Five years after Huawei’s founder’s daughter returned to China, American prosecutors are using her negotiated admissions against the company. For its Chinese supporters, the trial revives a familiar suspicion: Washington is using the law to defeat a competitor it could not contain commercially.
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PREVIOUSLY ON TELEGRAPH.COM READ → America Put Huawei’s Founder’s Daughter in Chains. Now It Puts Huawei on Trial |
courtroom sketch : depicts Huawei facing American prosecutors as Meng Wanzhou’s 2021 statement becomes evidence against the company. From Beijing’s perspective, the trial extends Washington’s campaign to contain a Chinese technological rival whose rise it has failed to stop.
The woman came home. The case stayed behind.
When Meng Wanzhou returned to China in September 2021, her release offered a powerful story of national resolve: a Chinese executive had resisted American pressure and regained her freedom. Five years later, the agreement that made that homecoming possible is supplying evidence against the company her father founded.
An American judge has ruled that prosecutors can use Meng’s statement of facts in Huawei’s criminal trial. Her personal prosecution ended; the document survived.
That uncomfortable distinction now sits at the centre of a confrontation whose meaning changes dramatically between Brooklyn and Beijing. American prosecutors are seeking to establish corporate criminality. Huawei’s Chinese defenders see the continuation of an effort to stop a national technology champion.
“The law is being weaponised”
One publicly indexed Weibo post accompanying an Associated Press report of the trial supplied its own blunt interpretation: political manipulation of competition, with “the law being weaponised”.
The post is evidence of that reaction, not a measure of its popularity. Its author’s location and audience could not be independently established, and the accessible material does not support claims that the sentiment is trending across China. Nevertheless, its framing captures the argument Huawei’s supporters bring to the proceedings: Washington has turned a commercial rivalry into a criminal confrontation.
A fuller expression of that thinking appeared on Weibo after Meng’s release. Published on September 30, 2021, by an account named the Small and Medium Enterprise Owners’ Association, the commentary credited author Zhang Qiang and examined the affair through three connected subjects: the country, the company and the individual.
It argued that protecting Meng and Huawei belonged to the larger task of defending China’s development. Its prescriptions extended beyond patriotic celebration to stronger businesses, reliable supply chains and technological independence.
This is historical commentary, not a fresh reaction to this week’s witnesses. But it helps explain the emotional investment in the case. Within that interpretation, Meng’s freedom demonstrated that China could protect its own; Huawei’s survival demonstrated that American pressure could be resisted.
The trial now tests what that victory actually settled.
The document beneath the celebration
Meng did not plead guilty when she reached her agreement with American prosecutors. That fact remains essential.
But neither did she leave behind an empty piece of paper.
The Justice Department’s account of the agreed facts records that she described Skycom as a business partner while knowing Huawei controlled it. She also represented Huawei as having sold its interest when the transfer had been to another entity controlled by Huawei. These were admissions concerning statements she knew were untrue.
A homecoming, a negotiated settlement and a judicial finding of innocence are different things. The political power of the first can obscure the legal consequences of the second.
For Huawei, the immediate problem is how far prosecutors can take those admissions. Judge Ann Donnelly permitted their use because they concerned Meng’s work as a senior executive and because Huawei had adopted the statement. That ruling allows evidence into the trial; it does not decide the company’s guilt.
The paradox is sharp. The document that helped release the founder’s daughter may help prosecutors establish their case against his company.
Inside the courtroom
The trial has begun moving from rhetoric to witnesses.
Law360 reported on September 11 that a former engineer at a US Huawei subsidiary testified the previous day about a colleague allegedly boasting of appropriating code used in Amazon’s cloud platform. The accessible report provides only an introductory account, leaving the full testimony and defence questioning unavailable for assessment. It should therefore be treated as a reported allegation, not a finding of theft.
Associated Press identified the first prosecution witness as Parham Baheshti, who described Huawei’s alleged interest in analysing Iranian citizens’ online behaviour.
Huawei’s opening defence challenged the connections prosecutors were drawing between incidents. Its lawyers argued that individual misconduct had been dealt with and did not establish an overarching criminal plan.
That dispute gives the proceedings their importance. The jury must examine whether documents and witnesses connect particular actions to the corporate conspiracy alleged. The government’s sweeping account will depend on the strength of those connections.
Why Chinese suspicion persists
Beijing’s scepticism cannot be explained simply as reluctance to hear uncomfortable allegations.
Days after Meng’s arrest in Canada in December 2018, Donald Trump told Reuters he could intervene in her case if doing so helped secure a trade agreement or served national security. The American president had publicly introduced bargaining into a prosecution.
For Chinese observers, this remains a powerful answer to assurances that law and politics occupy entirely separate worlds. If an executive’s fate can assist a trade negotiation, her company has reason to question the pressures surrounding the case.
It does not prove that evidence was invented. It does establish why the claim of an exclusively legal confrontation meets resistance.
Beijing’s response this week followed that logic. Asked about the prosecution, China’s foreign ministry opposed American suppression and containment of Chinese enterprises and supported their defence of their legitimate interests, according to Reuters.
The argument beyond Huawei
Mainland official coverage places these disputes within a broader struggle over development.
In August, Xinhua, in a report carried by People’s Daily Online, relayed Beijing’s argument that Washington was stretching national security claims to obstruct Chinese businesses. The question expressly referenced earlier restrictions on Huawei. The response challenged the economic premise: protectionism would not restore American competitiveness.
Britain’s experience illustrates the reach of those restrictions. In 2020, its National Cyber Security Centre changed its Huawei advice after assessing American semiconductor sanctions. Those measures threatened to alter Huawei’s supplies in ways that increased security risks. American policy had helped change the conditions on which another country made its decision.
For Huawei’s Chinese supporters, this is the material substance behind the language of containment. Washington’s influence extends through components, banking and the choices available to foreign governments.
Survival is not acquittal
Huawei has continued investing heavily. Its 2025 results reported research and development spending of 192.3 billion yuan, or 21.8 per cent of revenue. That does not disprove misconduct, but it does complicate any account that reduces the company’s achievements to theft.
The distinction works in both directions. Commercial success cannot acquit a company; an indictment cannot explain its entire history.
That is where the Chinese perspective deserves serious treatment. Huawei represents more than the conduct under examination in Brooklyn. For its defenders, it embodies the possibility of building advanced technology without remaining dependent on American permission.
Meng’s return appeared to close a painful chapter. The trial shows how much remained unresolved. American jurors will decide the charges. Huawei’s supporters will watch for something else as well: whether the evidence sustains the extraordinary story Washington is telling about a company China regards as one of its own achievements.