In recent days, Chinese telecom giant Huawei has celebrated the return of Meng Wanzhou, daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei and Huawei’s former cheif financial officer who was detained for three years in Canada after charges of violating a US ban on business deals with Iran. Freed last September after a compromise deal with US authorities, Meng has now been promoted to one of Huawei’s three rotating chairmen. Ren had previously stated that his children would not lead the company after his retirement, but recent setbacks seem to have caused a dramatic change in plans—most particularly that the company is being “slowly strangled” by a successful ban on advanced semiconductors.

To review, Meng led Huawei’s closely watched annual meeting on earnings and future plans. Admitting the company had been “under a lot of pressure” in recent years, she stoutly argued that “this has made us more united and has made our strategy more clear.” In 2021, Huawei’s revenue fell 29 percent to about $100 billion, depressed by a steep decline in smartphone sales and decreasing revenue from its core business of selling baseline equipment to telecom operators. Profits for the year, however, rose by a record 76 percent, largely fueled by the sale of Huawei’s mobile phone unit to a government-backed consortium.