Arrest reveals life of China’s rich diaspora

The arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer has thrown a spotlight on the complex private lives of rich Chinese.

Supporters outside the Vancouver courthouse where Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was due to appear this week. Picture: AP

Canada’s arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou has thrown a spotlight on the complex private lives of some of China’s rich and famous.

A senior executive in China’s largest telecommunications company that was founded by her ­father, Ren Zhengei, and based in Shenzhen, just over the border from Hong Kong, she has two mansions in Vancouver worth a total of $20 million, a string of passports from Hong Kong and China and family and children in the US, Canada, Hong Kong and China.

Details of the life of Meng, 46, have emerged from her lawyer and in evidence during her application for bail in Vancouver following her arrest on December 1 by Canadian police for extradition to the US on potential charges of helping to avoid US sanctions on doing business with Iran.

Meng was born in Chengdu, in Sichuan Province, in 1972, the daughter of Ren and his first wife, Meng Jun. Meng, who is also known as Sabrina Meng and Cathy Meng, took her mother’s surname from the age of 16.

She worked at the China Construction Bank for a year before joining Huawei, which was started by her father, a former engineer in the People’s Liberation Army, in 1987. She did a masters degree in accounting at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, rejoining Huawei in 1998 in its finance department where she rose up the ranks.

Her positions included head of international accounting and chief financial officer of Huawei in Hong Kong before her appointment as the company’s chief ­financial officer, a role she has had since at least 2011 when the company first published details of its senior executives.

She has another brother, Meng Ping, who works for Huawei. Her father divorced her mother and married Yao Ling, which whom he had a daughter, Annabel Yao, a ballet dancer who is 25 years young­er than Meng.

When she was arrested at Vancouver airport, Meng had at least seven passports — four from mainland China and three from Hong Kong — according to documents filed with the court by the US Justice Department, which listed their details in its argument that she was a flight risk and should be denied bail.

Sources say Meng may have retained old passports because of the visas they contained. The passport details have raised questions in Hong Kong about whether a resident can have two passports — one from Hong Kong and one from China — at the same time.

Hong Kong authorities hastily confirmed this week that a person could have only one “valid” passport at a time.

At some point, Meng’s formally migrated to Canada, a familiar story for many Hong Kong-based Chinese, despite her business interests in China.

Many wealthy Hong Kong- based Chinese have Canadian residency or citizenship, because of its easier business migration laws. Vancouver is the key location because of its location on the Pacific, closer to Asia, and its strong local Chinese population.

There was a particularly big rush among Hong Kong’s wealthy to take out Canadian residency and citizenship before the 1997 handover from Britain to China, making Vancouver a familiar place for many wealthy Chinese from Hong Kong and southern China.

Richard Li, the son of Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Kashing, is another example of a wealthy Hong Kong Chinese who has been living in the city while holding a Canadian passport.

The prevalence of wealthy young Chinese in Vancouver has become so legendary it prompted a reality television show in Canada called Ultra Rich Asian Girls, featuring the daughters of wealthy Chinese living in Vancouver.

Meng has said in the past that she relinquished her Canadian residency in 2009, although it appears she left some of her family behind, including her husband and one of her sons from a previous marriage who went to school in Vancouver from 2009 to 2012.

Meng has three sons from a previous marriage, including a 14- year-old, who lives with his father in Hong Kong, and another who is at school in Andover, Massachusetts, according to documents filed with the court.

Meng’s current husband, Liu Xiaozong, lives in Vancouver and is described as a “marketing developer” on the title of one of the houses in Vancouver the couple own, which was bought in 2009, and “investor” on the title of a second property bought in 2016.

His elderly parents also live in Vancouver while the 10-year-old daughter of Meng and Liu, who went to kindergarten in Vancouver, lives with her mother in Shenzhen.

“Meng’s Canadian backstory is familiar,” said Ian Young, the ­Vancouver-based correspondent for the South China Morning Post who has pieced together Meng’s Canadian connections.

“She is a reverse immigrant who left family members in Vancouver for many years. Vancouverites could be forgiven for thinking Meng’s backstory sounds pretty ho-hum: that of a wealthy returnee immigrant and satellite parent who abandoned her permanent residency for more lucrative opportunities in China while buying a couple of eastside mansions in Vancouver for her family.”

In an article in the Post yesterday, Young described Meng’s relationship with Vancouver and Canada as a “cookie-cutter tale for a rich Chinese immigrant”. A familiar story that sees Chinese get Canadian residency, bring their family to Vancouver, and then move back to Hong Kong or China where there are lucrative business opportunities, leaving their family behind in North America.