The west’s response to the Huawei row is bound to backfire

The Huawei row is now a full-blown diplomatic incident between China and Canada. Two months ago, on the very same evening that presidents Trump and Xi met to agree a temporary ceasefire in their trade war, Canadian authorities arrested the queen of the Chinese tech world, to be extradited to the US. Meng is the daughter of Chinese telecoms company Huawei’s founder, and she herself is the company’s chief financial executive. The arrest provoked a furious reaction in China, and in the days following her arrest, two high profile Canadian citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, were arrested on vague ‘national security’ grounds. Tit for tat arrests? It’s hard to see how these were anything but despite Beijing’s insistence otherwise.

This row has only worsened in recent weeks, with Canada putting Meng on house arrest and other Canadians falling foul of the Chinese authorities (one Canadian drug smuggler had his sentence increased