How to handle Huawei

ON JANUARY 28TH Liu He, a Chinese vice-premier, landed in Washington ready for talks to calm the trade war between America and China. Instead he was met by a geopolitical tempest. That day America’s attorney-general charged Huawei, one of China’s biggest firms, with 23 crimes, including sanctions-busting, stealing corporate secrets and obstructing justice. American officials also made clear that they view Huawei as a threat to national security, since it builds the telecoms networks that underpin modern societies. Some 170 countries that use Huawei must now decide whether doing business with it is safe.

That decision is hard, because Huawei has more than one guise. The first is benign: it is China’s most successful global firm. Last year it booked $110bn of sales and shipped 200m smartphones. It has built 1,500 networks, reaching a third of the planet’s population. Huawei’s second face, prosecutors allege, is that of a grubby enterprise that breaks laws for profit. They say it offered bonuses to staff who stole intellectual property and that Meng Wanzhou, its finance chief and the daughter of its founder, misled banks about doing business in Iran. She was arrested in Canada in December and authorities there are considering an American extradition request. China says the allegations are a “smear”.