Well, let's say I pretty sure the "pressure" is useless to release Meng and the pressure is more like a show for other country to see. More like you arrest my high profiled people, I arrest yours in return. As my previous post already stated that I don't see this world as black and white, specially in international level. There are some people simply won't be touch, innocent or not. Many injustices happen around the world in international level and won't get their justice back. ( I don't want naming game, so just leave it as that)
My opinion is Meng case is already done when Meng was arrested. The only way Canadian gov't can prevent Canada himself to get in bewteen the two giants without hurting his interests is before the arrest, after that is up to the judicial branch of Canada. 2018 alone, HK government already denied 3 extradition requests from USA without explaination. Not to mentions, Edward Snowdon boarded the plane to Russia as the same day the US requested his arrest to HK gov't. So I can see there are grey areas when it comes to national interest. But I also understand the diffculty that Canadian gov't is facing. However, the Canadian leadership failed to see the retaliations from the China's side was immature, specially when it happened in the middle of the trade war and Huawei leading the 5G technology.
First of all, Hong Kong is completely different than in Canada.
Hong Kong government does not have the right to external affair, and yes, even tho Hong Kong have an extradition treaty with the US, the treaty can be veto and voided by the Chinese government, which is the government in charge of Hong Kong External Affairs.
This case remind me of the case when the US arrested an Indian diplomat a couple years back. No one is outside the jurisdiction for the DOJ, so if a case was issued and pass the evidence threshold. DOJ will issue an arrest warrant for the individual, and regardless of who that person are, they will be arraigned and processed.
The problem is, this is not done by a part of "under-the-table" deal between US and Canada, DOJ issue a warrant, pass that on to Interpol, a red notice was issued, and Canada received the red notice, as part of the extradition agreement, they have to arrest Meng, or else what would Canada going to do? Ignore the red notice? Or ignore the Jurisprudence of their own country to not do anything?
You can pressure the Canadian government all you want, or arrest any Canadian in China, the back bone of the Judiciary system in Canada is build on Jurisprudence and no amount of pressure can have the Canadian back down from its own system, not for the US, not for the Chinese, and simply say, what China doing now is actually quite stupid. Because it was not targeting the actual instigator of this incident. You don't shoot the messenger just because you hate the message and in this case, China is shooting at Canada for something the US do.
World politics is not like how you think, you can only control the part that you can control, and once it's outside your jurisdiction, it's out of your hand, and whatever Canada do is whatever Canada will do, and regardless on how many Canadian being arrested both legally and illegally will not change this fact, and it will only damage China international image further.
If Meng was indeed innocent, what's the harm to let the case run its course? It's not like Meng is not going to have enough money to afford competent representation?