The arrest of a top Huawei executive may spark a conflict that could cripple America’s rivals and unleash chaos in the world, contends *Martin Khor

We shouldn’t be misled into thinking that the “trade war” between the United States and China is being resolved following their presidents’ recent meeting. Instead, President Donald Trump is taking the conflict way beyond tariffs into many other areas in a comprehensive attempt to stop or slow down China’s economic development. This has implications not only for China and countries like Malaysia, which are integrated into the Chinese production chains.
The evolving conflict spells the end of the Western countries’ belief in the win-win benefits of trade and investment liberalisation. It accompanies the emergence of an alternative view that China and some other countries are not partners after all but rivals that must be checked.
Just as Trump and China Presi¬dent Xi Jinping were sitting down for dinner on the sidelines of the G20 summit to thrash out a “truce” to their tariff war, the Canadian authorities were arresting the daughter of the owner of Huawei, China’s giant technology company whose smartphone sales are now bigger than that of Apple’s iPhone and second glob-ally only to Samsung phones.Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou was in transit at Vancouver airport when she was detained at the request of the US on the grounds that her company violated US sanctions against Iran years ago. Only after many days was she released on bail, and she has to wear an electronic tracker.
The Chinese government called the action “very nasty” and Chinese citizens are outraged. It would be equivalent to China arresting Melinda Gates, co-head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foun-dation, for alleged violation of China’s regulations on healthcare. In the whole Western world, there would have been a tremendous outcry and threats of very dire consequences. Yet the Chinese are supposed to accept Meng’s arrest as a routine matter