拘捕及審訊孟晚舟,美國的法理站得腳嗎?(4)

 美國經濟學家及哥倫比亞大學持續發展中心董事Jef­frey D. Sachs發表文章評論道:

If, as Mark Twain reput­ed­ly said, his­to­ry often rhymes, our era increas­ing­ly recalls the peri­od pre­ced­ing 1914. And as with Europe’s great pow­ers back then, the Unit­ed States, led by an admin­is­tra­tion intent on assert­ing America’s dom­i­nance over Chi­na, is push­ing the world toward disaster.

The con­text of the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou – a dan­ger­ous move by U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion in its inten­si­fy­ing con­flict with Chi­na – mat­ters enor­mous­ly. The Unit­ed States request­ed that Cana­da arrest Ms. Meng in the Van­cou­ver air­port en route to Mex­i­co from Hong Kong, and then extra­dite her to the Unit­ed States. Such a move is almost a U.S. dec­la­ra­tion of war on China’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. Near­ly unprece­dent­ed, it puts Amer­i­can busi­ness peo­ple trav­el­ling abroad at much greater risk of such actions by oth­er countries.

The Unit­ed States rarely arrests senior busi­ness peo­ple, U.S. or for­eign, for alleged crimes com­mit­ted by their com­pa­nies. Cor­po­rate man­agers are usu­al­ly arrest­ed for their alleged per­son­al crimes (such as embez­zle­ment, bribery or vio­lence) rather than their company’s alleged malfea­sance. Yes, cor­po­rate man­agers should be held to account for their company’s malfea­sance, up to and includ­ing crim­i­nal charges, but to start this prac­tice with a lead­ing Chi­nese busi­ness per­son – rather than the dozens of cul­pa­ble U.S. CEOs and CFOs – is a stun­ning provo­ca­tion to the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and public.

Ms. Meng is charged with vio­lat­ing U.S. sanc­tions on Iran. Yet, con­sid­er her arrest in the con­text of the large num­ber of com­pa­nies, U.S. and non‑U.S., that have vio­lat­ed America’s sanc­tions against Iran and oth­er coun­tries. In 2011, for exam­ple, JP Mor­gan Chase paid $88.3 mil­lion in fines in 2011 for vio­lat­ing U.S. sanc­tions against Cuba, Iran and Sudan. Yet Jamie Dimon wasn’t grabbed off a plane and whisked into custody.

And JP Mor­gan Chase was hard­ly alone in vio­lat­ing U.S. sanc­tions. Since 2010, the fol­low­ing major finan­cial insti­tu­tions paid fines for such vio­la­tions: Ban­co do Brasil, Bank of Amer­i­ca, Bank of Guam, Bank of Moscow, Bank of Tokyo-Mit­subishi, Bar­clays, BNP Paribas, Clearstream Bank­ing, Com­merzbank, Com­pass, Crédit Agri­cole, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ING, Inte­sa San­pao­lo, Nation­al Bank of Abu Dhabi, Nation­al Bank of Pak­istan, Pay­Pal, RBS (ABN Amro), Société Générale, Toron­to-Domin­ion Bank, Trans Pacif­ic Nation­al Bank (now known as Bea­con Busi­ness Bank), Stan­dard Char­tered and Wells Fargo.

None of the CEOs or CFOs of these sanc­tion-bust­ing banks were arrest­ed and tak­en into cus­tody for these vio­la­tions. In all of these cas­es, the cor­po­ra­tion – rather than an indi­vid­ual man­ag­er – was held account­able. Nor were they held account­able for the per­va­sive law­break­ing in the lead-up to or after­math of the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis, for which the banks paid a stag­ger­ing US$243 bil­lion in fines, accord­ing to a recent tal­ly. In light of this record, Ms. Meng’s arrest is a shock­ing break with prac­tice. Yes, hold CEOs and CFOs account­able – but start at home in order to avoid hypocrisy, self-inter­est dis­guised as high prin­ci­ple and the risk of incit­ing a new glob­al conflict.

Quite trans­par­ent­ly, the U.S. action against Ms. Meng real­ly seems to be part of the Trump administration’s broad­er attempt to under­mine China’s econ­o­my by impos­ing tar­iffs, clos­ing West­ern mar­kets to Chi­nese high-tech­nol­o­gy exports and block­ing Chi­nese pur­chas­es of U.S. and Euro­pean tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies. One can say, with­out exag­ger­a­tion, that this is part of an eco­nom­ic war on Chi­na – and a reck­less one at that.

Huawei is one of China’s most impor­tant tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies and there­fore a prime tar­get in the Trump administration’s effort to slow or stop China’s advance into sev­er­al high-tech­nol­o­gy sec­tors. America’s moti­va­tions in this eco­nom­ic war are part­ly com­mer­cial – to pro­tect and favour lag­gard U.S. com­pa­nies – and part­ly geopo­lit­i­cal. They cer­tain­ly have noth­ing to do with uphold­ing the inter­na­tion­al rule of law.

The U.S. appears to be try­ing to tar­get Huawei espe­cial­ly because of the company’s suc­cess in mar­ket­ing cut­ting-edge 5G tech­nolo­gies glob­al­ly. The U.S. claims the com­pa­ny pos­es a spe­cif­ic secu­ri­ty risk through hid­den sur­veil­lance capa­bil­i­ties in its hard­ware and soft­ware. Yet the U.S. gov­ern­ment has pro­vid­ed no evi­dence for this claim.

A recent dia­tribe against Huawei in the Finan­cial Times is reveal­ing in this regard. After con­ced­ing that “you can­not have con­crete proof of inter­fer­ence in ICT, unless you are lucky enough to find the nee­dle in the haystack,” the author sim­ply asserts that “you don’t take the risk of putting your secu­ri­ty in the hands of a poten­tial adver­sary.” In oth­er words: While we can’t real­ly point to mis­be­hav­ior by Huawei, we should black­list the com­pa­ny nonetheless.

When glob­al trade rules obstruct Mr. Trump’s gang­ster tac­tics, then the rules have to go, accord­ing to him. U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo admit­ted as much last week in Brus­sels: “Our admin­is­tra­tion,” he said, is “law­ful­ly exit­ing or rene­go­ti­at­ing out­dat­ed or harm­ful treaties, trade agree­ments, and oth­er inter­na­tion­al arrange­ments that don’t serve our sov­er­eign inter­ests, or the inter­ests of our allies.” Yet before it exits these agree­ments, the admin­is­tra­tion is trash­ing them through reck­less and uni­lat­er­al actions.

The unprece­dent­ed arrest of Ms. Meng is even more provoca­tive because it is based on U.S. extra-ter­ri­to­r­i­al sanc­tions – that is, the claim by the U.S. that it can order oth­er coun­tries to stop trad­ing with third par­ties such as Cuba or Iran. The U.S. would cer­tain­ly not tol­er­ate Chi­na or any oth­er coun­try telling Amer­i­can com­pa­nies with whom they can or can­not trade.

Sanc­tions regard­ing non-nation­al par­ties (such as U.S. sanc­tions on a Chi­nese busi­ness) should not be enforced by one coun­try alone, but accord­ing to agree­ments reached with­in the Unit­ed Nations Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil. In that regard, UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tion 2231 calls on all coun­tries to drop sanc­tions on Iran as part of the 2015 Iran nuclear agree­ment. Yet the Unit­ed States. – and only the Unit­ed States – now rejects the Secu­ri­ty Council’s role in such mat­ters. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion, not Huawei or Chi­na, is today’s great­est threat to the inter­na­tion­al rule of law, and there­fore to glob­al peace.

 

 

 

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