The Beijing Specialty of Hostage Diplomacy

Michael Spavor, pictured in 2017  | AP

"When you have multiple countries' citizens detained, all of whom have one thing in common, which is that they have tense relations with China, it suggests a pattern. Certainly there is a pattern of China relying on hostage diplomacy."                                     "One obvious avenue is -- and this will be highly controversial -- that China relies heavily on food imports from around the world to feed its population. That includes Canadian corn and grain and so if there's a collective effort by countries such as Australia and Canada that supply a disproportionate amount of basic foodstuffs to China it would send a clear signal that if you're going to play like that, we have ways of causing pain."                                                                                                                          "If this is the way the Chinese do business, then maybe we need to do business with the Chinese on their terms."   Christian Leuprecht, political science professor, Royal Military College, Queen's University

Michael Spavor, a Canadian diplomat on leave, and working in China for a Canadian non-profit has spent 18 months in a Chinese prison in an arrest and a year later, charges of espionage for the purpose of harming China, widely recognized as retaliation for the detaining in Canada of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. This event also began the diplomatic and trade erosion between the two countries that has produced a stalemate. 

Ms. Weng, wanted on a U.S. extradition warrant will be turned over to U.S. authorities to stand trial on the charges brought against her by the U.S., which has Canada honouring its extradition treaty with its southern neighbour. And Mr. Spavor, along with another Canadian, entrepreneur Michael Kovrig, arrested on the same specious charges, will continue to languish in the Chinese prison system with the threat of a long prison sentence before them following a mock trial.

Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the G20 summit in Hangzhou, China, in September 2016. | REUTERS

 Before becoming prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau was once asked which country he most admired. Canada was not his candidate, China was as he professed  his admiration for a 'basic dictatorship, capable of turning a country's authority around on a dime, as it were. Mr. Trudeau appeared besotted by China, and harboured an ambition to forge robust trade ties with the communist country, an ambition he had in common with Canadian big business all of whom wanted an opportunity to reach into the promise of doing business with the trading behemoth.

More latterly, an Australian news anchor working out of Beijing was placed under house arrest, linked to the escalation of tensions between Australia and China. She too may eventually be charged with 'espionage' on the basis of having written something unfavourable about China for her home audience of Australia. Detained since mid-August, Cheng Lei, born in China, now a citizen of Australia, is being "held under residential surveillance". 

Australia is guilty of having pushed for an enquiry over China's handling of the COVID-19 outbreak in the early days of COVID-19. Ever since that breach of confidence in Beijing's sterling behaviour on the world scene, the Chinese Communist Party leaders have expressed contempt for the Australian government, embarking on a trade war,  just as was done with Canada, when China embargoed canola products and meat claiming they had been infected and were substandard, refusing to accept them, as a trade pressure-point.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) released a new report finding that China has been more involved in the use of this typically coercive diplomacy, tracing incidents occurring across 28 countries. Included are the United Kingdom, Australia and other Asian countries severely displeasing Beijing. Predictably, in all such cases, Beijing views those nations that have dispeased it as having taken 'wrong action', recommending that they admit their guilt, apologize, reverse the wrong action, otherwise there is guaranteed deterioration in country-to-country relations.

According to the Australian report, offensive diplomatic incidents leading to hostage diplomacy arose in 2018, with "divide and conquer" tactics emanating from the Chinese Politboro. The rest of the world, it was suggested could take action, countering the situation through multilateral institutions acting in concert. There were 152 instances of coercive measures made use of by the Chinese regime, with 34 of those taking place in the first eight months of 2020. "Unless states can come up with a better strategy to resist coercive diplomacy, we can expect this trend to continue", noted Fergus Hanson, Emilia Currey and Tracy Beattie, the ASPI report authors.

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India and China dispute the border in the Ladakh region, both claiming part of the area as their own.

An increasing number of countries are beginning to recognize and speak out on the Chinese government's behaviour. Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan and India among them. In the U.K. the treatment of the Turkic minority Uighurs in Xinjiang province being placed in reeducation camps by the hundreds of thousands; the mistreatment of  Tibetan Buddhists and Kazahks; while Beijing's bullying in the East China Sea over a disputed island claimed by Japan, and violently claiming disputed rights over India's Himalayan borders all mark Beijing's growing aggression.