to current US idiocracy as anybody, but requiring people to relitigate every last fact, and prove even widely accepted moral concepts from first principle, just destroys any honest debate.

I do not know of any place that widely proves that "state-owned and state-controlled companies" are stealing trade secrets.

Individuals, sure. State-owned companies? I would like to know the proof for this.

> Chinese companies enjoy open access to Western markets

please show me how Huawei enjoyed its open access to the US market.

if you like, I can easily show you tons of evidence on how Huawei's competitors say Cisco enjoyed its open access to the Chinese markets.

What that has all to do with the arrest?

She has been arrested for violating a completely unrelated US law (in non-US territory).

You seem to suggest using a political move you disagree with to take hostages to force China to act on an entirely unrelated set of grievances.

Huawei is not open access to US market.

NYT said NSA is hacking into Huawei's server steal information.

Well said, US bias towards Saudi Arabia while both SA and Iran have totalitarian regimes which misbehave in the region shows they are primarily interested in having influence in the region. SA is the one deemed best suited and most willing to at least publicly show support for US foreign policy. Unfortunately affiliation with SA will wreck havoc with any diplomatic mission of US in the region for the future. Russia and China will gain more influence going forward as they don’t have so much moral baggage in the region.

> "I'm partial to Iran because a multi-lateral treaty was signed. Iran stopped nuclear enrichment. In exchange, western countries pledged to provide economic relief and stop sanctions."

Iran stopped its nuclear enrichment program, so the sanctions were wavered. Iran continued working on a ballistic missile program (capable of carrying nuclear warheads), and continued destabilizing countries throughout the middle east (through proxy terrorism) - so the sanctions came back.

In other words - temporarily halting the nuclear enrichment program alone should not excuse Iran from being held accountable.

> “continued destabilizing countries”

Pot, kettle, black. The US are continuously destabilising countries they don’t like, Iran included; in fact, most poweful countries do, all the time, from Russia to France to Germany. That doesn’t justify breaking treaties on a whim, like Trump has done.

The US had built up a reputation as a violent and aggressive bully after 2003. Obama worked hard at correcting that, but the new guy has thrown it all away again. The US at the moment look seriously bipolar, from the outside.

> If you want peace, you have to impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia as well.

Funny how Israel never gets mentioned by anyone!

political correctness, being called racist and whatnot

That’s probably because Israel is a part of the Western world and nobody in their right mind is concerned about it becoming a military threat or sponsoring radical Islamists.

The concern isn't becoming radical Islamists but becoming no different. The behavior is the ultimate problem. I mean the Shakers are technically a radical Christian sect who doesn't believe in sexual reproduction. Radical Martha Stewart fans deciding to kill people would be just as big of a problem.

Israel doesn't sponsor radical Islamists it just creates them by it's disregard for international law in the West Bank and Gaza.

And yet the heavy hitters (Al Qaeda, ISIS and co) never really bothered with Israel. They went directly after other Western nations which supported the Palestinian cause and sponsored Palestinians with billions of dollars.

Well if there is anything the Middle East can agree on, it’s their hatred of Israel. Probably better for Israel that they fight amongst themselves.

Israel is a bunch of middle European people clinging to a mythology of an omnipotent real estate agent granting them land amongst a bunch of eternally warring tribes. It's not gonna end well. I just wish the U.S. would stay out of that bs.

>I just wish the U.S. would stay out of that bs

You mean the descendants of Europeans who clung to a mythology that the son of that same omnipotent real estate agent granted them manifest destiny over a continent owned by a bunch of tribes?

And whose support for Israel is based, in part, on the belief that Israel as a state has a role to play in ushering in the Apocalypse of the Book of Revelations and the second coming of Christ?

The phrase "not bloody likely" comes to mind. The US is in with Israel for reasons that go far deeper than geopolitics.

> Perhaps there are technicalities to demonstrate a law in the US is broken. This makes sense for bureaucrats. For the rest of the world, it's just abuse and plain wrong.

(Almost?) All countries have a similar approval process in the parliament. Usually the president has enough votes in the parliament or has an informal arrangement with the opposition leaders to ensure the approval.

For example, Iran never ratified the 2013 treaty with Argentina. It was approved by the Argentinean Parliament, but it was never approved by the Iranian Parliament. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorandum_of_understanding_be... more info in the Spanish version (autotranslation): https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=es&tl=en&u=htt...

[Disclaimer: I'm from Argentina. I didn't like the treaty, but nobody asked for my opinion.]

You're complicating things: USA has issued an international arrest warrant. X person went to Canada and his name was blinking so he was arrested. End of the story.

A Canadian Court will decide whether the US arrest warrant was based on common Western norms or not. In this case the arrest warrant was not issued for free speech, tax evasion or political activity so almost certain he'll be extradited. End of the story. Canada will determine that the person involved--essentially with billion$ behind her--will get a fair hearing in USA. And she will, laws may be unfair but...

The external situation, and whether you agree or disagree about Iran, has no impact on whether or not it was illegal.

The company traded tech with the US under an agreement not to share said tech with sanctioned countries. They then proceeded in an apparent act of circumventing those trade agreements.

If they didn't like the sanctions against Iran then they shouldn't have been dealing with the US tech for which those sanctions applied in the first place.

Your argument is like saying "it's not theft because the person they were stealing from is a bad person" which isn't how the law works.

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/a3hied/huawei_de...

Keep in mind that US sanctions against foreign companies doing business with Iran are opposed by:

The United Nations International Court of Justice, which ordered the US to withdraw sanctions, to which the US responded by pulling out of international agreements.

The European Union, which has attempted to block its companies from complying with US sanctions.

With that said, the US is free to sanction anyone for its own interests, that's its right as a sovereign state. It is also its right as a sovereign state to refuse market access and trade to any company that violates its sanctions.

But arresting foreign nationals in other countries for violating US sanctions? That's the equivalent of Russia arresting American business executives and extraditing them to China for violating Chinese sanctions against Taiwan - and yes, there are sanctions against Taiwan, which are regularly ignored by the US, of course. This is a massive escalation and will undoubtedly cause a major international crisis. Stay tuned.

Plus the arrested party is the daughter of the founder; I can't separate that fact when trying to infer intention here.

I definitely feel anxious..

I think this is an extremely dangeruous move on the side of the Trump administration.

This is supposed to be about Iran? Arresting the daugther of Huawei's founder definately makes it seem like there is more going on.

How is any significant American business man flying through Hong Kong airport supposed to feel right now?

And I am pretty sure that the mullahs in Tehran are laughing in their beards over the US picking fights with China (and maybe the EU) over the Iran boycots. At least when this is the way it is done.

Well, the world is laughing, including the clergy men in Dharmashala.

Pretty sure the mullahs have bigger fish to fry regarding the future of their country

>>>Meng, one of the vice chairs on the company’s board and the daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei, was arrested on Dec. 1 at the request of U.S. authorities and a court hearing has been set for Friday, a Canadian Justice Department spokesman said. Trump and Xi had dined in Argentina on Dec. 1 at the G20 summit.

She works for the company in question.

That's obvious to everyone but you. It's literally the headline.

Doubtful about massive and major. The US and China have a complicated relationship over Taiwan a la sovereignty -- replace Taiwan with, say, Japan and you have a better but still imperfect analogy.

They arrested the founder's daughter! I think it would be a good idea for American execs in China to take a long vacation home until this cools down. No one wants to become collateral damage between a great power rivalry.

Meng Wanzhou is a the CFO of Huawei[0]

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-huawei/huawei-f...

She’s both

Ughg, what the previous poster is insinuating is that she wasn't arrested because she's the daughter of Huawei CEO, but because of her role as CFO of the company violating US sanction.

I would be very curious to know if there were other high level executives (C-suite) who were not arrested when they entered a country (not just Canada) with whom the US has an extradition treaty.

That would resolve the question of whether she was arrested solely because of her role as CFO, or if it was also an attempt to send a personal message.

I assume that is what is being discussed.

Not to make light of the subject, but reminds me of the movie "Sicario: Day of the Soldado" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicario:_Day_of_the_Soldado) where an agent provocateur recommends to the US Government: "You want to start a war? the fastest way is to kidnap a prince"

Or Chinese execs in America.

You make it sound as if she’s not a company executive and this is some political maneuver, arresting a family member rather than a company employee.

> Keep in mind that US sanctions against foreign companies doing business with Iran are opposed by:

They may be but US is on the right side of history on this one. And I say this as an European.

For breaking agreements they've made before? I think Europe is on the right side on this.

As a European I wish the US would take all the refugees their actions cause.

Why do you think this?

Why are you cowardly hiding behind a throwaway account? Why do you care? Everybody is entitled to their own personal opinion and you are free to disagree with it.

I've used this account for several months now. It's not exactly single use.

You are entitled to your opinion. I am entitled to ask you for the arguments behind your opinion. You are of course entitled to respond angrily. However, it doesn't make for great discussion and you won't persuade many people with this approach.

As another European: That’s like, your opinion, man.

Like totally

History is long, and I can't say it with as much definitive certainty as you (I wish you'd cite your reasoning), but as far as I know the reintroduction of sanctions against Iran will cause economic hardships which will radicalize a lot of people, and which will cause further instability to the world.

The same kind of hardships that also radicalized Trump voters, it lead them to vote a populist fascist into power.

Of course if Iran or Iranians cause trouble in the future, you'd use these as an excuse to say "Trump did the right thing, see what they did, they deserved those sanctions!", ignoring cause and effect: without the sanctions, they wouldn't be that pissed off to cause these troubles.

Exactly. The neoconservative ethos does not concern itself with those sorts of side effects.

What the US is doing is a form of terrorism. It completely nullifies any inspiring or positive influence that the narratives about the US founding principles might evoke in those abroad, and it is only possible due to the idea of American Exceptionalism, which is patently false to anyone who observes without bias US actions.

A power asserting its dominance has been the norm for thousands of years; you have just been brainwashed into hating your country. As for neocons being responsible for everything- just wow- that’s two steps past ignorant. The last president and Secretary of State are directly responsible for open slave markets in libya. Predatory foreign policy has been the only bipartisan issue in our history.

Maybe you view the word neocon in a more idealistic sense than I do.

I agree the horrible policy is bipartisan.

Please clarify the nature of your disagreement with my comment. Not sure I fully understand.

I'm not the one you replied to, but you're commenting under my reply chain, so...

> you have just been brainwashed into hating your country.

That's a very large assumption from a few lines of text, I'll classify this as a cheap baseless attack/dismissal.

> The last president and Secretary of State are directly responsible for open slave markets in libya.

So I guess Bush and Cheney are "directly responsible" for a lot of thousand dead Iraqis and Afghanis. Or were those military interventions justified in your eyes? At least Obama has admitted "the aftermath" is his biggest regret.

As a Jewish born Iranian atheist refugee to the states who protested against Iran a few years ago in Iran, I'd have to say, you're pretty wrong on this one.

I hate Islamic Republic with every single cell in my body but you're just wrong.

* U.S. plain and simply fucked Iran up with a coup at 1953.

* Then helped Islamic Republic gain power in 1979. (This is up for debate though)

* Then helped Saddam Hussein attack Iran.

* Then sanctioned the country to the verge of bankruptcy.

* Then made a deal and backed out of it for no reason (Internal politics?)

As an American, I am so ashamed that we did this to your country.

The humanitarian toll of US policies is hard to fathom.

Iran was already fucked up of its own doing before the 1953 coup. For the last few centuries Iran's history had been alternating periods of civil war and regional agression on Iran's part.

The late 19th century was marked by occupation by Russia and the Ottoman empire. Following defeats in wars which Iran generally had provoked.

Once Iran became a constitutional monarchy in the early 20th century political instability reigned as forces loyal to the monarchy fought for power with those with a more democratic bent. Between 1947-1951 Iran had 6 different prime ministers. The coup itself was really a continuation of this political battle with the US helping the forces loyal to the monarchy.

Iran also didn't help itself during WW2 by choosing to technically remain neutral while allowing a large German presence and German utilization of the oil fields. This led to a joint British and Russian occupation to drive the Germans out.

Even today Iran's economic woes although made worse by sanctions is mostly rooted in economic policy decisions and large scale corruption which feeds money to those backed by the revolutionary guard at the expense of the people.

But it is easier to blame the big bad West for all your woes rather than take an introspective look at your own culpability.

You have not really disproven most of the more recent issues he brought up. The US (and Britain) did have a big hand in the struggle that culminated in the Iranian revolution: for fear of getting a USSR ally, they got a completely out-of-control regime and then have fought it with the dirtiest tricks they could muster ever since. Sure, nobody is fully innocent, but that doesn't justify acting like a c*nt in return; it actually justifies blaming "the big bad West" and helping the worst sectors of Iranian society. Isolation always helps this sort of regime, see also: fascist Italy, socialist Cuba and so on.

Path to democracy is not easy, specially in an oil-rich country like Iran.

We've had our moments that we were getting close. Now those moments are quite fragile. Every single time the U.S. has kicked us in the nuts in those moments.

Examples are this very same moment, where the economic sanctions and the reformists finally convinced the hardliners to talk to the U.S.

Supreme Leader finally gave it a thumbs up. And he raised his concerns back then that the U.S. cannot be trusted but if that's what people want it's OK to do it.

He was right. The U.S. could not be trusted. Now reformists have lost all credibility. In 2 years we have another election and for sure a batshit crazy like Ahmadinejad is going to be elected.

Same happened around 9/11. We had a really strong reformist movement and government. Then, out of nowhere, president Bush named Iran a part of "axis of evil". That gave the hardliners enough of a reason to push back against major reforms.

Jack Straw (British foreign minister of the time) has good notes on this if you're more interested.

1953's coup was another moment like that. Actually that's probably the closest we've ever been.

Now, if Iran is moving towards democracy, and at the most important moments, you kick it in the nuts, you "are" part of the problem.

As also an European, I think breaching international agreements like this and making regular people suffer, (because that's what the sanctions are doing), in order to score points because the U.S. is still mad that their regime in Iran got overthrown, I absolutely support the EU opposition to this.

I may say that I recently got a victim of the USA sanctions when our plane back from Iran made two emergency landings in a row and had no real possibility to repair it obviously. We were then put on another Jetliner which can be only seen in museums nowadays (except for Iran, where, thanks to Trump, this is now a dangerous mean transportation). No one should trust the Iranian government without really checking twice everything they say, yet those sanction take hostage of 80 Million people who now really struggle for a decent life. Sure, the US want to create another revolution to overthrow the government. Yet this means regular people have to want to die (because many will fall victims to this authoritarian government then).

The US policy is deeply embarrassing and abjectly cruel.

I am so deeply ashamed by how the US treats the people of Iran.

I don't understand why this comment is so heavily down voted for a simple difference of opinion. That isn't what the down vote is for.

This isn't Reddit, but the argumentative tone of this thread certainly reminds me of Reddit. Sensitive people make me sad :(

> They may be but US is on the right side of history on this one. And I say this as an European.

As anopther European, the US is most certainly on the wrong side of history with this shit. They're still salty that their pet dictator got ousted all those years ago.

> But arresting foreign nationals in other countries for violating US sanctions?

In this case, the other country in question is Canada, which has made its own sovereign decision to also sanction Iran.

Extradition treaties, including the US-Canada one, require that the conduct involved be a crime in both jurisdictions. If the Canadian courts decide that what she did is not a crime under Canadian law, she will get off. Simple as that.

Worth mentioning that Canada has its own history of concerns with Huawei due to the Nortel debacle: https://www.afr.com/technology/web/security/how-chinese-hack...

it is all the FVEY countries that have issues with Huawei. UK, Australia & NZ have played a big role in disseminating US anti-China propaganda. I say this as somebody who has been criticizing Huawei for years. There is no denying their products are not only of poor quality (competing on price), that they bribed their way through Africa, and that the founders have strong ties to the military and party. Yet it would be hypocritical to not call this anything but a political move.

> There is no denying their products are not only of poor quality (competing on price)

Huawei Mate 20 Pro starts from 1049 Euro and Mate 20 start from 800 Euro, last time when I checked, 1049 Euro is almost $1200 USD, common sense tells that when an Android phone has a price tag of $1200 USD, it is anything but competing on price.

I have Mate 20/Mate 9/P8, the top ranking build quality has been repeatedly confirmed by numerous reviews world wide. I never ever had any issue with my Huawei Mate 20/10/P8. Labelling Huawei products as poor quality without proof is not helping on anything.

that is true but Huawei isn't just consumer products. Their radio and core network products absolutely suck. Their O&M plane is a disaster no NOC wants to put up with. And their Huawei cloud offering that positions itself as a carrier-grade cloud is worse than digital ocean. Operators choose Huawei because it's cheap not because their features and interoperability and acceptance tests were of better quality then another vendor. They're able to compete below price precisely because they are heavily government funded, and because they stole a lot of IP from the established players and could leapfrog many years of innovation done for them by competitors. Ericsson, Nokia have seen this coming long ago which lead to all these M&A's (starting in the late 90ies till just recently). The only players left now are Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei & ZTE. It doesn't look good for Nokia & Ericsson considering how lazy and half-arsed their presence is in standardization activities and how much of it is actually driven by CENELEC (the Chinese standards-compliance arm of ETSI).

As for consumer products, yes of course they will have to get their money back somewhere. If you're running on one end a shady operation that is to cut the price to levels nobody can compete with and deliver shitty products only developing countries or banana republics want to afford, ... then you need to make up for this somewhere else in order not to expose the whole racket.

I just saw news that millions of mobile users in UK and Japan got kicked off the net by those high quality carrier-grade Ericsson carrier equipments.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/6/18128720/o2-down-softbank...

> They're able to compete below price precisely because they are heavily government funded.

so you are arguing that rather than funding carefully selected new businesses with good potentials, or those state owned established companies with full government control in the same area such as ZTE, Chinese government is heavily funding the most profitable private high tech company Huawei?

sounds like the Chinese government is on a self destruction mission to me.

>But arresting foreign nationals in other countries for violating US sanctions? That's the equivalent of Russia arresting American business executives and extraditing them to China for violating Chinese sanctions against Taiwan - and yes, there are sanctions against Taiwan, which are regularly ignored by the US, of course.

No, it isn't. They're only equivalent if the American executive's company in question is selling, say, Huawei networking equipment (assuming it is banned; I don't know if it's the case) to businesses in Taiwan -- probably under an arrangement where the intention to sell to Taiwan was never made clear and likely actively concealed.

That's circumvention of export controls and likely fraud at the expense of the sanctioning country -- an entirely different beast than merely passive business between the sanctioned and a separate third-party.

>will undoubtedly cause a major international crisis.

It will, but it has less to do with any escalation by the US than it does with China's own, well, unique political environment. If a similar case occurred to CFO of e.g. Yandex, I have a hard time seeing Russians/Russia reacting nearly as strongly as I expect Chinese/China to.

You basically repeated what the OP said and making it look like it meant the opposite. Which it does not.

No, that comment is pointing out that OP left out the key fact that Huawei was selling American products to Iran. That changes the situation from the OP’s claim of “Huawei was doing business with a country the US is sanctioning” to “Huawei was actively working to subvert US export restrictions”.

The author of this comment has a history of apologizing for Chinese crimes:

>>LOL, kill thousands of its own citizens in protests? The Chinese government never did that (even the famous tank man was unharmed and was not arrested), the truth is, many soldiers got killed because they were not allowed to fire at citizens. Even the Chinese government did kill its own citizen they learnt from the US (1932 Bonus Army, 1970 Kent state massacre, Jesus that was only 48 years ago, not mentioning almost every day someone is being shot by the police somewhere in the US. The funny thing is one shot won't even make it to the newspaper now.)

>>In a word, you have been brainwashed by your media. I know it's hard to wake up someone who pretends to be asleep, but it's good for you.

Do you have a substantive point relevant to what the parent said here?

Seems like pretty relevant context to me.

Why? The argument stands on its own legs, how is the commenter's post history relevant?

How is a commenter's potential conflict of interest not relevant?

Subtract the OP's posting history. Is what they wrote still relevant and valid? Yes? There's your answer.

Everyone technically has a conflict of interest or premeditated motivation. An argument should stand on its own merit, regardless of who makes it. Analyzing anything other than the argument is immature.

Calling someone's argument or stance immature is immature.

With that mindset nobody should use that word. We should wipe it from the dictionary.

Analyzing anything other than the argument is immature.

Yet sometimes it leads to a better outcome than just analysis of the argument alone. Context is real. Context matters. Automatically disregarding real information on the grounds of "maturity" ideology can lead to a worse outcome, so it doesn't seem like the best course.

While context is important, I’ve found that the context of who someone is personally is rarely beneficial when being objective. If anything, this approach is anti-ideology, as you are not taking ideological bias into account...and there’s way too much ideological bias in discussions these days. I think that’s what I meant by maturity.

It's not because there may be a conflict of interest that he's wrong. He's mainly just explaining the legal background of this event.

A conflict of interest would mean that they have an undisclosed interest in pushing that narrative (say, that they have stock in Huawei, that they're a Chinese official or something like that). The parent comment discloses no such thing. Having an opinion is not a conflict of interest.

At worse you could argue that the poster is biased, but then in this types of geopolitical discussions who isn't? Certainly not me.

What I'm posting under this thread is based on fact. So you want to criticize me for irrelevant things?

It looks like you've been using HN primarily for nationalistic political comments. That breaks the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Could you please review those and use HN as intended, i.e. for intellectual curiosity, from now on?

The test we apply is whether an account has crossed the line of using HN primarily for political battle. If that is the case, we ban the account, regardless of which politics or nation they're fighting for or against. That is because these battles have a way of consuming everything if allowed to, and therefore must not be allowed to.

Further explanations of how we moderate this are here for anyone who wants more: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

I don't have a history of doing that and came to comment very similar things. US sanctions against Iran are motivated solely for geopolitical realpolitik.

The author of this comment has a history of attacking the Chinese government:

>This is ridiculous equivocation between a democratic society with a rule of law and an authoritarian regime. You're kidding yourself if you don't think the Chinese government has an interest in data owned by foreign nationals that they could gain access to.

Ad hominem?

Just as much as the poster I replied to.

The fact that the parent is pro-chinese is pretty clear, I don't see what digging into their post history adds to the discussion, especially since in this case it's tangential at best.

It's always good to know the other parties agenda/ideology as that will (consciously or unconsciously, often the latter) influence what they feel deserves or doesn't deserve being mentioned.

Because astroturfing has utterly subverted discussion on hot-button issues on all social media platforms (including this one), whether you choose to believe it or not.

I wonder if there are solutions to astroturfing that have not been explored.

this is really challenging as it is something I have been thinking about a long time and each idea I have I find a way that it would simply not work.

We've spent a lot of time working on this, and the actual astroturfing that we've found is small compared to the frequency with which users fire this accusation at each other merely because they hold opposing views. That's why the site guidelines ask people not to bring this toxic trope up without evidence. Some users holding opposing views to yours is not evidence of astroturfing, only of divided views.

Perhaps you or someone else knows more than we do about this on Hacker News, but in that case you should be telling us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it. That's in the guidelines as well. When there's real information, we take it very seriously. Unfortunately, though, this trope is driven mostly by imagination, not information.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Is this reddit?

HN should shut down nation state's propaganda accounts.

I don't support the Iran sanctions either. But a key detail is buried in the middle of the article.

> Since at least 2016, U.S. authorities have been reviewing Huawei’s alleged shipping of U.S.-origin products to Iran

Huawei is free to export all their Chinese origin products to Iran. The allegation here is that us-origin products are not following us export laws. This seems more like a case of "when in Rome, follow Roman laws".

Keep in mind that a lot of network equipment for 4G network (eg.) requires US patents, Qualcomm chips. So even if you build 99% of the equipment yourself if you use a single transistor that requires a US patent of is manufactured in the US the US will upkeep it's sanctions.

I didn't know patents crossed international borders.

China is a member of the World Intellectual Property Organization, which exists to ensure that patents cross international borders.

https://www.wipo.int/members/en/contact.jsp?country_id=38

This case is much more straightforward - it involves a company she chaired, which used Huawei slides and so was probably a Huawei front, offering to be a straw purchaser for HP hardware (buy it and immediately resell it to Iran).

>>But arresting foreign nationals in other countries for violating US sanctions?*

You steal a car in Belgium. Belgium investigates, charges you and issues an arrest warrant. In some cases it goes to Interpol or EU-wide systems. You go to Germany for a vacation and your name is flagged. Yes, you are arrested by Germany for violating Belgian laws and the extradition process starts.

You can challenge the arrest on a few basis (such as "Iran wants to jail me for criticizing Mullahs") but other than that, countries do help each other catch criminals. "Violating US sanctions" is apparently a crime in USA and Canada more or less has the same view on major international relations so he is likely screwed. (I think the arrest is almost automatic everywhere, but then courts and justice dept decide on whether to extradite.)

I find your comment very misleading.

There is no indication that this arrest is related to U.S. policies to sanction foreign companies for selling to Iran.

Rather, the arrest is far more likely related to "US law [that] prohibits exports of certain US-origin technologies to certain countries" (from nytimes article). Huawei purchased certain technology from the US with the promise not to sell it to certain countries like Iran, and then proceeded to shamelessly violate the agreement.

Without laws like this, sanctions are far less powerful, because any foreign company not affected by the sanction can act as a middleman between the origin country and the sanctioned country.

What the UN International Court of Justice and European Union think about US sanctioning foreign companies that do business with Iran is completely irrelevant, since this arrest is not related to that policy.

Can somebody explain to me on what authority the US can request the arrest of a Chinese national on Canadian soil for any action they took while conducting operations of a Chinese organization headquartered in China?

They don't have any. They asked Canada to arrest her and they agreed to do it.

Just watch them come up with something.

Not sure what you mean. They have come up with something - violating sanctions against Iran.

Which to me doesn't sound that different from the above comment talking about Thailand wanting to extradite westerns for offending their king, breaking their law. The something doesn't matter, it's not why she is in trouble.

As a point of clarification, the Guardian article referenced above reports a request from Thailand to extradite Thai nationals living overseas. Thailand's lèse-majesté law was broken by Thais, as opposed to this case where a foreign national broke a US law and was present in an extradition-friendly country (to note, the sanctions are also law in Canada).

So what you are saying is not even Thailand is that much up their asses to behave like the US does in international relationships, this idea of having jurisdiction over anyone all the time is unique to the US.

I assume it's basically the same authority that China would use if they wanted to arrest somebody who happened to be in Laos -- "what's Laos/Canada going to do, say no?"

They can ask Canada to do so, usually through legal cooperation/assistance agreements. But it remains Canada's decision to help or not.

She allegedly broke US law and was in the territory of a country that shares an extradition treaty with the US.

How sure can I be if my company is not breaking any Chinese laws? Would it by fine if I get arrested for breaking those when I'm on a trip to Asia?

I'm not saying that Huawei is innocent, I just agree with the downvoted comment that the situation seems ridiculous.

That is the risk you take! It's not without precedent. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Elcom_Ltd. Russian citizen working for a Russian company, comes to the US to give a talk and is arrested for violating the DMCA.

It does sound ridiculous but if you do break Chinese laws and travel to a country that has an extraditions treaty with china, then yes, you can get arrested and sent to China for prosecution. That's why it is important to only do business in countries you understand the law in or have business policies which are favorable to your business.

When you do business in another country, you are subject to its laws. You can choose to not worry about other countries laws very easily: do not do any business there.

I have no idea about details of Huawei situation, but if your product ends up in given country do you do business there? How about providing a website and not filtering users by country?

In most countries laws are created faster than citizens can learn them even if they would put a lot of effort into that. In many cases those who vote them haven't even read them in detail. There is no single person on the planet who knows all laws in all countries. Should we abandon the idea of the Internet?

It would be purely hypothetical pondering if not for GDPR which bring a lot of mess to countries outside EU and cut off some EU users from the content which they could otherwise consume.

Unless regulators get their stuff together reasonably quick, we may likely end up in some more encrypted and decentralized version of the Internet which makes governments less relevant. I don't mind.

In this particular case, it was that Huawei was purchasing US-made products to which sanctions applied and exporting them to Iran.

I highly doubt that Huawei executives were unaware that this was against US policy and law; they just thought that the US would only punish the corporation and not the people involved, without realizing that the arm of US law extends to a whole web of countries that have extradition treaties with it.

See also the German VW executives who are very restricted in where they can travel to based on their crimes in the diesel emissions scandal.

You can't be sure, and that's a risk you'll always take when going to a country China can extradite you from. Singling China out is silly though, any country can do this, some just have more political clout to pull it off.

For instance, Thailand sought extradition of those insulting their king abroad.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/29/thailand-bhumi...

This is mind-blowing and appalling. A 30-year prison sentence for posting on Facebook?

Every country has things the culture is sensitive of. That might be child pornography for the USA, or drugs for Malaysia, or comments about the king for Thailand.

They all have long prison sentences/death in their country, and light/no sentences in most of the rest of the world.

All countries have tried to go after people breaking their culturally sensitive thing abroad, with varying levels of success.

>Every country has things the culture is sensitive of. That might be child pornography for the USA, or drugs for Malaysia, or comments about the king for Thailand.

That doesn't make them morally equivalent. You can't defend 30 years in prison for being mean.

Morally equivalent? Who is the arbiter of moral valence?

This sense of moral superiority or having a better judgement than others, is exactly the property that blinds individuals and entire cultures to the absurdity of their own morals.

Claiming moral superiority is different from judging morality. As humans we judge morality through our reason. It is reasonable, irrespective of culture, to conclude that child pornography is worse than saying something mean about a king.

Have a peruse through Michel Foucault's "Discipline and Punish". It's impossible to take these moral absolutism claims seriously after spending any time studying the history of crime and morality.

Almost every culture at almost every point in history prevalently believes they have morals figured out and anything that came before them or from elsewhere is absurd.

I don't believe in strict moral relativism. Some things are self evident, e.g., child abuse is an objectively worse crime than is speaking out against one's government (the latter of which shouldn't be a crime at all.) If we can't agree on that then I don't think we'll ever agree on anything.

Insulting the royal family in the UAE or Saudi Arabia will also get you jailed.

In Thailand a lot of people jailed for Lèse-majesté get pardoned by the king. This king is new though so that might not continue.

Well a good comparison, is that the same amount of weed you have in Canada will get you arrested in non-weed US states.

A core philosophy of law is that ignorance of the law isn't a valid excuse for breaking it.

You should ask your corporate counsel. Yes, it would be fine if you get arrested.

This is why a number of VW corporate officers cannot travel to countries with extradition treaties with the US, due to diesel cheating scandal.

You do not have a right to not be arrested in China. Why would you think that? They can arrest you for any reason at any time if you are on their land.

You also don't have a right to not be arrested in America. Why would you think that? They can arrest you for any reason at any time if you are on their land.

If you're outside America, you don't have a right not to be blown to pieces by a killer robot (aka "drone"). Why would you think that? They can blow you to pieces for any reason at any time no matter where you are.

> You also don't have a right to not be arrested in America.

That's a given, mate. The commentor made the ridiculous claim that he had a right not to be arrested in China for breaking Chinese laws. No individual has that right.

The passage I responded to was

> How sure can I be if my company is not breaking any Chinese laws? Would it by fine if I get arrested for breaking those when I'm on a trip to Asia?

The answer is that you cannot be sure. The chinese government has every ability to arrest you for crimes committed elsewhere. They have every ability to change their laws at any time to enable their arrest. No one will even blink if they abandoned their legal system entirely to arrest just you for nothing at all in particular. There is no 'rule' saying they can only arrest you for things done on their soil; or that arrests of a non-citizen must be just; or really anything.

This is true of America as well. Why wouldn't it be? We're speaking on the level of sovereign nations.

> If you're outside America, you don't have a right not to be blown to pieces by a killer robot (aka "drone"). Why would you think that? They can blow you to pieces for any reason at any time no matter where you are.

This is another topic entirely and completely non-germaine to the thread.

One way to to be certain is to not travel or do business with any Chinese company. In this case, Huawei was selling us technology to Iran so it became a target.

Whenever you get in the cross-hairs of any country and you travel abroad, there is a non-zero risk of you being extradited.

If you were CFO you likely would be involved with a deal to a foreign government.

Which is why a) China hasn't managed to get a whole lot of extradition treaties signed, and b) those treaties generally have exemptions for crimes that are considered "political".

The unusual thing is that the Canada-US extradition treaty allows extradition on such a "political" offense, but that's probably mostly down to the US and Canada having the same position on Iran.

Also important to note that extradition generally requires that the request be for a crime similar or recognized in the requested country. The treaties usually state or outline the crimes or characteristics that qualify.

Countries with "incompatible" legal systems generally don't have extradition treaties, but if they do you typically have to be charged with something that's a serious crime in both countries.

Selling US devices (HP computers) in contravention of US sanctions (ITAR, probably) for payment that probably touched US banks

Dollar-denominated transactions are enough, doesn't need to hit an explicitly US bank.

Did you read the article? US is alleging Huawei was shipping "U.S.-origin" products to Iran - probably U.S. made components for Huawei devices/technology.

What "authority" do you need to ask for a favor from a friendly ally? Canada also has active economic sanctions against Iran.

Hi there, just want to remind you of the HN guidelines:

Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."

I'm sure you forgot. We all make mistakes.

I have mixed feelings about this rule because it genuinely feels like the majority of comments come from people who aren't reading most of the article.

For example, this article here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18476805

...is just dominated by people that didn't read to the end. The top complaint is treating the article as if it isn't facetious (it is.)

That does get very frustrating. I understand the premise of the rule, though.

"The article mentions that ..." accomplishes the goal of calling out poor comments while taking the high road.

Sure, and I think that works here. But what do you say when the entire comment doesn't make any sense because it was formed from an incorrect view of what the article was really about, like in the example I linked? I guess "do nothing" is the option I choose, still frustrating.

Reply & Deny, or Downvote and move on.

I think the more important question is: if someone is talking out of their ass, is it worth continuing to talk to them? In RL, other factors may apply, but in a forum like this...?

Unless ofc you end up with an interesting response anyways ;) (note: did you read tfa does not constitute interesting unless your standards are disturbingly low). Imo the minimum is a good backhanded insult thrown in

The overlooked piece wasn't at the end. It was after the end, hidden behind a little quiz.

Sarcasm is annoying, and prone to misinterpretation. That's not the fault of the reader who took the author at face value.

Your response nitpicks the particular example but what about the general phenomenon? Are you saying there are next to no instances of it?

I wonder if the type of component used even matters.

What if the us origin component was a plastic bezel, a screw or some peice of sheet metal in the chassis...

In this case it was (allegedly) HP computer equipment.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-huawei-skycom/exclusive-h...

> Can somebody explain to me on what authority the US can arrest a Chinese national on Canadian soil

Canada arrested him, not the US.

If you mean, what is the authority for the US to ask Canada to do that, well, asking doesn't require any special authority; OTOH, the US does have an extradition treaty with Canada [0], and while trade sanctions violations don't appear to be an enumerated offense covered by the extradition treaty, sanctions violations tend to also involve false declarations and certain kinds of frauds, which are covered.

[0] https://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/en/traites/en_traites-ext-c...

The article suggests she took US-made products and routed them to Iran through Huawei. That's a US crime, and the US can issue a warrant for her arrest, and if she shows up in a country with extradition to the US, she can get arrested. Which is apparently what happened.

Huh - I always assumed that extradition treaties only applied to people traveling on passports of the relevant country.

Your assumption was incorrect. Were you trying to imply something? If so, I didn't understand the implication.

In case you were wondering why you were downvoted (as I used to be), generally one (of the few) good thing about this forum is that personal opinions that don't add value arent encouraged.

Why don't they arrest US citizens who sold those US products instead?

Because the actual crime was the act of selling the tech to Iran.

This only works one way though. No one arrested Ronald Regan for selling guns to the contras to fund the revolution in Iran. The US gets to do this because might makes right.

Indeed it does.

And for the sake of humanity let's hope the US is never beholden to Chinese whims.

The US did, in fact, arrest the arms salesmen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brokers_of_Death_arms_case

Regean had sovereign immunity, so he could not be personally tried.

> Regean had sovereign immunity, so he could not be personally tried. Sounds fair. Arrest businessmen because it's practical, don't arrest Regean because it won't look good

He also had dementia

I just learned, thanks Wikipedia, that Jamal Khashoggi (journalist murdered in Turkey) who has recently been dominating the news is the nephew of the arms dealer king pen, Adnan Khashoggi, behind the Brokers of Death. It appears Adnan and our current US president have had a prior business relationship (according to Wikipedia).

That is a strange closed loop.

A good lesson about the value of networking. Similar things are all over the politics, business or even arts and people inclined to believe in conspiracies love to dig these but most of the time it's just the effect of having a way to meet people that are already in.

It doesnt, that why they asked their friend to do it.

Some times the US later finds out that the arresting country’s courts found no authority or legality for their own country to arrest the person and wont continue with extradition. This happened in New Zealand.

So typically a bit more research is needed and they find a way to get it right in future cases.

Another thing the US does is send an FBI agent to merely observe the arrest, to ensure that it is later compatible with US courts as well. Its a lot of organizations to make happy but the US is essentially one of the only organizations with the resources and interest to bother.

It is an interesting outcome of the nation state concept.

The authority of this treaty:

https://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/en/traites/en_traites-ext-c...

This comment is getting a lot of downvotes for a fairly straightforward question, so I just want to remind everyone about one of the HN guidelines:

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

The tone of the question reads angry and incredulous, not curious, hence the downvotes.

You will also note that the poster of the question never came back to acknowledge the work people put into replying and explaining the situation. I believe that eduction wasn't the intent here.

I see nothing in the word choice of the grandparent comment to imply anger.

Regarding "coming back", the poster may be in a different time zone or have an abnormal work / life schedule

Your response shows a good example of not interpreting the strongest, or possibly the only intent, of the message.

Your explanation is flawed because it’s derived from how you think of the speaker with no good faith.

Indeed I don't believe the speaker was asking in good faith. This is why I did not engage them directly, and only opined when the matter of downvotes came up - an explanation of the downvotes may prove helpful.

If you insist calling it an explanation, I’d call it smear.

in which you discover that international law, in the end, has no natural source of authority in the same way domestic law does.

Really? There are extradition agreements between Canada and he US... let’s say you murder someone. You can’t just leave the country and expect the new host to not care!

What she is alleged to have done would be a crime in Canada too so her nationality isn’t relevant.

Is she personally alleged to have done anything?

It seems the only allegations are against Huawei, of which sh is just one of many board members, and there's a good chance she wasn't even involved with the deal the allegation is concerning.

She's the Chief Financial Officer which means she is at the top. She is an extension of the company and responsible for the companies financial decisions - which would include concerns related to sanctions.

> You can’t just leave the country and expect the new host to not care!

That's not a fair comparison. If any law was broken, it was definitely not broken on US soil. It would be like US arresting people that it thinks committed murders in China.

> What she is alleged to have done would be a crime in Canada too so her nationality isn’t relevant.

I think it is. It's also relevant where the crime occured. e.g., lets say some small country decides that it's illegal to wear grey color pants. Then, can they morally arrest any person anywhere in the world that they think wore grey color pants at any point in the time at any place in the world?

The RCMP and FBI regularly cooperate on arrests.

IE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Border_Declaration

There's all sorts of similar agreements/declarations/etc. We have a rather fluid border for the arrest and extradition of individuals.

What I would like to know is how deals like this go down? Like does the US have some sort of agreement/incentive with Canada for them to spend their own effort on this?

The US calling Canada on the phone and asking them to arrest someone they want seems too.. easy? I imagine there's a limit where goodwill only gets you so far, and then some sort of compensation is expected. Maybe there's a lot of backdoor Gov2Gov money funneling or economic deals, but idk. This seems like stuff that is opaque to average citizens.

If you search for "US canada extradiction treaty" you'll find there have been multiple treaties between both countries. It's fair well documented law.

It's a treaty, and there is a formal procedure for submitting extradition requests. For example, here is an article from the US DoJ article on requests for extradition from the US [https://www.justice.gov/jm/criminal-resource-manual-612-role...]:

> All extradition treaties currently in force require foreign requests for extradition to be submitted through diplomatic channels, usually from the country's embassy in Washington to the Department of State. Many treaties also require that requests for provisional arrest be submitted through diplomatic channels, although some permit provisional arrest requests to be sent directly to the Department of Justice. The Department of State reviews foreign extradition demands to identify any potential foreign policy problems and to ensure that there is a treaty in force between the United States and the country making the request, that the crime or crimes are extraditable offenses, and that the supporting documents are properly certified in accordance with 18 U.S.C. § 3190. If the request is in proper order, an attorney in the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser prepares a certificate attesting to the existence of the treaty, etc., and forwards it with the original request to the Office of International Affairs.

For the Canadian version, see https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/emla-eej/tocan-aucan.htm...:

"""

There are three key stages to the Canadian extradition process:

The Minister of Justice must determine whether to authorize the commencement of extradition proceedings in the Canadian courts by issuing an “Authority to Proceed” ; Where an Authority to Proceed has been issued, the Canadian courts must determine whether there is sufficient evidence to justify the person’s committal for extradition; and Where the person is committed for extradition, the Minister of Justice must personally decide whether to order the person’s surrender to the foreign state. A person sought for extradition may appeal their committal and seek judicial review of the Minister’s surrender order.

In all cases, the conduct for which extradition is sought must be considered criminal in both the requesting country and in Canada. This is known as “dual criminality”.

Central Authorities from outside Canada are encouraged to contact the IAG to determine what is required to make an extradition request to Canada, including the evidentiary requirements, and whether provisional arrest is appropriate in a given situation.

"""

Sanctions governing trade with Iran have been codified through multiple acts of Congress and are overseen under the Departments of Treasury, Commerce, and State, under Title 31 statute, with additional regulatory aspects within Titles 15 and 22. The statute (31 CFR 560.205) makes reexportation of US goods from a third party country by a non-US person explicitly illegal under US law.

To the second aspect of your question, Canada is under treaty obligation to cooperate with extradition requests issued by US courts for fugitive apprehension, and Canadian courts will rule on whether the extradition is consistent with Canadian law before transferring the suspect to US federal custody.

Welcome to the rule of law.

1. The US charge is "shipping U.S.-origin products to Iran and other countries in violation of U.S. export and sanctions laws"

2. Canada has similar embargo laws on the books.

3. Canada has a multi-lateral extradition treaty with the US

4. The crime is considered serious with a maximum penalty (in the US) of up to 20 years in prison plus substantial monetary fines.

So she's accused of a serious crime in the US that's also recognized as a crime in Canada, and the countries have an extradition treaty.

Could that product be Android or does Huawei use a non-Play store version that is exempted?

That's a very interesting question!

However, it may not be salient. It's allegedly HP computer equipment - https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-huawei-skycom/exclusive-h...

You could try to make a case about Android, but as you posit an open source internationally available source base would be hard to prosecute.

This is surely about hardware.

Android on production smartphones is hardly equivalent to the open source versions of Android available online...

True, but the majority of it is. The customization of Android was done in China anyways, so I'm not sure there is an argument of it being a US export.

License is different than copyright or ownership.

And neither have anything in particular to do with export laws, which are the subject at hand.

A trade embargo does nothing if any middleman can funnel goods and money across by simply misrepresenting or omitting details about where the goods are going.

If I’m wholesaling Cisco routers and they show up in Syria or Iran, and Cisco and I can prove we didn’t know how they got there , that still doesn’t make it okay.

You can still be held responsible. The law requires you to check on who the final customer is and to take some actions on any suspicious transaction. Someone will come knocking on your door and you will need to show documentation to support your assertion that you "couldn't have known". If a product is subject to a trade embargo you can't just "sell it to a middleman" and turn a blind eye.

Im trying to understand if your last comment is aimed at HP or Huawai?

Wasn't really aimed at either. But maybe to answer the question: if Huawei acts as a middleman that buys embargoed goods from the US and then sells them to a country under embargo then under US laws both Huawei and whoever sells to Huawei can be held responsible (individuals and the company as a whole), the place the actions take place aren't relevant as far as I know. Even companies selling their own product to embargoed countries without any US involvement face economic sanctions under US laws (though their executives presumably would not be arrested.)

If HP (A US company) sells to a middleman without knowing who the final customer is for embargoed goods then HP and its executives can be held legally responsible.

This is mostly based on mandatory training I had to go through while working for a US company. I am not a lawyer ;)

If embargoes were trivial to get around they'd be pointless. The intent of embargo laws are to as much as possible, within the full power of the US, prevent goods from getting to a certain country regardless of any other variable. Embargoes are pretty extreme actions, there are only a few targets for those in general and the embargo usually targets specific goods.

The real answer is quite straight forward. In the end international and governmental actions come down to clout, which in turn comes down to power. The governments with the most power will always do whatever they want to do, and impose their desires on other governments.

The crackdown on online poker was a striking example of this. To give cliff notes the US, heavily influenced by casino lobbyists, decided to ban online poker. Online poker sites were operating in foreign countries obeying all laws domestically applied to them. In spite of the fact that sites were operating within all laws that domestically applied to them, the US decided to act because they refused to overtly ban US players. In an extremely rapid action the US simultaneously confiscated the domains of these sites, and executed arrest warrants on many of the involved individuals including surreptitious raids and extraditions from places including South/Central America, and froze numerous bank accounts around the world including in places such as Ireland.

The US is powerful enough that its own desire is sufficient authority to enact any action. Guantanamo Bay is a great example. This is not a just a US property under US law. It is operated as a US territory but mostly independent of US legal authority. The Geneva Convention is disregarded as convenient. For instance the three prisoners that were reported as having committed suicide (which would result in condemnation in Islamic belief) were allegedly tortured to death at a secret facility in Guantanamo, known as 'Camp No' (as in, no it does not exist), detached from the main camp. [1]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_No

the authority of the biggest military of all countries

Everything that you need to know to evaluate international relations can be learned in a school yard.

Canada: 5'4 @110 lb kid in glasses with a pocket protector. Very smart. Has adoring crowd that claps.

US: the 6'1 220lb line backer built in the same school yard

Arrested Chinese exec: 4'10, 78lb daughter of a family from a different school somewhere over there. That school has lots of those like the US, US sometimes exchanges words with that school but they are somewhere over there.

Girls shows up in a schoolyard with Canada and the US. US tells Canada: "Give her to me. I have some business with her".

Coincidentally, a Stanford Chinese American scientist, Prof. Shoucheng Zhang (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoucheng_Zhang), who discovered the Quantum Spin Hall effect that plays a big part in the recent Intel announcement of the next generation of chip design, was found dead on Stanford campus on Dec. 1st. Before he's death, Prof. Zhang went together with Huawei's CFO to attend a dinner in Argentina on Dec. 1st.

Basically, after that dinner in Argentina, one of them is dead, another is arrested.

Suicide apparently https://www.chinamoneynetwork.com/2018/12/06/renowed-chinese...

That's not a trustworthy news source. Why would a renowned scientist doing world changing research commit suicide suddenly?

My speculation is that he lost a lot of money on the crypto market.

https://medium.com/blockchain-connect-conference/backing-the...

That isn't unprecedented sadly, Wallace Carothers [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Carothers], the inventor of nylon committed suicide despite becoming head researcher of DuPont. Despite admitting serious red flags that could harm his ability to work the CEO came out to personally persuade him. In the great depression no less.

Of course neither is murdering the turbulent.

Many people at the top of their field suffer from depression. Floer was a 28 year old tenured professor at Berkeley when he killed himself.

There is no way for all the events you prescribed to happen in one day across four different countries.

I'm sorry to hear the loss of Prof. Zhang, however I suspect that his death may have had something to do with his heavy investment in some questionable blockchain startups.

>however I suspect that his death may have had something to do with his heavy investment in some questionable blockchain startups

Why do you suspect that?

>His family said in a statement that he died after "a battle with depression."

Holly ssss, this went wild. I hope it is only a coincidence.

The chinese chat rooms are going wild with rumors about the cinnection between the arrest, the dinner, the suicide and the fire.

Sources about this? Can't find anything that corroborates what you're saying about them being at the G20

And Coincidentally, ASML ( The only manufacture of EUV Equipment in the World used by every Leading node Fab ) had a Fire Hazard which causes Product Delays.

I don't know about you, but these are not an accident, there are links in the Chain, the work of a single organisation, the Syndicate. A rogue nation trying to do destroy the system that created them, regardless who is in the way.

An Anti - IMF.

Ok small jokes only. But both pieces of news, the professor and CFO arrested are blocked in WeChat and Weibo so no one knew about it.

> But both pieces of news, the professor and CFO arrested are blocked in WeChat and Weibo so no one knew about it.

Stop it.

https://imgur.com/a/X4tTzpb

Did you try sending it on WeChat ? All I got was content was blocked.

Edit: I tried again, turns out the Link I sent was blocked, but the news is in the wild now.

I would not look forward to being an American businessman abroad in China right now. I think we're all used to the fiction that we live in a world that's totally governed by fairness and laws. That's been a pretty useful fiction for a long time, and in (some) of the developed world that's basically been how it's worked.

But I really wonder how many shocks this system can take. I would bet money that an important US executive for some company is arrested in the two years while visiting China.

EDIT:

There's another comment here asking how it's possibly legal for the US to do this. Whether you believe it or not, it's useful to know that the philosophy much of our state department believes in is called Realpolitik (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik). It doesn't really matter what the law says or what treaties we've signed, the primary thing that matters for the US is what's pragmatic for it at the moment.

Unfortunately, this is a pretty safe bet. That's why I always recommend that if you are going to go to China to do business, you should go with the goal of making people over there extremely rich. This will give you some protection.

But yeah, if this is the game that the nations are going to play, then you don't want to be the poor schmuck sitting in a Chinese prison for 10 years just so they can make a point. It's probably time to start considering business models that allow you to operate at a distance from China. (Same with the smaller Chinese operators I guess? I mean, if I'm being fair. They should probably start considering models that don't require them to be in North America.)

If you're small, it's just a fact that this game is in danger of evolving beyond the capacity of your resources to play it.

Bottom line, whether you're Chinese or American, no one wants to start spending years on years in foreign prisons because they wanted to go to a foreign country to work for a few years. It's just not worth the risk.

> But yeah, if this is the game that the nations are going to play, then you don't want to be the poor schmuck sitting in a Chinese prison for 10 years just so they can make a point.

Facilitating deals with Iran to deliver US products in defiance of US sanctions seems like something the average schmuck hopefully isn't getting mixed up in. It's not quite the same as accidentally violating some random domestic business laws.

But on general grounds, why a Chinese company should comply with sanctions between US and Iran? And why a fourth country is arresting Chinese citizens violating US rules?

I am sure most of us break UAE laws on being with members of opposite gender without a chaperone and even post pictures of class reunions, etc. But I'm not expecting to be arrested for this while visiting, say, Sweden.

Somehow they got the US technology in order to sell it to Iran. I'm no legal expert, but there was probably an assumption during that transaction that they wouldn't be selling it to Iran, which they violated.

(which is exactly why this is different than them simply doing business with Iran in the first place)

I believe that is what ZTE was pinged for. There were US chips in the equiptment sold to Iran.

No one at ZTE was criminally charged. Though the indictment could be sealed and we may not know until they travel to a country that complies with American arrest request.

> but there was probably an assumption during that transaction that they wouldn't be selling it to Iran, which they violated.

It isn’t an assumption, it’s in the actual export laws.

> But on general grounds, why a Chinese company should comply with sanctions between US and Iran?

In general, they don't have to. Only to the extent they want to continue doing business with the US do they have to comply.

Not that easy, as most international trade is denominated in USD, and nominally flows through the US, and makes it subject to US jurisdiction. Which is one reason there is a growing push for denominating trade in EUR or CNY instead.

USD transactions don't have to flow through the US, either nominally or in actuality.

This is obviously true in the case of cash transactions which consist of the physical transfer of small green pieces of paper in places outside the US.

It is also true of bank transactions, for example the vast Eurodollar market which has been in existence since the 1950s. If a non-US bank offers USD-denominated accounts and transfers funds from one of those accounts to another, this can and does happen entirely outside US jurisdiction.

Sweden doesn’t view that as a crime so they don’t have any interest in further oppression. Many western countries will arrest foreigners that attempt to use their country as a hiding place. There are extradition agreements that outline this - the long arm of the law.

> why a Chinese company should comply with sanctions between US and Iran? And why a fourth country is arresting Chinese citizens violating US rules?

Huawei stole a Canadian company's technology [1], markets products in America [2], has issued dollar-denominated debt [3] and then went and violated sanctions in dollar-denominated transactions. This is a far cry from extraterritorial enforcement for either the U.S. or Canada.

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-ag...

[2] https://www.huawei.com/us/

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2018/04/26/huawei-...

"Now everywhere is New York":

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-03-13/now-ar...

> Huawei stole a Canadian company's technology

Then Canada gets to do the arresting and jailing.

Re next 2 points: If you want to justify violance you need stronger triggers. Those 2 just give the US right to ban the Huawei from country or using the USD.

This looks like US doing it because it can. But then US is not facing USSR whose going to die from self-inflicted wounds. China have the most capitalist companies (Apple/etc) defending it.

> then Canada gets to do the arresting

That’s...what happened.

> if you want to justify violance you need stronger triggers

Violating sanctions is a criminal offense under U.S. and Canadian law. Huawei chose to do business in America and Canada. Its executive chose to travel to Canada.

This is a difficult story to mangle into a morality play.

No Canada is arresting on behalf of US. On the contrary, Huawei is building 5g infra for Canada.

> Violating sanctions is a criminal offense under U.S. and Canadian law.

Just because its legal does not mean there wont be an aggressive reaction[1]. China will probably respond with force. Huawei with market exit. Then there are other actors who would respond in there own way we would never know about. US probably going to take net-hurt from this.

Do you want to hurt US market/USD ? Because thats what use of your justifications will do.

[1] edit: By that I mean non-US actors have not agreed to react aggressively. Legal implies that only US persons have.

Why, yes, I'd rather we didn't do business with a country that has close to 1M people in forced reeducation camps. I am OK with not profiting from some things. A dystopian "social credit" police state, for example, is apparently very high on my list of places not to invest in, be associated with, or deal with at all.

Now thats a moral argument. In a realpolitikal world, X aggresses against Y because its in X's self interest, not because Y have been bad. Under this model, China _is_ suffering from aggressions just not from Apple/etc.

The US and China should behave morally. I disagree with the real politks strategy. I'm sure many countries want to behave that way, I'm glad there is still the rule of law in the US (even as our president tries to subvert it). The US doesn't always act morally, but often it does - our laws against us companies bribing people in other countries are a good thing even though it makes it harder for us companies to operate in other places.

I'm not naive enough to think that China will suddenly reform itself, end oppression against it's people and take complete advantage of its people's incredible energy, creativity and intelligence.

> Do you want to hurt US market/USD ? Because thats what use of your justifications will do.

That's not going to happen. China is also not going to over-react. They're going to under-react, because their economy and global political context is at a slightly precarious point. It's why the US has been able to apply such immense tariffs without China doing anything crazy so far: they still need the US more than the US needs China (which isn't the same thing as the US not needing China at all). It's also partially why China is relatively eager to find positive ground with the US on trade issues. For example the US is currently building a coalition to reform the WTO in a manner that is detrimental to China (it caused the recent surge in Chinese interest in settling the trade dispute). The US is running perpetual trade deficits with almost everyone (specifically of importance, the major economies), which leaves most everyone having more of an interest in going along with the US rather than China on trade modifications. To say nothing of the IP issues and market barriers in place in China.

China will find a modest way to stab the US over this, unless it's resolved relatively quickly. It won't be a big deal for China, arresting one executive is not something they'll care to shake the world over at all. This isn't Jack Ma we're talking about, which would demand a big response due to his prominence and popularity. This is a nation run tightly by a Communist party that at the highest levels (ie Xi) barely likes business executives to begin with, they merely tolerate them as useful tools to get from here to there in a process that China perceives itself as going through. Executives of that sort are pawns that can be thrown away or swapped out with little concern. Overall it may be nothing more than the US acquiring a small bargaining chip at a tiny cost, which it can then release to perceived good will when it does so. It's a relatively simple political move if that's the case.

Its not just US vs China. Its US vs Market. Its the hand of market that US need to watch out for. Everytime a powerful entity acts like a madman, it gets weaker. Soon or later it will receive 1000th cut which may be one too many.

Today US became less reliable.

You're exaggerating what this tiny incident means to the market. Historically this doesn't show up on the list at all, it's just barely a one day top 10 business story.

The market in this context effectively means the top 30 or 40 economies. They make up the extreme majority of all global GDP.

What practical alternative to the US as an essential ally in the coming global bifurcation with China and Russia do you perceive that: EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, UK, etc - have? Who else is there? There is nobody else to help offset the enormity of China's looming power. The US has, on many occasions since WW2, done radically worse than arrest a Huawei executive over sanctions on a foreign nation. Mr. Market barely blinked over Snowden and the global espionage revelations for example, which was a thousand times worse than this incident. It had enormous commerce implications. For the most part the world went on with its business; and here we are years later, the US espionage system continues unabated (actually it's stronger now) and mostly unchallenged. This arrest will barely matter at all to Mr. Market.

You have very restricted definition of market. Market != Stock Market. Slap of market does not mean you go down, it means the profits goes to your compititors. Rise of China is textbook example here. China made the bank, while everyone who did not have compititive labor regulations got slapped for it. Globalisation basically means States getting slapped for not being competitive.

There are whole categories of companies/products (OVH/ProtonMail/etc) due to NSA. So yes USA got slapped for it too just not as visible as Rise-of-China.

> Do you want to hurt US market/USD ? Because thats what use of your justifications will do.

I would think that human rights, morals, and ideals of liberty and freedom are more important than a few percentages of GDP growth.

> Its executive chose to travel to Canada.

In retrospect, that was foolish.

Stole Cisco code as well I hear?

So if some Western company would trade with Ukraine or Georgia in violation of Russian sanctions, should their representatives be arrested and extradited to Russia?

Also, after Russia-Ukraine conflict many Ukranian politicians are under a criminal investigation in Russia (and I guess Russian politicians are investigated in Ukraine). Should they be extradited too?

If they were doing business in Russia and buying Russian-made tech under an agreement that the tech not be sold to Russian-sanctioned countries, and then they sold the tech to those countries in violation of that agreement... That might be a valid comparison.

And if they were in a country that cooperated with Russia to extradite criminals, this exact thing might happen to them.

> So if some Western company would trade with Ukraine or Georgia in violation of Russian sanctions, should their representatives be arrested and extradited to Russia?

The US is still the sole global superpower, it is still (yes, despite Trump) largely charged with maintaining the world order that has existed since WW2. Russia is not a superpower, its reach is regional and it has few allies. You'll see a lot of varied answers in this thread, the only one that matters is this: the US can do things that Iceland (tiny nation) or Russia (large, regional power) cannot because it's far more powerful in most every regard. That's not meant to justify any arbitrary flexing of that power that the US does, it's an explanation for why the US can do it and Russia generally can't in the case of Georgia. It's an imposition of will, backed up by immense diplomatic, financial and military power. Few countries will comply with a Russian request to arrest an American executive, dozens of major countries will at least consider a US request like the one in this case.

Well, if one were to wake up one day and find that another nation had arisen, say, one that is world's large manufacturer and that a vast number of companies rely on and where a large number of powerful Westerners happen to wind-up at one point or another, well, however far-fetched this might seem, this situation might put a wrench in this idea of US hegemony.

I mean, I know it's 1999 but who knows what will happen in the years to come? /:s

In my post I never said there were going to be no consequences to US behavior. I never said anything attempting to justify US behavior. I never said the US would remain the sole superpower. I never said China wouldn't eventually rise to the same level of global power that the US now has, or even beyond that.

What I said non-the-less is true. It's unpopular to state it, to say why things are the way they are in actuality. Sometimes reality is unpopular.

> Russia is not a superpower, its reach is regional and it has few allies.

It still has lots of nuclear weapons. And probably more tactical nuclear weapons than the US does. But yes, it has fewer allies, for sure.

Nuclear weapons are difficult tools to apply in diplomatic contexts like this one.

Well, during the 1967 Six Days War, I've heard that Russia threatened to nuke Tel Aviv if Israel bombed Cairo.

> The US is still the sole global superpower, it is still (yes, despite Trump) largely charged with maintaining the world order that has existed since WW2.

No, the US is not "charged" with maintaining the "world order". The US just thinks that it is. And they're so bad at their self-imposed job that the only reason why they can get away with it is that they're a superpower.

For a similar reason is why google had move all of their employees out of Russia a few years back.

Yes, if you violate another country’s laws, you are subject to arrest. Whether or not they can actually arrest you depends if you are in their jurisdiction or a jurisdiction that does extradition.

This was a "should" question.

[1] is a claim by some guy without any proof. In addition, the guy is clearly interested in selling his security services.

As for [2], [3]: I don't think there's any special law about people who use US dollars being under US jurisdiction.

Uh I mean, maybe not officially but there's a whole lot of precedent that if you engage in trade using USD that you're under US jurisdiction.

Really. How valid is that? If an American tourist uses 20USD to pay for a meal in Montreal or Toronto (which happens a lot), what's the logic that this falls under US jurisdiction.

If it's true, I'd avoid USD like plague

I mean, it's obviously valid because this incident happened (and many other events that show the same validity). The logic is that the US says any transactions involving USD fall under US jurisdiction, because it's their currency--that is, the USD only has any value at all because the US government says it's legal tender.

Because the USD is the international reserve currency for a lot of countries and the US largely is pretty stable, most countries are fine with cooperating in cases like this with notable exceptions.

FWIW that's changing under Trump (i.e. people are seeing the US as less stable), and the EU is making efforts to increase the use of the Euro as an international reserve currency.

Yes, you should avoid USD like plague. That's why Iran and South Korea established payment facility denominated in won, South Korean currency.

https://www.rt.com/business/443354-iran-south-korea-currenci...

Well for one thing, Canadian (and many other) extradition treaties require the notion of dual criminality - the thing you're being extradited for has to also be a crime in Canada.

Second, Canada (and most democracies) does not extradite to countries where the Canadian courts are not satisfied you will get a fair trial, or where the person would face capital punishment. So all these comparisons of being extradited to Russia or China or any other dictatorship are not exactly valid. That kind of thing is not on the table.

In fact right now Canada has a major dispute with China because the Canadian government won't return even run of the mill Chinese criminals because they will likely be executed after a sham trial in China.

A lot of the extraterritorial power of US jurisdiction is due to the fact that a lot of international commerce is denominated in USD. Matt Levine writes about this occasionally in his informative and amusing news letter "Money Matters" [1], for example [2]:

> The basic system of international trade is:

> 1. International trade is done using U.S. dollars.

> 2. Any trade done using U.S. dollars is subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. government: Dollars flow through banks in the U.S., and if the U.S. government doesn’t want dollars to be used for some purpose—to fund genocide or terrorists or dictators or narcotraffickers—then it can reasonably effectively cut off dollar funding for those purposes, and punish banks, including foreign banks, that disobey it.

> 3. The U.S. is a good and responsible steward, and only cuts off dollar funding for bad purposes like genocide or terrorism or totalitarianism or drugs.

[...]

> If other countries lose confidence that the U.S.’s decisions about who can use dollars are predictable, stable, constrained by the rule of law and responsive to the concerns of other large economies, then those other countries might look elsewhere.

Or the beginning of [3]:

> There was also a sense of uneasiness with the U.S. using the power of the dollar to enforce its foreign policy: Because all dollar payments are nominally processed through the U.S., moving dollars anywhere in the world effectively puts you under U.S. jurisdiction, even if the dollars are financing purely non-U.S. transactions. Lots of Europeans — bankers but also politicians and businesspeople and regular citizens — didn’t have the same antipathy to, say, Cuba that the U.S. does; they found it unfair that European banks were prohibited from doing business in Cuba not by European regulations but by American ones.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthe...

[2] Section "Dollar hegemony" of https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-04/trying...

[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-20/u-s-sa...

EU seems to want to change the US Dollar hegemony[1] as of late.

[1]http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-6643_en.htm

You are going to say all that without pointing out that the US and Canada are fighting espionage, and China will look for an innocent business person in response and that's just totally ok with everyone here?

In 2013, "U.S. businessman held hostage by his workers in China, he says":

https://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/25/world/asia/china-us-busin...

China regularly arrests western business execs. They famously arrested Crown senior execs from Australia last year (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/business/crown-resorts-ch...)

Realpolitik seems like the ideology of fuck you money.

The whole point of Realpolitik is that it isn't about ideology M(

Seriously. It's this fiction that makes me believe that, despite it's flaws, America (along with other democratic countries) is a beacon compared to the rest of the world. A country locking up a foreigner for breaking their laws is so different than a country locking up said foreigner out of retaliation, which is what I imagine China will end up doing.

Worth noting that the lines are a little bit blurred in America. I don't know if you grew up in the US/your nationality, but I've noticed a lot more things feel questionable to me about America since I've been an expat for a few years.

This is one of the most interesting cases I've seen:

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-story-of-joseph-nacchio-...

The problem is this, you're always violating some law.

Even in the US, there are over 20,000 laws and regulations at the federal level alone. In China, there are even more. Any small foreign operator in China naive enough to assert with 100% confidence that they are not in violation of any of those codes is being dangerously foolish.

So here's the thing, I actually agree with you. What China will do, they will do out of retaliation. However, I can pretty much guarantee that whoever the patsy is, that person will be in violation of some obscure code that no one in their right mind would have been paying attention to. They will definitely be in violation of some law. And they will condemn him/her to whatever ungodly prison camp for however many years.

So China will also be simply arresting someone for violating their laws. That's the issue.

Now my point is that if you are American, and a small operator without the clout to prevent this sort of thing from happening to you, it's best to try to get out in front of the problem. I know that I really don't want to be one of the poor stooges sitting in a Chinese prison for a decade because these people are trying to make tit-for-tat points.

I'm not talking politics or philosophy. I'm just saying that China is not like the US, and I'm advising people to be careful if they are small and plan to operate in what appears to be a dangerous legal environment that will likely be getting more treacherous with time.

I'm curious why you mention "small operators" twice here.

Huawei is a huge player in an inherently global business, complicated by the fact that selling telecoms network equipment necessitates dealing with quasi-state actors in most countries. Anyone playing at the C-level in such a company is definitely well advised around things like FCPA (and its non-US equivalents) and sanctions regimes.

Small operators get the short end of the stick, sure, but Huawei's CFO is not a small operator (and the sad recipient of China's likely retaliation probably won't be, either).

You're off by several orders of magnitude. Last I checked, we're seeing 600,000+ regulations that have the force of law published _every_ year.

> you're always violating some law

Exactly.

Selective enforcement is indistinguishable from arbitrary arrest.

Which is what makes America, with elected and political DA's, so much less of a beacon compared to normal democratic countries where that would be considered insane.

I don’t agree with this, selective enforcement at least has a ceiling of what you can be arrested for. Arbitrary arrest does not have such a ceiling.

As the size of a set of rules approaches infinity, it becomes indistinguishable from selective enforcement.

I think the above poster's point is that there are so many laws on the books that effectively everyone is above said ceiling. Thus, selective enforcement is functionally identical to arbitrary arrest.

No, because the fine, jail time, and infamy of "public noodle eating" or whatever has a hard cap. Selective enforcement can only get harassers so far.

China's harassers get to use the much more powerful "lock up whoever I want for no reason at all, forever"

Sure, public noodle eating may not have a long sentence. But carring a lobster in a plastic bag is a felony: https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dd-7o9xYp7eE&ved=2ahUKEwjuy...

There are enough laws on the books to lock people up at essentially any time if the police care enough to do so.

>The problem is this, you're always violating some law.

"21 USC §§331, 333, 343 & 21 CFR §133.113(a)(3) make it a federal crime for a cheesemaker to sell cheddar cheese unless the curd was matted into a cohesive mass."

https://twitter.com/crimeaday

Look for laws to be enforced cops need to be aware of them.

Specialists exist both on the government side as say food safty inspectors etc, and the private side as compliance officers. So, rules like this are not obscure for people building factory’s to manufacture cheddar and your local cops are not going to know about this crap they are searching your house for something else.

This actually works really well, as we want food to be safe to eat even if most people are not aware of how long food can be kept at what temperatures. Likewise what safty systems need to be part of nuclear reactors, or the minimum safty factor for bridges.

It's just a bit odd that highly specific examples like this make it into written law. A pretty clear example of what happens when you have a Government that can be heavily influenced by corporate lobbying.

I don't think your average reasonable person is in opposition to requirements to label food correctly and not mislead consumers. These things are already written in law, in the case of food it's governed by the FDA. However, when we start including overly specific laws like this, of which this is but one of many (sheesh, check-out what was in the TPP), then every other company in every other industry wants the same treatment, and we end up with a convoluted mess that we have today. This is a problem because your average citizen can't possibly keep up with all this; but more importantly these overly specific laws are a nightmare when it comes time to introduce new legislation. So much time is wasted on garbage like this.

The TPP actually had plenty of reasonable components to it, but it was also filled to the brim with corporate garbage. It's hard enough to form trade agreements and pass legislation without corporations insisting their obscure needs must be met. Particularly when legislation and agreements are either signed and passed as entire unit, or not at all. It just wastes everyone's time when there's a few odd sticking points holding up the whole process.

Why is it odd to have identity standards for food?

It's not, and I never said that it was; quite the opposite actually.

I said that it's odd that these things are written in law seems as we already have laws that cover this more broadly. Attempting to maintain in written law explicit definitions of every food that humans can fathom, and how they are presently produced, is clearly untenable.

Seems pretty clearly tenable to me. It is, in fact, being tened. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Really? You're genuinely arguing that every single edible substance and combination thereof ought to be recorded in written law?

No. I didn't argue that. Happy to keep talking if you want to respond to what I actually did say.

My apologies, perhaps you need to elaborate on what you meant when you wrote:

> Seems pretty clearly tenable to me. It is, in fact, being tened. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

in response to:

> Attempting to maintain in written law explicit definitions of every food that humans can fathom, and how they are presently produced, is clearly untenable.

If you have a vauger law you get all sorts of arguments that "well, cheddar doesn't have to be cheddared" and "10% meat is enough in meat sauce" etc, etc.

I don't understand your argument. You seem to be opposed to specificity in the written prohibition. So what's the alternative? You'd prefer it if FDA regulations didn't have the force of law? Or would you prefer it if FDA regulations were secret, unwritten, unavailable for cheddar manufacturers and cheddar manufacturer compliance officers to examine? Neither of those seem like good solutions.

It's called industry standards, and it's common practice and already in place in written legislation.

Written laws give Government bodies power to maintain and enforce theses standards, independent of legislation that needs to be passed through long slow processes involving many politicians who have no knowledge of the relevant field.

Industry standards don't have the force of law unless they are given the force of law.

> Written laws give Government bodies power to maintain and enforce theses standards, independent of legislation that needs to be passed through long slow processes involving many politicians who have no knowledge of the relevant field.

"Written laws ... independent of legislation" doesn't make sense. What are you trying to say here?

> "Written laws ... independent of legislation" doesn't make sense. What are you trying to say here?

You're right, it doesn't. That's what happens when you truncate a quote to completely remove the context.

It's not about local cops picking you for some arcane law. It's about anyone in government having the ability to find something to fuck you with at any time they want to.

That's not actually true. The cited regulation permits cheddar cheese produced "by the procedure set forth in paragraph (a)(3) of this section, or by any other procedure which produces a finished cheese having the same physical and chemical properties." 21 C.F.R. § 133.113(a)(1) (emphasis added), available at https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/21/133.113.

It would be interesting to see what the current US president would do in response to that. They are not exactly dealing with a rational man.

> A country locking up a foreigner for breaking their laws

It is absolutely crazy to think that US law should apply worldwide.

The article does not even mention if Wanzhou Meng is US citizen who broke US law in the US.

This case might be retaliation and fear mongering similar to the case of Julian Assange which is pure retaliation and fear mongering.

If you want to do business with the US, there are certain conditions they'd like to enforce (e.g. don't resell their stuff to a list of countries). That's simple.

The other reality is that certain countries have cooperation agreements where they feel their laws are compatible enough that they agree to extradite individuals that break those laws. Seems pretty standard business to me.

If you know you're violating a high profile US law, dont travel to countries that are buddies with the US. Maybe she didn't know about the arrest request?

Pretty sure she would not travel to Canada knowing that an arrest warrant is outstanding. Why is it kept secret? Is it that important to nab her? Could be a huge headache for Canada.

> It is absolutely crazy to think that US law should apply worldwide

Don't steal a Canadian company's technology [1], market products in America [2], issue dollar-denominated debt [3] and then violate sanctions in dollar-denominated transactions, and the U.S. and Canada will probably leave you alone.

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-ag...

[2] https://www.huawei.com/us/

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2018/04/26/huawei-...

> It is absolutely crazy to think that US law should apply worldwide.

Sure, but, most crime denominated in dollars goes through New York too. The section called "Stationary bandits" in the following expands this theory a bit:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-27/don-t-...

While the US won’t prosecute you for stealing in, say, Argentina, there are laws on the books that prohibit all citizens from doing business with certain nations, period.

They’re calling them US sanctions but the UN has also imposed sanctions on Iran. That may explain why Canada arested him. One signatory picking up a person on behalf of a more motivated one.

But other countries might have similar rules too. For example, Russia has sanctions against Ukraine, and Western companies generally ignore them. Also, Russia has Internet control laws and companies like Google are disrespectfully not complying with them.

Also, under Russian laws companies like Google or Facebook must keep Russian users' data in Russia; they are not complying.

If an USA or EU pays a bribe in Argentina, they may be prosecuted in their origin country. Also, the legislation about bribes abroad is very different in USA than in the EU, so when there is an important bidding process where there are companies from both sites, there are always problems and accusations afterwards. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens#2005_and_continuing:_w...

Maybe the most shocking example of bad UN sanctions pushed by the US: Madeleine Albright says 500,000 dead Iraqi Children was "worth it" wins Medal of Freedom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omnskeu-puE

Canada wants trade with the US more than trade with Iran and thus bows to the US.

As do EU nations.

Examples:

https://www.rt.com/business/443315-swift-iran-us-sanctions/

Quote:

The Belgium-based financial messaging service added: “This step, while regrettable, has been taken in the interest of the stability and integrity of the wider global financial system.”

SWIFT’s decision further undermines EU efforts to maintain trade with Iran and save an international deal with Tehran to curtail its nuclear program, after President Donald Trump pulled the US out in May. Being cut off from SWIFT makes it difficult for Iran to get paid for exports and to pay for imports.

https://www.rt.com/business/444051-eu-fears-us-sanctions-ira...

Quote:

Earlier this week, European Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova pledged to find an effective solution, saying that technical work on creating the mechanism to allow EU trade with Iran continued.

“We Europeans cannot accept that a foreign power, not even our closest friend and ally, takes decisions over our legitimate trade with another country,” she told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, stressing that the bloc would not be cowed by probable US penalties.

The law broken was a US law which 'applies worldwide'. The actual supposed crime occurred in a trade between China and Iran.

No other country could make a law like that and have any success in enforcing it abroad.

If you're Huawei and you want to continue selling your products in the USA you might want to consider following the law of the USA.

If the US doesn't like the way Huawei does business, they are free to ban them from selling products in their country. Bringing criminal charges is still ridiculous.

When you agree to a set of terms, and then violate that set of terms, you are on the hook.

Why should Huawei get extra warning shots? They knew they would have to comply with US law and sanctions if they wanted to do business in the US. They chose to try and ignore those sanctions. Ignorantia juris non excusat.

You are suggesting that we make let international companies import products under a pretense, and then we are supposed to politely remind them of their obligations every time they run off the rails?

Huawei is one step away from being a branch of the Chinese intelligence service. We did the right thing.

How the US claims to have criminal jurisdiction over a Chinese company selling to Iran is beyond me. I am suggesting the US ban them from doing business in the US (not "polite reminders") if they wish. i.e the consequence of breaking business sanctions should be prohibition from doing business.

The reports from US commitee's investigating Huawei have never demonstrated any real evidence of the alleged spying or Huawei being a "branch of the Chinese intelligence". Seems like overblown paranoia and fear as China begins to dominate the worlds economy. Not to mention the US routinely spies on other countries as much as possible, inspects all foreign telecom traffic (including phone calls like Huawei allegedly does) going through the US as the NSA leaks demonstrated, but they seem to dislike it when the tables are turned.

The only reason they get away with double-standards like that all over the place is because they have the biggest guns/economy. I call that bullying not justice. Its clearly a power-struggle not justice, you can't claim some moral high ground over not spying on others when you do the same thing.

I feel they are free to protect their national interests - say by banning Huawei if they suspect spying but if they have no proof, they have no authority to start extraditing and threatening and possibly prosecuting people.

USA will go to a foreign country and topple their government for violating US business interests (not laws). Being an American might be OK, but America isn't a beacon for citizens of other countries.

> USA will go to a foreign country and topple their government for violating US business interests (not laws).

I, too remember the cold war. I don't see this happening today.

I mean Syria, Libya, Iraq are some recent examples. There could also be a discussion about Ukraine and how much did US help to topple the government there but that is a more speculative example. The middle eastern examples are quite clear cut. I do agree US is doing this less than during the cold war.

The US toppled Syria for violating US business interests, did I get that right?

When did Assad get overthrown, and why? And how? Very confusing comment.

Assad getting overthrown was related to the big geopolitical confrontation with Russia (cold war has never really ended fyi). It was a move against Putin, trying to cut off his ally, as well as secure new pipeline to Europe to damage Russia economically.

Currently Germany, the largest EU economy, is dependent on Russian natural gas. Once you cut that dependency, Russia will get weaker and more isolated, which is in national interest of US I assume. US is also trying to make Germany less dependent on Russia so they can put on more pressure on Russian economy without damaging Germany's economy.

Google is your friend, there were plans for the Iran–Iraq–Syria natural gas pipeline and Putin intervened to stop the project as it was against Russian national interest. Also don't forget about Russian military base in Syria, getting rid of that in the process would be an added bonus from US point of view.

I did not specify business interests exclusively btw. It could be business interests or national interests (or combination of both, often when a country pursues regime change as a part of national interest, there are private companies that make profit).

Governments do not get toppled only for economical benefit, often it's mainly because of geopolitics, see cold war, both US and Russia were toppling over governments and installing puppet regimes in various countries as part of their fight for dominance. Economic/business interests are secondary most of the time.

Reasons for overthrowing Gaddafi were iffy at best also (I'd would actually like to turn the table and let you explain it to me, because I haven't heard any valid reason why we randomly started bombing Syria).

I'm not familiar with any important economic interests there, although they produce some oil and export it mainly to Europe (but it's small potatoes). So I'd assume it was geopolitics again, maybe Gaddafi was friend of Putin also.

Syria now is a complete mess with different local strongmen and terrorist groups competing for power, there's basically a constant state of anarchy and violence so I don't see how you can argue it was a good idea.

> but America isn't a beacon for citizens of other countries.

“Most of all, America passes the critical gate test. Open the gate and see where people go — in or out. This is still the country people flock to.”

— George Will, 1992

“We are the ally of the US not because they are powerful, but because we share their values. I am not surprised by anti-Americanism; but it is a foolish indulgence. For all their faults and all nations have them, the US are a force for good; they have liberal and democratic traditions of which any nation can be proud. I sometimes think it is a good rule of thumb to ask of a country: are people trying to get into it or out of it? It’s not a bad guide to what sort of country it is.”

— Tony Blair, 2003

When there are people camped outside of the Chinese, Polish, French or Serbian embassies waiting to apply for immigrant visas, then maybe I might agree that the US isn’t a beacon. However, reality is that more people want to emmigrate to the US compared to every single other country in the world. That seems like the very definition of beacon to me. Perhaps the British aren’t clamoring to move to the US, but citizens of many other countries are. The US does have faults, but if you dig deep enough into any country, there are faults. The US is just a popular target for hatred because nobody in the media really gets worked up over the policies of Denmark or Uruguay. Nobody could probably even name a single person extradited by Canada to a non-US country, but it happens every day, but since it’s the CFO of a major corporation, it’s big news and somehow the narrative is being proffered that the US is acting in some exceptional way here.

Those quotes actually prove this point. People want to be American because they know USA is great for its citizens, not so much for others.

When the Roman Empire found Jesus and slowly devolved into the Roman Catholic Church over the next thousand years, its "war on paganism" spread throughout Europe and Asia, with a death toll that is hard to estimate, but easily in the millions if you add up all the crusades and inquisitions.

Unsurprisingly, many pagans chose to convert to Christianity, rather than be murdered on the spot.

So maybe we can stop using this word "beacon", and use something more appropriate. How about "fortress"?

This comment reeks of arrogance. American beacon? as if the tables were turned arresting someone out of retaliation isn't what the US would do.

The US arrests and harasses innocent business people from China/Iran? Source?

American Bacon

Don’t read up on extraordinary renditions then. It’s rather sobering.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/03/1...

China can always pass a necessary law so that Western citizen will become guilty in full accordance with the law. And US can do the same. There is no difference.

The US can't do the same. Bills of attainder are constitutionally prohibited in America.

> America is a beacon compared to the rest of the world

lol

US toppled democratically-elected govts in other countries, one of which indirectly created the Islamic Iran of today, its not a idealistic beacon of hope, its just the current world hegemon with 800 military bases all over the world, the British empire of its time:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27état

I've see US soldiers in the Middle East while I was there, generically they're just people but in a way theres something strange about a US military base in another country. I was born an expat during the Gulf War period and US is really seen as a big advanced petrodollar bully in the region and has really only brought even more death and chaos to Iraq than Saddam did ironically. Kofi Annan, past UN Secretary General, himself has said that the Iraq war was unjust but then again I'm just reminiscing about something the US and US citizens no longer cares about. Iraq is now just another failed state, and the deaths there don't matter.

Beacon?!

The United States is currently operating an illegal drone war in other parts of the world.

Imagine how you would feel if Russia was flying drones above the US and targeted bombing a certain extremist group of people. Are you sure the next wedding you attend none of your friends friends is a target (or a mistaken target)?

Imagine how you life would be when death can come from the sky at any moment and there is nothing you can do about it.

Maybe this petty fight between nation-states will finally do what financial legislation could not.

"I think we're all used to the fiction that we live in a world that's totally governed by fairness and laws."

Why are you so sure that this CFO did not break US trade law with regards to Iran?

Let's bring it to a trial, that would be the fair thing, and that's what is taking place.

I mostly agree with you, but this isn't exactly a case where the CFO can expect to be tried by a jury of their peers. Enforcing international law (or laws with international scope) in a single country that isn't one's own is a little problematic.

“Jury of [your] peers” is not a phrase that has legal significance in the US. The sixth amendment requires “an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed“.[0]

The indicting US Attorney will be have to show that some element of an alleged crime took place within the United States.

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/sixth_amendment

Since when are Chinese citizens governed by US laws though? Did I miss something there? There's a jurisdictional issue.

When exporting a product from the US, you are bound by the export laws of the US, if you then violate those laws (by shipping that product to Iran, say), then you can expect to be prosecuted by the US. If you then enter a country that has an extradition treaty with the US, you may find yourself on an unexpected plane ride to the US ...

Is that what Huawei does, export American products?

Do you head that sound? That’s the sound of every American CFO packing up and leaving China.

But seriously, China is already preventing foreigners from leaving the country. https://www.afr.com/news/world/asia/china-steps-up-and-widen...

"It doesn't really matter what the law says "

Though there's a lot of realpolitik, it actually does matter what the laws say as well.

I think that other countries should improve their cooperation and arrest Western citizens breaking their laws. So that Western citizens and companies that break Chinese, Russian or Iranian laws and violate their trading sanctions, cannot evade a fair trial.

It is annoying to read news like this. US is not a world's police. They should not be telling foreign citizens with whom they should or shouldn't trade.

Concerning realpolitik, this isn't even the first time it's been used on a telecom executive in the US.

Joseph Nacchio, the CEO of Qwest, was jailed for insider trading in 2001 and wasn't allowed to use his defence in court that it was retaliation for refusing NSA data requests.

I am comparing the attention that two stories got on HN.

One that China is locking up thousands of Uyghur people for indefinite periods [1]

This one.

Well, I guess its closer to home when American businessman may face the same fate of being locked up in a Chinese prison.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18351568

Most people commenting here have never been to China. As a foreigner you enjoy a freedom greater than in the US.

I have spent a total of a few months in China and have not perceived the phenomenon to which you allude.

Were you in a large city like Beijing or Shanghai? This is odd. Foreigners act like monkeys there.

Having been a foreigner in both countries, I felt more oppressed in China than by the USA, although only somewhat.

It was the contrary to me.

China has been doing this for a long time already to Australian business people.

Several Australian Mining and Casino executives and employees have been imprisoned for considerable time by China's opaque justice system.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-04/stern-hu-explainer-wh...

https://www.smh.com.au/business/crown-says-detained-staff-in...

This is not a fair comparison.The Australian citizen was working in the company's ShangHai office and broke Chinese law.

You know that just because you commit a crime in another country doesn't mean you aren't culpable to victim county.

We will never know if that is actually what occurred as all of these cases were prosecuted behind closed doors.

No Australian embassy officials were permitted to assist or even observe court proceedings.

Needless to say, this is not the way a country with a fair justice system behaves.

> the fiction that we live in a world that's totally governed by fairness and laws

For those who follow China closely, this delusion doesn't really exist. Check out this article from 2010:

https://www.chinalawblog.com/2010/05/how_not_to_get_kidnappe...

https://www.chinalawblog.com/2012/06/how-not-to-get-kidnappe...

A simple search on that (excellent) blog will give you many, many more examples. Those articles are years old; it's only getting worse.

Note that this arrest was due to the lesser sin of export control busting, rather than Huawei's biggest sin: facilitating surveillance and IP theft.

Remarkable that they (she?) went through all the effort to set up a HK front company, but then left the Huawei logo on their powerpoint decks

She probably didn't write the PowerPoint.

Maybe they're getting for what they can prove rather than what they suspect.

Like Capote for tax fraud.

I think you mean Capone

Hah. Yes.

"facilitating surveillance and IP theft" ... Which is pretty funny coming from the US!

Notably she’s not just CFO, but also vice chairwoman of the board, daughter of founder/CEO, and very widely viewed as the successor of his father.

his/her

In case people aren't aware, Canadian-Iranian relations aren't exactly in a good place right now.[1]

Extraditing someone to the US for violating US sanctions against Iran aligns pretty well with Canada's interests right now.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Iran_relations

Huawei also has a large R&D presence in Canada. Maintaining good relations with Huawei is more in Canada's interest.

I believe that the USA's relationship is at least a bit more important than Huawei's R&D budget.

I take deep umbrage at the suggestion that my country and government would choose corporate money over the global democratic order.

Seriously? Canada will try to maintain R&D for Huawei vs. risking their relationship with US? Don't say the answer - we know it.

You should actually read the article your shared. Relations have improved under Trudeau. It was the previous Harper government under which relations deteriorated.

Going off on a tangent, but the hypocrisy around the Middle East is so brazen, it's embarrassing. I am by no means a fan of the Iranian regime. It's as rotten as all the autocraticies and theocraties in the region. However, to claim Iran is irredeemable for supporting Assad while at the same time inking arm deals and strategizing with Saudi Arabia is an insult to our intelligence.

I also wonder what this is going to do to Canada's real estate market considering that Canada has basically been a "safe haven" for Chinese nationals to flock to basically launder their money.

Probably nothing. The Chinese looking at Canada as "a safe haven" are worried about their own government, not Canada's.

On the other hand, Canadians who have helped Chinese people circumvent Chinese capital controls might want to think carefully about their holiday plans.

The good part is that PRC reach is mostly limited to China itself. Except if you get high enough profile they send a kidnap squad after you.

It depends on who the Chinese nationals are worried about. Does Canada have an extradition treaty with China?

It's sad how this has become a fact because it's insinuated enough times in the press by the same few reporters. First it was Chinese foreigners buying up all the real estate, but that was proven false. Now, it's all these foreigners are laundering their money. Yes, a few (although the RCMP is having trouble with their money laundering case) but not all. The press simplifies and that becomes the reality that everyone believes. I had a coworker mention this "fact" after hearing it on the radio. Ugh. Reminds me of the weapons of mass destruction debacle.

Just to remind you that a 1000 something square ft apartment in Shanghai's perimeters costs like 5 million rmb, that's 50 times the average income there, and in better areas, it easily costs 10 or 20 millions plus.

Think about it.

> First it was Chinese foreigners buying up all the real estate, but that was proven false.

How was it proven false?

The market impact appears to be negligible. At least not as large as factor as implied or popularly claimed.

To convey the spirit of your parent, is there any credible source? Remember china has a huge media manipulation budget.

Is there any credible source the other way around?

How many foreign nationals own property in Vancouver? How many of those properties are unoccupied? I can't remember where I spotted reporting on those two questions, but I wouldn't be surprised if the city publishes real estate transaction data such that the number of foreign purchases can be gathered. I remember a very small portion reported.

Google is your friend. Metro Vancouver has 9.2% of unoccupied homes and Vancouver itself has 8.2%, them being highest and second highest in Canada. Chinese drug mafia also allegedly moved more than $5bn through flipping properties in Vancouver.

https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2018/06/24/in-one-of-west-...

It's strange that owners would let the homes go vacant rather than rent them via a property manager. While the article seemed well-researched, one missing bit was who purchased the mansions they kept mentioning. They knew the builder, so perhaps they could have asked.

Is it though? Some of them just want to move their money outside of China incase something happens and they don't really care about anything else. While renting them via a property manager is a better financial decision, i'm don't know if you they care about it that much they are paying $x above asking price. Also, this might be their vacation home.

Yes, making a poor financial decision is strange when it's so easy (on the face of it) to make a better choice.

Though it's not. There is a property management company out of Hong Kong/China that owns 30 condos in my unit and rents it out to tenants. I work near One Bloor and if you see the demographic over there it's all non-english speaking Asian people. Heck the Nordstorm rack in that Condo accepts WePay. Where else have you seen that in Toronto?

All statistics point to it being false.

From the financial post (https://business.financialpost.com/real-estate/perception-of...):

A study from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released Wednesday found that 68 per cent of Vancouver respondents, 48 per cent of Toronto respondents and 42 per cent of Montreal respondents believe foreign buyers are having "a lot of influence" on their markets and are driving up home prices.

The insight into perceptions around foreign buyers that 30,000 respondents in the three cities shared with the Crown Corporation between September and mid-October is in stark contrast with recent data from Statistics Canada showing foreign buyers only own 4.8 per cent of Vancouver properties and 3.4 per cent of homes in Toronto.

----

The truth is that we're house horny enough to not need any outside help to increase the price of real estate. According to Statistics Canada, 69.0% of households are owner (https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-014-x/99-0...). While anecdotal data can be comforting, the data doesn't support the thesis.

While I'm sympathetic to the claim that foreign buyers didn't influence the price significantly, the ~5% ownership figure is surprisingly high. I wonder what portion it is in other cities, ones that aren't complaining.

So i read the highlights of the statcan link you posted.

a) it's from 2011, that's 7 years ago. b) Just being house owners doesn't mean a lot. There are non-Canadians (neither PR nor Citizens) buying condo's/houses with 35+% downpayment. Our government allows that, which is kind of mind boggling. You'll see a lot of international students living in condo's that their parents have bought.

I know this is unrelated point, but also effing Airbnb has screwed up the market for renters/first time home buyers.

I don't know which Stats Canada statistics the Financial Post article refers to (I'm sure they have more than one measure), but here's Stats Canada putting non-resident ownership at over 7% in Vancouver (https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/180625/dq180...).

Whatever the exact number is, I don't think you can draw a conclusion just from that measure alone. The percentage of total properties owned by non-residents is less important than the percentage of recent sales that went to non-residents.

Some completely made up and simplified numbers to illustrate my point:

Let's say 10% of all properties in Vancouver have been sold on the market in the last 8 years, and 25% of those went to foreign buyers. That would only account for an increase in 2.5% of non-resident ownership. That by itself doesn't sound significant, but 25% of all sales going to buyers many of which are price insensitive is going to have a massive effect on prices.

> Heck the Nordstorm rack in that Condo accepts WePay.

To be fair, I think all Nordsrom's in Canada accept WePay now. WePay is accepted in Nordrsom's Ottawa as well

Basically any time someone who has more money than you do purchases something you can't afford, it's automatically assumed that they are laundering their money?

It's difficult to take housing issues in Vancouver seriously because paranoia nonsense like "all Chinese are money launderers" just wouldn't stop coming. As soon as a discussion happens, it gets swarmed by (dare I say it) bigots and immediately derailed.

I don't think they were insinuating that all Chinese are money launderers but it is a real issue that has an impact on the real estate market. https://globalnews.ca/news/4149818/vancouver-cautionary-tale...

The Chinese buying real estate property in Vancouver or Toronto don't care about house prices so it won't do anything. They are doing it to secure their children's outside of China, they are not trying to flip those properties. I don't think they care if the house they bought for their kids loses in value, it's still a house and the kids can live there.

Wow this seems like a huge deal.

If the whole company is suspected of breaking the embargo, why is just the CFO arrested? Was she just the one they could get?

Also, it seems weird that Huawei can sell their own products to Iran but not American products they own.

> Was she just the one they could get?

This seems likely. Any officer of the company might do in this circumstance. She might be the only one currently accessible in a country friendly to US extradition.

> If the whole company is suspected of breaking the embargo, why is just the CFO arrested?

If the basis of extradition is fraud by a corporate officer (which seems to be one of the more likely offenses in a trade sanctions case actually covered by the extradition treaty, as sanctions violations themselves are not), then the question is how many corporate officers of Huawei are in Canada and exposed to extradition?

It is a big deal. It's not everyday that an exec of a major company gets arrested - especially one so politically connected.

I'm guessing this is just a continuation of the trade war we've been having with china and we told the canadians to arrest the CFO to send a message to china. She was probably targeted because she was important enough to matter but not important enough to go to war over.

It'll be interesting how china responds. I doubt china would go after one of our execs but I wouldn't want to be a canadian executive in china.

A shell company was setup to do the deal, and she helped setup the shell company and was on the board of directors of the shell company, and was the shell company's corporate secretary.

> “Wanzhou Meng was arrested in Vancouver on December 1. She is sought for extradition by the United States, and a bail hearing has been set for Friday,” Justice department spokesperson Ian McLeod said in a statement to The Globe and Mail. “As there is a publication ban in effect, we cannot provide any further detail at this time. The ban was sought by Ms. Meng.

I don't understand the last bit there about a "publicaton ban." So, in Canada, a suspect can request that some info of their arrest be withheld? I googled and came up with https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/victims-victimes/factshe..., but it doesn't make much sense to me since her name was published? So how would a publication ban protect her identity? I guess there could be others involved that she was protecting and not wanting the names released?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_ban

As stated on the wiki, likely because the publicity generated could affect the case. This case likely will get a lot of publicity.

Yes, but her name was released. I'm questioning on what exactly this ban is protecting if her identity is already known?

As in it could turn into a cause celebre and run amok due to the politics involved.

Likely the cause celebre might not just be affecting court decisions but cause external effects like other clashes in society so best to keep it quiet to not risk random crises.

I believe (based on the fact she was arrested Dec. 1) that her name was part of the tight information security but once it gets out that she has been arrested the news are allowed to publish that. Moreover, It also appears these may be international papers and I don’t know enough to say they have to or don’t have to follow the ban.

The Iran sanctions are yet another sad example of the US losing the moral high ground and soft power (followed by hard power). Americans might not like hearing this but increasingly the US is seen a dangerous, untrustworthy and negative value ally. As this continues the EU block will steadily move away from the US eventually NATO will fragment and this will have serious implications for global stability.

Prior to the current return to Iran sanctions the USA had a monopoly on international payments clearance. The EU has responded by setting up an alternative system.

I’m curious where she was flying. If Chinese execs can’t do China to Mexico via Canada connections, that will be interesting. (I am pretty sure she was actively avoiding connections in the US. Overflight of the US is bad if you are Snowden level but it isn’t quite as risky as connecting in Canada and way less than connecting in the US, since the US doesn’t do sterile transit.)

Details are pretty scarce because of the publication ban atm, however rumour has it that she's arrested in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond, and she may have entered the country using a Canadian passport.

Again these are just hearsay at the mlment, however it does explain why the US/Canadian authorities were enboldened to act and she had to seek an order to prevent publication of the particilars of the case against her.

It is telling that Chinese-US relations are at stake when a "private" citizen is arrested for a crime. Beijing was quick to say there was no wrong-doing before formal charges were even made.

China wonders why we distrust their businesses, and this is the reason. They all seem to be heavily politically supported by the Chinese government.

We're all discussing it with the presumption that, of course, it would. When we indicted half of FIFA everyone in the EU loved us for it, and certainly no political establishments condemned it.

A tl;dr to address some of the obvious questions here:

In 2013 she set up a Hong Kong shell company called Skycom Tech. That company (attempted to) purchase HP computers from the United States and resell them to Iran. The deal did not involve Huawei products, but many of the documents related to the deal were labeled "Huawei confidential" indicating they created the shell company to conceal their involvement.

She broke the law by attempting to do a straw purchase for the Iranian government of US manufactured restricted goods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_purchase

Canada has an extradition agreement with the United States, so the Canadian government arrested her on behalf of the US.

It's kinda scary that the US can do anything about straw purchases. US company sells to HK company, the stuff becomes property of HK company, US should be completely out of the goddamn picture at this point, HK company sells to Iran, done. The US govt must not be able to do anything about the HK company's intention to resell.

> The US govt must not be able to do anything about the HK company's intention to resell.

What does that statement mean?

Ah, if it's not buying with the intention to resell that's illegal, but the resale itself, it means nothing.

I just think it's weird that the US law handles the resale case. Like they think they have authority over the whole world.

The US supposedly loves private property. But this transitive application of trade restrictions sounds like complete disrespect of private property. (And honestly even just any trade restrictions in general…)

My question was significantly higher level than that. The United States exists to further the objectives of the United States. You made the statement 'The US govt must not be able to...'.

What does that statement mean given that (1) the United States is most certainly able to, (2) the United States merely looks after its own interests, and (3) there is no (earthly at least) authority which can actually judge the United states's actions in this case.

Thus, what does it mean to say '<insert country here> must not'? By what standard?

Every other nation has trade embargo's as well. And when they want to arrest someone in the US for violating those, the US will do just that. People are a little overly obsessed with the US being behind it.

Because the Computers are the property of HK company at that time, so the question is do US has any further rights on what is being done with them.

This being HP computers, it may be possible that they might even have been made in China/HK themselves.

What if it was used second hand computers, aren't their rightful owners free to dispose them at their will without deferment to any trade restrictions sanctioned by the country of their origin.

> Because the Computers are the property of HK company at that time, so the question is do US has any further rights on what is being done with them.

By the standards of the United states of America, yes the government of the United States of America has every right to do so.

I disagree.

Take Arms. Lets say the US has an arms embargo with a country like Iran. You would agree that it definitely is a violation (and it would be of many international treaties) to purchase US arms as a Hong Kong (replace with whatever country) firm and then resell them to Iran. Now, with computers being the next front of warfare, computer tech is treated similar to arms.

The whole movie 'War Dogs' is about people doing this with Soviet Arms, repackaging them, and selling them to the US. It was illegal, hence they got locked up at the end

This is essentially saying that it should be legal to circumvent embargos. I understand that prohibiting resale can be abused - it's illegal to prohibit resale under many circumstances in the US under antitrust law for example. But that only applies within the US market. The example here is a company deliberately breaching an embargo. If we allowed these sorts of sales then this could prompt the US to take even more drastic measures to enforce its sanctions, like blockading Iranian ports.

>This is essentially saying that it should be legal to circumvent embargos.

Yes, that's true. The US embargo policies undermine the prosperity of foreign and predominantly poor nations (including Cuba), the freedom of companies to engage in business with third partners, and the sovereignty of other nations, in this case, Canada.

It is a shame that the US can still bully businesses and countries around like this, and it is an even bigger shame that Canada complies.

Would you rather have a ground war in Iran or North Korea? How about Ukraine? That's the alternative to sanctions/embargoes.

The other alternative would be to stay out of the affairs of foreign countries.

True. I don't expect them to give us or others the same courtesy in response.

Yes, it's attacking their prosperity. That's the whole point of embargos: to attack the prosperity of countries that are doing bad things (like developing nuclear weapons). We choose to attack countries prosperity because it's drastically less harmful than attacking them militarily. For that reason it's crucial that those who circumvent embargos are held responsible.

To use an analogy, if the US is a cop the embargos are her taser and military intervention are her handgun. Outside of exigent circumstances she should prefer the former to the latter. While it's worthwhile to criticize unnecessary usages of the former, removing the less lethal option means plenty of bad actors get shot when getting tased would have resolved the threat.

This is not because the US is the big dog in the world (well okay, that's a factor, but not the main factor). This is because these things are always reciprocal cooperation agreements. The US goes to Canada (or some other country) and says "Hey, if you'll help us enforce our embargoes, we'll help you enforce yours." And the other country says "Deal!"

EDIT: Above is the carrot. There are also sticks that can be brought to bear, like import tariffs.

Suspicious how this comes right on the heels of negative publicity about Huawei's IP theft and possible infiltration of global telecom networks. I suspect someone might be wanting to apply pressure and forcing Huawei to respond.

Is she herself accused of breaking the Iran sanctions or is it Huawei, and as the CFO she's being held accountable? I can't tell from this article or the one from NYT. And it seems like that would be a big difference, and if it was Huawai then the US should just level sanctions against Huawai rather than arresting its executives on criminal charges.

"It seems" is not really a useful starting point in discussions. It is better to actually know the relevant laws & practices.

"It seems" is just fine. I was expressing my opinion of how it should be handled, not making a statement of fact on applicable laws.

She herself was instrumental in setting up the shell company used to try to do the deal, and was at a minimum, on it's board of directors at the time.

US can very well do both.

Only if Huawei could dismember some journalists, then they would probably be fine, maybe even get to shake the President's hand.

https://outline.com/NWDj34

Huawei has a branch in the US and Canada. Why not arrest some of them now?

If the criminal is done by other colleagues in the company, should the executives be punished? I highly doubt the CFO is arranging the shipment to Iran...

Or simply because the CFO is the daughter of the founder?

The CFO is a fiduciary if the company. The rank and file generally are not. The CFO couldn’t possibly be unaware of shipments to Iran. That would be absurd — and awareness of, is the same as agreement with, when you are the CFO of the company. Surely the receipts from Iranian payments crossed the CFO’s desk. This isn’t some subsidiary selling a few laptops illegally, this was far bigger. Some minion in the US office wasn’t making decisions unilaterally.

double standard? I dont recall seeing any of the Bluecoat (Symantec now) CEO's cuffed at the airport when hackers found Bluecoat hardware in Syria...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Coat_Systems

It seems like the US Government has a serious axe to grind with Huawei.

And HN plays its part with the downvotes.

I flagged this one as a dup, not for content.

sorry about that, I duplicate posted by accident after realizing I hadnt whitelisted hn for cookies when switching back to firefox. dupe deleted.

but seriously, just google ITAR violations and youll find a litany of other american companies that have been made to pay fines for violations and allowed to continue business as normal with no sanctions, no boycotts.

https://spacenews.com/37071us-satellite-component-maker-fine... https://www.strtrade.com/news-publications-ITAR-AECA-violati...

its just Huawei for some reason that sticks in the craw of DC, and has for months now starting with senators insisting they should be boycotted, to a defense procurement boycott that extends to DOD contractors, and eventually the evangelism of a boycott that extends to AT&T and others.

Im genuinely curious what caused it? because the trade violation just seems convenient.

Bluecoat was the vendor in this case. They sold software to an intermediary that then sold it to Syria. The intermediary was fined for the exchange.

Just a bit unclear on this:

"Canada has arrested the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies, who now faces extradition to the United States on suspicion she violated U.S. trade sanctions against Iran."

What violation was really committed? Was it Huawei doing business with Iran, like selling chips/devices/etc on their product line? If it (the Huawei company) did, shouldn't everyone on the company's employ who have had a hand on the products that were provided to Iran be arrested?

I look forward to having more factual information on this, rather than mere speculations on the violations that were supposedly committed.

Could someone explain what laws were broken ? I can't understand what's the matter if a foreign national does trade with Iran ? And its kind of suspicious that Huawei, a telecom giant , is the prime target given how much lobbying is done by telecom companies in USA.

Whats the Iranian perspective? Theres a lot of Americans here, I presume there are Iranians too?

They're probably pissed at the USA welching on a made deal, at the very least..

Nothing new here! She appears to have violated the US sanctions. Many people have ended up in prison for lesser offenses, some of whom were not even aware of their crime. The story of John Roth is really informative. He was indicted and jailed simply because of hiring two Iranian and Chinese students. https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/knoxville/press-releases/2...

The fact that it was a USAF drone project which he hired them for seems salient, no?

Maybe! Probably he should have known better, but that's beside the point. One can end up in jail by simply hiring nationals from sanctioned countries. This case is more clearcut in comparison. She was actually involved in exporting American technology to Iran.

"Exporting" technology for these sorts of legal purposes can be as simple as allowing a foreign national to see a document in passing. Punishment can range from "good job admitting it promptly" to decades in prison.

The allegations surrounding Huawei are much more substantial than that - the export of equipment for building serious internet infrastructure. An example of past allegations:

> Meng isn't a stranger to issues with sanctions. In 2013, Reuters found that Meng served on the board of Skycom Tech, a company that offered to sell HP equipment to Iran in late 2010 with Huawei's apparent blessing -- 13 pages of the proposal were marked as "Huawei confidential." The deal reportedly never went through, but it could have landed at least Huawei and Skycom in trouble. It's unclear if the arrest has a connection to the 2010 sale or is based solely on separate allegations.

If a deal like that went through, that's a pretty intuitive and straightforward violation of sanctions.

Hmm. You keep forgetting the important bit. Let me help you out again.

"One can end up in jail by simply hiring nationals from sanctioned countries and then giving them access to documents pertaining to US military technology."

This doesn't just happen to any random employer or any random professor. It happens when you are working for the DoD and you do something you shouldn't. If you don't want to run afoul of such laws, be better informed or don't take government contracts.

>and then giving them access to documents pertaining to US military technology

Not true! Once a technology is deemed to fall under ITAR or EAR, the export regulations kick in. Doesn't matter if the technology belongs to the government, a large company, a startup, or a university lab. And for obvious reasons, sometimes people are not aware this fact.

Random technology does not fall under ITAR or EAR. They are specific regulations that are pertinent to a very particular industry. If you are building military defense technology, you should probably be familiar those regulations and act accordingly.

It is ugly. The US and Canada is going down a rabbit hole.

The dictatorship of Iran is disgusting and dangerous but the US trades with countries governed by equally disgusting and dangerous dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia and China.

The US trade sanctions are imposed unilaterally and create mountains of troubles for US allies. Most of the world oppose the trade sanctions. Such sanctions rarely work anyways. It's a huge cost born not only by US companies but by companies in allied countries that have to obey US sanctions in order to avoid repercussions.

It seems to me Canada is doing this for it's southern neighbor. Wondering if the fact that Huawei is putting a lot a pressure on American companies (by competing with them) is part of this?

The biggest Huawei competition is from Ericsson in Sweden and Nokia in Finland. The US feels very uncomfortable having it’s civilian and military networks serviced by Huawei because of the connections Huawei has to the Chinese military.

This reminds me of the Yinhe incident:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinhe_incident

丢掉幻想，准备斗争

this translates to "Lose fantasy, prepare to fight" according to google translate.

Good for Canada - they showed a lot of spine in criticising Saudi Arabia this summer and they're showing a lot of spine with this.

Combined with the UK's seizure of Facebook documents, it's a great week for assertive liberal democracies. Let's hope we're setting ourselves up for a 2019 where we'll get some sunlight into all the dark places that have been building up for the last couple of decades.

I hope multiple US executives now get arrested in other countries for supporting a US regime that breaks human rights and ignores international everyday

Although the propaganda from the white house says a deal was made with China last week on tariffs, this I would consider would be seen by China as a major escalation of the nationalist behavior of the USA. The markets will likely respond with a sell off because the behavior of the USA is not correlating with the statements coming out. Hold on for a scary couple of days.

For the conspiracy theorists O2 is currently suffering a massive mobile network outage in the UK [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/12/06/o2-network...]. Apparently it has been caused by a third party supplier [https://twitter.com/O2/status/1070612301110226944]. Apparently, O2 uses Huawei [http://telecoms.com/44197/huawei-wins-managed-services-deal-...] but has recently been boasting about moving away from them [can't find a reference].

But someone on twitter is claiming the third party is not Huawei. [https://twitter.com/NicFildes/status/1070606845881008128]

The only lesson here is: If your company has ever sold any products in Iran, I think its safe to avoid taking any connecting flights through US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and possibly Britain. Fly Emirates, Qatar Airways or Cathay Pacific.

Is Ms. Meng related to Meng Hongwei?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ex-interpol-chief-ousted-china-to...

It's interesting that this happened on the same day Trump and Jinping met, there is a possibility they both knew about this prior to the meeting. On Monday stock market goes up on "improving China relations", on Tuesday the Dow tanks 800 points on "no news". Chances are the sell-off was because some people learned about it on Tuesday.

And y'all thought we canucks we're nice.

So, we are willing to arrest foreign businesspeople and risk an international crisis in order to make sure that our supply of oil is secure, but if our own businesspeople rip off the American people to the tune of trillions of dollars, we not only let them walk free, but we compensate them for their losses. Interesting to see what kinds of behavior are actually punished. Shows you who's really in charge of the government. (Exxon, Goldman Sachs, etc)

Is it only coincidence that this prosecution of Huawei come just after Huawei create best smartphone on market?

No it's due to their 5G network equipment success. Their tech is on par with Nokia & Ericsson and the price is very competitive.

Is it only coincidence that this prosecution of Huawei come just after Huawei create best smartphone on market?

why Canada arrested Huawei’s global chief financial officer in Vancouver, this is not belong to Canada, really suck up to American. Canada got fuck good on tariff and still never learn. stupid the Canadian justice. tax fair paid him and he do job for American.

this is violation of international law, what is canada doing for us a favor. to arrest any citizen of country in canada. this is Canada looking own trouble now. really is suck up on us political .

Is china still holding those Americans hostage? Victor and Cynthia Liu?

This is a mockery of globalization, free markets and rule of law. It's sad for those of us who have supported some of these values to see them mocked like this. This is like China or Russia getting Trump's or Bill Gates daughter arrested on some made up charge in a third country. Who will support that?

Unilateral sanctions against Iran or Cuba without the consensus of the UN is questionable in law in the first place. What crimes have Iran or Cuba committed? And yet these sanctions without basis by countries who count Saudi Arabia as their closest ally are allowed to cause suffering to millions of people for decades on end and no one cares. This is the twisted state of our world.

It seems ultimately foolish to believe in ideals when they only apply to a certain group of countries in their benefit, and when not will use propaganda and their collective political and diplomatic power to harass others.

Weird.

Huawei made an carefully worded announcement early this day and states that they are didn't violate any related law:

- https://www.zhihu.com/question/304821204

- https://weibo.com/2557129567/H5WbTkTkj

December 1, the same day Xi and Trump met at G20. Wonder if anything goes wrong.

Americans better find something this time, one Yinhe incident[0] is bad enough for PR already :)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinhe_incident

I'm hoping Canada puts her on a flight to Beijing instead of involving itself. She is acused of violating a trade embargo that Canada is not a party to.

That would violate US-Canadian reciprocation agreements and could dramatically hinder relations between the countries. What your suggesting is a very small-picture POV that will only result in hurting both countries.

I was under the impression that unless you left the airport you're not technically in that country.

That's how Julian Assange evaded arrest.

Not so. The airport is definitely the territory of the country in which it resides. You do not have to clear immigration to be subject to that nation's laws.

I have no doubt this has a lot to do with two super powers trying very hard to flex their muscles, both trying to project a position of strength.

However, I don't think China was helping it's cause when a month ago it decided to arrest the Interpol chief, only to have that chief released a few hours latter.

Throw in that mix a crazy Putin itching for war in the Ukraine and we have three boys all trying very hard to take control the playground.

Goodbye Vancouver real estate?

The Chinese buy real estate in Vancouver to avoid the Chinese government, not the US. Canada does not have an extradition treaty with China.

Probably related to this: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-c.... Trump brought it up at the g20

This is disgusting, I know what is the brand of my new mobile phone:-D

加拿大还是一个主权国家吗？

加拿大很好

Is Canada becoming little brother of US?

What do you mean by "becoming"? The extradition treaty that the US most likely invoked in this case has been in force for almost 50 years.

https://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/en/traites/en_traites-ext-c...

So many double standard to the legal system from US & Canada.

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1130954.shtml

And yes, you remind me that I use the wrong word, it should not be "becoming", it should be "always". :)

Shameless, hypocrite countries

Expecting in couple months, there would be an American executive's nationally televised confession and contrition.

I think that's totally fine. Only the US can spy on their own citizens, plus on the entire world.

No problem USA! Go back on the Iran deal, go back on the Paris climate deal, go back on TPP.

Just don't expect that anyone believes you anymore.

You think THIS proves the US is not a trustworthy nation? Why choose to ignore the last 100+ years of the US's backstory and focus on this rather minor setback to make such a bold statement? I would imagine any amount of trust we had left was entirely exhausted more than 40 years ago, during the Nixon shock [0] and Exorbitant privilege [1].

Surely, you realize the US earns its status on the global stage via its violent & powerful military, and the PetroDollar? It is foolish to suggest that the US expects other nations to possess any pretense of trust.

You don't have to believe me, because after all I'm just some dumb American. But you may want to take a good look in the mirror and ask yourself who is being the true "American" here.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege

Trust is lost in buckets, and earned in drops. The US will learn this the hard way. There's never been a discussion about a European army, now it crops up, for example.

Even if the next administration is deemed trustworthy what's with the one coming after that?

AND pushing for international clearing in Euros, which is much more damaging for the interests of the US.

>You think THIS proves the US is not a trustworthy nation?

Yes

>Why choose to ignore the last 100+ years of the US's backstory

I was born in '93 so what happened 100 years ago isn't much of a concern for me.

>and focus on this rather minor setback to make such a bold statement?

Calling climate change a chinese hoax and exiting a global climate deal is not a minor setback.

Destroying the trust that Obama built over 8 years since Iraq and rolling back all his promises to the world, while having a 40%+ domestic approval rating, is not a minor setback.

>Surely, you realize the US earns its status on the global stage via its violent & powerful military, and the PetroDollar? It is foolish to suggest that the US expects other nations to possess any pretense of trust.

No I'm not aware that USA/EU common trade and foreign policy interested rest on us being afraid of the American armed forces, or on what currency is used to buy petrol.

>You don't have to believe me, because after all I'm just some dumb American. But you may want to take a good look in the mirror and ask yourself who is being the true "American"

What? Is this just a roundabout way of telling me I'm dumb?

> I was born in '93 so what happened 100 years ago isn't much of a concern for me.

Newtonian physics. World War II. Penicillin. A lot of things that happened a long time ago shape your reality today. This is not related to the Huawei case, but I wish more people would take into account how their actions might affect those living 100 years in the future.

> I was born in '93 so what happened 100 years ago isn't much of a concern for me.

This is a painfully ignorant statement. Every facet of your life is shaped by the actions of those in the past.

> or on what currency is used to buy petrol.

This literally is the thing regulates how every currency on the planet is valued/traded. EVERYTHING is based on the relationship between the dollar and the price of oil, including the USA/EU trade relationship, and every other trade relationship for that matter. Is that a good thing? Depends on who you ask, but it is nevertheless the current reality.

> What? Is this just a roundabout way of telling me I'm dumb?

No, but you aren't exactly making a great case for yourself.

Generic nationalistic flamewar comments will get you banned on HN. Please don't post like this here, regardless of which nations you favor or disfavor.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18616293 and marked it off-topic.

tesr

Intern camp.

China has a long history of disregarding United Nations and US sanctions. During the second Iraq war they defied UN sanctions by selling anti-aircraft defense systems to Iraq directly endangering US and coalition fighters.

Edit: verb tense.

https://books.google.com/books?id=grGMAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT221&lpg=...

Keep in mind that US sanctions against foreign companies doing business with Iran are opposed by:

The United Nations International Court of Justice, which ordered the US to withdraw sanctions, to which the US responded by pulling out of international agreements.

The European Union, which has attempted to block its companies from complying with US sanctions.

Source:https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/a3hied/huawei_de...

I mean you’re right that the UN has a lot of realpolitik, and you need to take those decisions with a grain of salt. But the rulings you are referring to are an instance where the US took a different ideological stance to the EU as to the best course of action to deal with Iran (which nobody wants to have intercontinental ballistic missiles, but really doesn’t want it to have nuclear weapons).

The example I gave and what it looks like Meng did at Huawei are examples of the Chinese government actively supporting weapons programs in hostile regions. I very much feel that she should stand trial for the deception she did constructing these shell companies to sell US export controlled items to Iran.

Tell that to US and NATO who bombed Yugoslavia without UN approval. Among other things they did, like toppled goverments..

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