Criminal Company

US unveils criminal charges against Huawei and Meng Wanzhou 
By Kiran Stacey in Washington and Tom Mitchell in Beijing

Acting US Attorney General Matthew Whitaker reiterated the Justice Department’s desire to have Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou extradited to the United States.

The US has accused China’s Huawei and its chief financial officer of stealing American technology and breaking US sanctions against Iran, in a criminal indictment that sharply escalates the two countries’ technological rivalry.
 The move will overshadow trade talks this week aimed at averting an all-out trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
 Matthew Whitaker, acting attorney-general, announced the action against the world’s biggest telecoms equipment maker on Monday as China’s trade negotiators, led by Vice-Premier Liu He, arrived in Washington for talks scheduled to open on Wednesday.
 Depending on the penalties sought by the justice department, the Trump administration’s salvo could disrupt the global operations of a Chinese corporate champion and land its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, in prison.
 Meng is the daughter of Huawei’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, and is currently in Vancouver as she fights a US extradition request in Canadian courts.
Canada’s justice department late Monday said it had received a formal extradition request from the US, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
 Mr Whitaker told a press conference: “These are very serious actions by a company that appears to be using corporate espionage and sanctions violations not only to enhance their bottom line, but also to compete in the world economy. This is something the United States will not stand for.”
 He added: “This goes back 10 years and goes all the way to the top of the company.” 
 Huawei said it was “disappointed to learn of the charges brought against the company today”, adding that it had sought discussions with the US justice department after Meng’s arrest but “the request was rejected”.
 US officials said the investigations into Huawei had been going on for years.
But they began to come to a head in December, when Canadian officials arrested Meng in Vancouver on US charges, a move that triggered protests from China, which has since detained at least two Canadian citizens.
 Mr Whitaker said the US would formally lodge an extradition request with Canada in the coming days. 
 Meng’s arrest is a particularly sensitive political issue given Huawei’s status as a Chinese national champion.
 Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University, predicted the charges would make an eventual trade deal less likely.
 It is also likely to give the US further leverage when urging allies to do more to shut the Chinese company out of their markets. 
 Mark Warner, the Democratic vice-chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said: “This is a reminder that we need to take seriously the risks of doing business with companies like Huawei and allowing them access to our markets. I will continue to strongly urge our ally Canada to reconsider Huawei’s inclusion in any aspect of its 5G infrastructure.” 
 US officials including Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, outlined on Monday the charges being brought against both Meng and the company.
 The charges of corporate espionage, they said, related to Huawei’s attempts to steal the technology used by T-Mobile, one of its US business partners, in a robot called Tappy, which was used to test mobile telephones.
 Annette Hayes, first assistant US attorney for the western district of Washington state, said US officials had internal emails from Huawei showing this was a “determined and unrelenting effort”, and not a rogue operation by some within the company.
“This was Huawei’s modus operandi,” she said.
 T-Mobile declined to comment.
The sanctions-busting charges relate to Huawei’s ownership of a company called Skycom, which was reported to have offered to sell embargoed Hewlett-Packard equipment to Iran’s Mobile Telecommunication Co in 2013.
The indictment filed in the eastern district of New York alleges that Skycom illegally employed a US citizen in Iran, and that Huawei lied to US banks about its financial interest in Skycom.
As a result, the indictment says, US funds were illegally funnelled to Iran. 
 US officials said they had evidence that Meng was personally involved in these criminal actions. 
 The legal action might have additional consequences for the company as a whole.
 One lawyer involved in action against Huawei in the US said: “The fact that Wilbur Ross was at the press conference indicates the US might end up putting Huawei on the export control list.”
 Banning US companies from exporting to Huawei is seen in Washington as the “nuclear option” against the Chinese company, given its reliance on US software and microchips.
 Stocks in China turned sharply lower following the filing of the charges and declines on Wall Street on Monday.
The Shenzhen Composite fell as much as 2.6 per cent by mid-morning, but later erased some of that decline to trade down 1 per cent in the late afternoon.

Huawei Threat

How arrest of Chinese princess exposes regime’s world domination plot
By Steven W. Mosher

Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou’s arrest in Vancouver on Dec. 6 led to immediate blowback.
Furious Chinese Communists have begun arresting innocent Canadians in retaliation. 

So far, three of these “revenge hostages” have been taken and are being held in secret jails on vague charges. 

Beijing hints that the hostage count may grow if Meng is not freed and fast.
Even for a thuggish regime like China’s, this kind of action is almost unprecedented.
So who is Meng Wanzhou?
Currently under house arrest and awaiting extradition to the US, she will face charges that her company violated US sanctions by doing business with Iran and committed bank fraud by disguising the payments it received in return.
But to say that she is the CFO of Huawei doesn’t begin to explain her importance — or China’s reaction.
It turns out that “Princess” Meng, as she is called, is Communist royalty. 

Her grandfather was a close comrade of Mao Zedong during the Chinese Civil War, who went on to become vice governor of China’s largest province.
She is also the daughter of Huawei’s Founder and Chairman, Ren Zhengfei. 

Daddy is grooming her to succeed him when he retires.
In other words, Meng is the heiress apparent of China’s largest and most advanced hi-tech company, and one which plays a key role in China’s grand strategy of global domination.
Huawei is a leader in 5G technology and, earlier this year, surpassed Apple to become the second largest smartphone maker in the world behind Samsung.
But Huawei is much more than an innocent manufacturer of smartphones. It is a spy agency of the Chinese Communist Party.
How do we know?
Because the party has repeatedly said so.
First in 2015 and then again in June 2017, the party declared that all Chinese companies must collaborate in gathering intelligence.
“All organizations and citizens,” reads Article 7 of China’s National Intelligence Law, “must support, assist with, and collaborate in national intelligence work, and guard the national intelligence work secrets they are privy to.”
All Chinese companies, whether they are private or owned by the state, are now part and parcel of the party’s massive overseas espionage campaign.
Huawei is a key part of this aggressive effort to spy on the rest of the world. 

The company’s smartphones, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray, are used to “maliciously modify or steal information,” as well as “conduct undetected espionage.” 

Earlier this year the Pentagon banned the devices from all US military bases worldwide.
But Huawei, which has been specially designated as a “national champion,” has an even more important assignment from the Communist Party than simply listening in on phone conversations.
As a global leader in 5G technology, it has been tasked with installing 5G “fiber to the phone” networks in countries around the world.
In fact, “Made in China 2025” — the party’s aggressive plan to dominate the cutting-edge technologies of the 21st century — singles out Huawei as the key to achieving global 5G dominance.
Any network system installed by Huawei working hand-in-glove with China’s intelligence services raises the danger of not only cyber espionage, but also cyber-enabled technology theft.
And the danger doesn’t stop there.
The new superfast 5G networks, which are 100 times faster than 4G, will literally run the world of the future. 

Everything from smartphones to smart cities, from self-driving vehicles to, yes, even weapons systems, will be under their control.
In other words, whoever controls the 5G networks will control the world — or at least large parts of it.
Huawei has reportedly secured more than 25 commercial contracts for 5G, but has been locked out of an increasing number of countries around the world because of spying concerns.
The “Five Eyes” — Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the US — have over the past year waged a concerted campaign to block the Chinese tech giant from dominating next-generation wireless networks around the world. 

Not only have they largely kept Huawei out of their own countries, they have convinced other countries like Japan, India and Germany to go along, too.
Yet Huawei is far from finished. 

The company has grown into a global brand over the past two decades because, as a “national champion,” it is constantly being fed and nourished by the party and the military with low-interest-rate loans, privileged access to a protected domestic market, and other preferential treatment.
These various state subsidies continue, giving Huawei a huge and unfair advantage over its free market competitors.
Huawei stands in the same relationship to the Chinese Communist Party as German steelmaker Alfried Krupp did to Germany’s National Socialists in the days leading up to WWII.
Just as Germany’s leading supplier of armaments basically became an arm of the Nazi machine after war broke out, so is China’s leading hi-tech company an essential element of the party’s cold war plan to dominate the world of the future.
As far as “Princess” Meng is concerned, I expect that she will be found guilty of committing bank fraud, ordered to pay a fine, and then released. 

Even a billion dollar fine would be chump change for a seventy-five-billion-dollar corporation like Huawei.
The real payoff of her arrest lies elsewhere. 

It has exposed the massive campaign of espionage that Huawei is carrying out around the world at the behest of the Party.

It has revealed how that Party dreams of a new world order in which China, not America, is dominant.
The two Chinese characters that make up Huawei’s name literally mean, “To Serve China.” 

That’s clear enough, isn’t it?

Final Solution

US sanctions are China's big concern right now

By Samantha Vinograd

Lying is trending in Moscow and Beijing.

While Russia mocks the international community's consensus that Moscow used chemical weapons in the UK, you should also expect other misinformation to come, this time out of Beijing.
After reports last week that your administration is considering sanctions against China for its worsening crackdown on Muslims, including the Uighurs, we assess that China will continue a two-pronged public approach: 

1) playing the security card and saying Muslims in China are a security risk, and 

2) claiming the internment camps in East Turkestan, where upwards of a million Muslims are being held, are "educational" and "professional training centers."

Beijing probably thinks that stoking security concerns is a winning strategy for getting a pass on this extraordinary and abusive behavior -- Vladimir Putin consistently engages in similar practices without suffering major consequences. 

Claiming that the camps actually help the detained Muslims by readying them for a different, productive path is a transparent attempt to placate Muslims around the world -- including Muslim leaders that China does a lot of business with.
But, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pointed out, countries like Iran haven't come out publicly against this Chinese behavior. 

So, we assess that China's biggest concern at this point are US sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act -- which allows the US to issue sanctions against a country implicated in human rights violations -- because they could impact senior Chinese officials.

China's war on law: victims' wives tell US Congress of torture and trauma

Women whose husbands were targets of Communist party crackdown on human rights lawyers call for US sanctions
By Tom Phillips in Beijing

Chen Guiqiu (3rd L), the wife of detained human rights lawyer Xie Yang, with other wives of detained human rights lawyers wearing the names of their husbands on their dresses in 2016. 

The wives of some of the most prominent victims of Xi Jinping’s crackdown on civil society have stepped up their campaign for justice, backing calls for US sanctions against Chinese officials involved in barbaric cases of torture and abuse.
Addressing a congressional hearing in Washington on Thursday, the women, whose husbands were among the key targets of a Communist party offensive against human rights lawyers, detailed the physical and psychological trauma inflicted by China’s war on law.

Chen Guiqiu, who fled to the United States in March, told of how her husband, the attorney Xie Yang, had been imprisoned and brutally tortured because of his work defending victims of land grabs, religious persecution and dissidents.

She described her husband’s ordeal as an example of China’s lawlessness and claimed that at his recent trial Xie had been forced to refute detailed claims that he had been the victim of sustained and brutal campaign of torture.
Wang Yanfeng, the wife of Tang Jingling, a lawyer and democracy activist who was jailed in 2016 in what campaigners described as “a gross injustice”, said her husband had suffered repeated spells of abuse, threats and torture. 

“Today other [lawyers and political prisoners] are still suffering from such torture,” Wang said, calling on Donald Trump to challenge China over such abuses.
In a video message, Li Wenzu, the wife of lawyer Wang Quanzhang, said she had heard nothing from him since he was seized by police at the start of the campaign against lawyers in July 2015. 

“I am deeply concerned about my husband’s safety. I don’t know how his health is. I don’t know whether he has been left disabled by the torture. I don’t even know whether he is alive.”
Wang Qiaoling, whose husband, Li Heping, recently emerged from a 22-month stint in custody, said he returned home looking “20 years older” and had told of being forced to sit for hours in stress positions and being shackled with chains. 

“He suffered from very cruel and sick torture,” Wang added.
Also giving testimony was Lee Chin-yu, whose husband, the Taiwanese human rights activist Lee Ming-che, vanished into Chinese custody in March after travelling to the mainland. 

“I stand alone before you today to plead for your help for my husband,” Lee said, calling on Washington to pressure China to end her husband’s “illegitimate detention”.
Since China’s crackdown on lawyers began almost two years ago, its victims’ wives have emerged as a relentless and forceful voice of opposition, often using humorous online videos and public performances to champion their cause. 

They say they have done so in defiance of a campaign of state-sponsored intimidation that has seen them trailed by undercover agents, struggle to enrol their children into schools or be evicted from their homes.
Terry Halliday, the author of a book about China’s human rights lawyers, said the lawyers’ wives had opened up “a new line of struggle that we have not seen before in China”.
“These women have become a very powerful and visible public presence both of criticism of the government, of appeals for the release of their loved-ones but also impugning China in the eyes of the world. It is remarkable.”
“It’s a whole new front,” Halliday added. 

“It is not so easy for the government to silence wives and daughters.”
Thursday’s hearing was part of a push by human rights groups to convince the Trump administration to use a law called the Magnitsky Act to bring sanctions such as travel bans or property seizures against Chinese officials involved in human rights abuses.
“We should be seeking to hold accountable any Chinese officials complicit in torture, human rights abuses and illegal detentions,” said Chris Smith, the Republican congressman who chaired the session and said he was compiling a list of potential targets.
Smith said he hoped such action could help end the “shocking, offensive, immoral, barbaric and inhumane” treatment of Chinese activists that has accelerated since Xi Jinping took power in 2012.
“While Xi Jinping feels feted at Davos and lauded in national capitals for his public commitments to openness, his government is torturing and abusing those seeking rights guaranteed by China’s own constitution,” Smith said.