Huawei's chief financial officer (CFO) Meng Wanzhou. Photo: VCG

With a Canadian court scheduled to hear Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou's extradition case on Thursday, Chinese analysts warned that if the case is not handled properly, China-Canada tensions may not ease quickly, and they urged the Canadian side to make decisions independent of US influence. 

China-Canada relations have suffered after the latter arrested Meng at the request of the US, and Chinese experts on Wednesday stressed that Canada's diplomatic decisions and legal system are heavily influenced by the US, and have therefore failed to make policies based on its own interest and beneficial to China-Canada relations. 

China's Ambassador to Canada Lu Shaye said on Tuesday that China is not responsible for the "difficulties" facing the bilateral ties, but that China is willing to help the Canadian side solve them. 

Lu said he believes Canada could manage to handle its relations with the world's largest and second-largest economies. Lu's remarks were made in a joint interview with Chinese and Canadian media.

Lu will leave his post in Ottawa later this month, Canadian media reported. 

On the day Lu held the press event, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed "real concerns about China's behavior in regards to human rights," Reuters reported. 

The Chinese Embassy in Canada on Wednesday made stern representations, saying Trudeau's words grossly interfere in China's internal affairs, and trample on the basic norms governing international relations. 

Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing, noted that Trudeau's comments suggested that he lacks an understanding of China's complexity as a huge country with an enormous population, and China's own way of development.

Economic and trade ties have also been affected as Canada claimed that China would strengthen its inspections on pork and pork products from Canada, opening all containers of Canadian imports and, in some cases, inspecting all the contents. China temporarily suspended import permits from two pork plants in early May, CBC News reported on Tuesday. 

These twists and turns suggest that tensions may not ease soon, Li said, noting that the federal government of Canada has shown its dependence (on diplomacy and law enforcement), so a breakthrough in bilateral relations lies in province-to-province economic and cultural exchanges between the two countries.  

Canada's Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil paid a five-day visit to South China's Guangdong Province in mid-May, which was the first by a Canadian politician to China since Meng's arrest. 


Newspaper headline: Canada urged to make own decisions as court prepares to hear Meng case