Why Huawei and its CFO Meng Wanzhou are caught up in the US-China trade war

Huawei has a key role to play in China’s ambition to lead the way in next-generation mobile telecoms infrastructure – known as 5G

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A man walks past a Huawei store in Beijing on December 10, 2018. Photo: AFP

Published: 5:02pm, 12 Dec 2018Updated: 5:56am, 25 Dec 2021

Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, the 46-year-old CFO of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei and daughter of its founder Ren Zhengfei, has been granted bail by a Canadian court, setting up a protracted legal fight over extradition to the United States.

Meng was arrested in Vancouver earlier this month at the request of US authorities, who have accused her of fraudulently representing Huawei to get around US sanctions on Iran.

Her case has now become embroiled in the wider trade war between China and the US after US President Donald Trump suggested he may intervene if it would help secure a broad deal with Beijing. The arrest came the same day Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping declared a 90-day truce in their trade war during summit talks in Buenos Aires.

Although Meng’s arrest prompted outrage in China, Beijing is walking a fine line between defending one of the crown jewels of the country’s tech industry and preventing a nationalist backlash that could derail a potential trade deal with Washington.

But what is Huawei and why is it so important to the future of relations between China and the US? Here is what you need to know.

What is Huawei?

Established in 1987, Huawei is a Chinese tech champion that sells smartphones and telecoms equipment across the world. Headquartered in China’s southern coastal city of Shenzhen, Huawei is China’s top smartphone maker, and overtook Apple as the second-largest smartphone vendor globally in the second quarter this year – a feat it also maintained in the third quarter, according to IDC data.