Why the Meng Wanzhou saga may not be the last of its kind

The misguided anger and recklessness Donald Trump hijacked is still simmering in the US and elsewhere, including China – albeit for different reasons
China’s development momentum and the US abuse of state power are a highly combustible mix, and that fundamental has not changed

Dabing Li

Published: 6:45am, 29 Sep 2021

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The US has ended its extradition case against Meng Wanzhou, and Huawei’s chief financial officer is now free after being detained in Canada for nearly three years. She arrived back in Shenzhen to a hero’s welcome. The outpouring of support has been massive; her case struck a chord with many people, as it should.

Huawei was pulling ahead in 5G technology, seen as perhaps the next big thing to redefine industry, commerce, finance, and life in general.

At the height of the US-China trade war, the Trump administration gambled on Meng’s extraordinary detention, betting that this could help it destroy Huawei and give it a bargaining chip to extract more trade concessions from China.

Euphemistically, Meng’s extradition case was trumped up in an evidentiary vacuum. Realistically, it was gangsterism initiated by a vain, insecure bully who happened to be occupying the White House.

As former US president Donald Trump often boasted, “I alone can fix it.” Yes, he did things his own way, and nothing stroked his fragile and outsize ego quite like such a bullying stunt to shock the world.

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But this was not Trump’s doing alone. He had a voter base that enabled him, a minority of the US population that is entitled, angry and apparently free from the need for facts and responsibility.

That base is still there, grinding its axe and nursing its grievances. Trump is still whining about last November’s election – which, in another evidentiary vacuum, he still claims was stolen – and is obsessed with returning to the White House in 2024.

This kind of misguided anger that Trump hijacked is contagious, and is simmering in other corners of the world, albeit for different reasons. In the West, it is hardly distinguishable from the disbelief that China, under a different governing model, could succeed in manufacturing, technology, poverty alleviation and pandemic control.

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In China, it wells up from another disbelief: when Chinese, through hard work, seek to build a better life, why does the West then turn around and say they are a threat?

This anger is a breeding ground for recklessness. It might be Trump’s most damaging legacy. Just look at how many treaties were torn up, sanctions imposed and “alternative facts” uttered, tweeted and recycled each day. Anger is being weaponised for political and nationalistic purposes worldwide.

Recklessness also exists in abundance in China, but more in a commercial and financial sense – it is based on hunger as well as anger. China was in the past a nation of peasants, and the fear of being poor remains in its psyche.

Many successful entrepreneurs in China are referred to as “peasant executives”, whether in contempt or as a term of endearment. That innate fear of poverty sometimes drives them into risk-taking and disorderly expansion.

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In that zeal for success, nothing is ever enough for these entrepreneurs. Building and expanding are their modus operandi. The sheer scale of China’s domestic market is both a blessing and a curse.

It gives them a vast platform to grow and profit from, but it also instils an unhealthy worship of market share, often grabbed through monopolistic means.

How else can we understand why Evergrande felt the need to drive up sales during an obvious property glut, or why Huawei feels it must have its footprint in every corner of the world, including risk-laden places such as Iran?

China’s recent regulatory tightening is a recognition of this recklessness and a “whole of society” effort to rein it in. It’s about time. China’s development momentum and the US abuse of state power are an unfortunate, highly combustible mix. That fundamental has not changed. The Meng Wanzhou saga may not be the last of its kind.

On the same day Meng flew home, two top HNA Group executives were detained in China. It could be a coincidence, but it is telling. China is at least doing its part and putting its house in order.

Dabing Li worked in China, the US and Hong Kong as a textile salesman, a trade official, banker, consultant and entrepreneur. Now retired, he resides in Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong