President Joe Biden gave a great gift to China on Friday when his Justice Department agreed to drop charges against Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou. The CFO will now return to China.
It’s a major concession to Beijing and its PLA-aligned espionage agency. One that appears to have earned no immediate reciprocity from Xi Jinping’s regime. According to the Wall Street Journal, the agreement entails Meng’s admitting wrongdoing in return for the dropping of U.S. wire and bank fraud charges against her. The Chinese official was arrested in December 2018 while in Canada. Since then, she has battled against extradition in the Canadian courts.
It’s unclear just what the United States is getting in return.
It is likely that the Canadian government pushed the Biden administration to drop the charges. Canada had faced escalating trade and political pressure from Beijing in retaliation for detaining Meng. It’s also fair to say that the Trump administration gave inadequate support to Justin Trudeau’s government in response to that pressure. The problem with this deal, however, is that it openly rewards Chinese misconduct.
Two names stand out in this regard: Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig. A Canadian businessman and a diplomat, the two men were detained in China and met with spurious criminal charges. They were clearly targeted in retaliation for Meng’s detention. But even if the two men are soon released, which seems likely, Beijing will have learned that it can respond to legitimate criminal proceedings with blatant hostage-taking.
This is not a good message for Washington to send to Beijing.
There’s another concern. Meng’s release comes on the same day as the Quad partnership’s first in-person leaders meeting in Washington. A partnership between Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S., the Quad was established under the Trump administration. It’s an alignment of the most powerful Indo-Pacific democracies and is designed to deter and resist Chinese imperialism. It’s a very good thing. But coming at a time of escalating Chinese aggression, Meng’s release doesn’t exactly preach U.S. resolve.
Indeed, it sends a signal of appeasement. Evincing as much, Meng’s release won praise from a former Obama administration official, Brett Bruen. He told the South China Morning Post that the charges against Meng represented “a very aggressive move by the Trump administration in pursuing such a high-level person that not only exposed Canadian executives but put our own people at great risk.”
Translation: We must play nice with China because it might behave like even more of a rogue state if we don’t.
China is also likely to look at the Biden administration’s decision as evidence that it should advance its climate change strategy. That is to say, Beijing’s strategy of claiming that it takes climate change seriously while demanding U.S. concessions in other areas in return for carbon emissions cuts.
Coming so soon after his Afghanistan debacle, and his enabling of Vladimir Putin’s energy war on Europe, Biden’s foreign policy credibility isn’t looking great.
