Beijing's Gratuitous Hostage Diplomacy as Tutelage

"In a dispute over the Senkaku Islands in 2010, China detained four Japanese citizens, and the government in Tokyo caved in to get their citizens back. Since then, nine Japanese citizens have been imprisoned in China on alleged espionage charges, with one given a 12-year sentence."

"In 2013, former British journalist and corporate investigator Peter Humphrey was detained and forced to make televised confessions."

"Swedish activist Peter Dahlin was detained for 23 days in 2015, forced to confess, and then expelled from China, as were British and French activists. The previous year, Swedish publisher Gui Minhai and U.K. bookseller Lee Bo were kidnapped in Thailand and Hong Kong [respectively], taken to China, forced to replace their ciizenships with Chinese, and are still incarcerated there.""Similarly, in 2017, Chinese-Canadian billionaire Xiao Jianhua was kidnapped in Hong Kong and is still detained in China."

"In 2018, Canadian brothers Chen Zhiheng and Chen Zhiryu were arrested in China and forced to give televised confessions aimed at compelling the extradition of a Chinese billionaire who was seeking asylum in the U.S."

"In August 2020, Beijing detained prominent Australian TV business anchor Cheng Lei of English-language CGTN, accusing her of endangering China's national security in what is seen as one of the many acts of retaliation for Australia's call for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19. Three weeks later, two Australian journalists were questioned by the Ministry of State Security regarding Cheng and fled China fearing detention." 

"Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are not the first to be held hostage in Beijing. The execution sentences for the drug offences of Canadians Robert Schellenberg, Fan Wei, Xu Weihong and Ye Jianhui tracked closely the steps in Meng Wanzhou's court hearings."

"Sun Qian, a Falun Gong practitioner, recently renounced her Canadian citizenship and was given an eight-year sentence."

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, senior fellow, China Institute, University of Alberta, senior fellow, Institute for Science, Society and Policy, University of Ottawa

Xi Jinping and Scott Morrison appear to be not seeing eye to eye these days    Reuters/EPA

 

Cross China in any measure, displease the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, and pay the consequences. Consequences begin with diplomatic relations stiffening, cautionary warnings and citizen-abductions, then proceed onward with threats, and trade exclusions, all for the purpose of 'teaching a lesson' in Chinese-style diplomacy to nations incautious enough to arouse the anger of Beijing and Xi Jinping who doesn't take what he perceives as slights against China lightly. Chinese diplomats have been given permission to play hardball, bluntly warning from their foreign missions that displeasing China is harmful to those naive enough to think they can stand up to the global colossus.

Despite which, some countries do have a spine, don't take kindly themselves to being threatened, much less having their citizens abducted and charged spuriously with 'espionage' and 'harming China's security'. Canada is not one of those countries with the courage of their stated convictions, under its current prime minister. Since the arrest and detention of China's communication giant Huawei's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the company's founder on an extradition request by the U.S. justice system, China and Canada have been on a collision course.

China's ship of state is larger, heavier, more dangerous than Canada's lightweight canoe and has inflicted quite a bit of economic and diplomatic damage as a form of tutelage to a recalcitrant deckhand by a stern captain of enterprise. Mere days after Ms.Meng's detention, the two Michaels were arrested and a year later charged with espionage, interrogated nightly into their second year of imprisonment, while Ms.Meng lives in her two luxury Vancouver mansions, awaiting her final extradition hearing.

The flag of the People's Republic of China files at the Embassy of China in Ottawa, on Friday, Nov. 22, 2019. (Justin Tang/CP)

 

Two years into a standoff between China and the U.S. with Canada wedged firmly in the middle, the U.S. Department of Justice appears prepared at this juncture to discuss dropping criminal proceedings against Ms.Meng in exchange for an admission of guilt. Ms. Meng has protested consistently that she has done nothing that would incriminate her in the view of the U.S.; a hapless victim of trade disagreements between China and the U.S. There seems to be a whiff of Chinese extraction of admissions of guilt in the process the U.S.Justice Department is now pursuing.

If she is guilty of an indictable offence and China protests by imprisoning two innocent Canadians, their lives have been forfeited in the loss of two years, but the matter is seen as trivial enough to forego criminal proceedings to extract a confession? China's ambassador to Canada, like his recent predecessor has been insultingly coercive in his diplomatic role. And has assured Ms.Meng she has been "wrongly detained ... We expect you to go back home safe and sound at an early date", he informed her.

The Huawei website posted a dispatch from Ms.Weng a year ago where she wrote: "It is so slow that I have enough time to read a book from cover to cover. I can take the time to discuss minutiae with my colleagues or to carefully complete an oil painting". This, while Michael Kovrig and Spavor languish in a tiny cell where the lights are never turned off, and guards stare them down continually, but for those night-time hours when extensive interrogations occur; spirit-breaking and contemptuous of human rights.

Back in January when the global community was informed of a virus outbreak that China was struggling to contain, Canada shipped face masks and ventilators to China in a gesture of goodwill. When Canada was in turn hit by the same Wuhan-erupted virus that escaped China, in April two Canadian planes arrived in China to retrieve medical supplies Canada had contracted for, but had to return to Canada empty, the supplies not forthcoming. Taiwan donated 500,000 medical masks to Canada in a goodwill gesture. 

At a later date when Canada finally received medical face masks from China the shipment turned out to be utterly worthless, defective and unusable. Months later, a Chinese-based biochemical company that used a Canadian formula as a base for its research for a vaccine and whose scientists had been  trained in Canada, made a deal with the National Research Council in Ottawa to jointly develop and test a vaccine. The partnership with CanSino fell through when Chinese customs authorities stopped an anticipated shipment of samples for clinical trails in Canada.

Fred Dufour-Pool/Getty Images

Through all of this, Beijing has been anticipating that Canada will approve Huawei's participation in Canada's 5G communications upgrade. As a member of the Five Eyes intelligence group that includes the United States, Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia, Canada is the sole member that has not yet declared Huawei's role to be extraneous to their needs given its close relations with Beijing and that its founder was an elite member of the Peoples' Republic of China military complex. Beijing's expertise in cyber-espionage is undeniable.

Australia, whose trade with China is many times greater than that of Canada and which stands to lose far more than Canada in defending itself against Beijing's bullying, has taken steps to put a stop to Chinese influence operations internally in Australia. That includes infiltration of politics, universities and corporations. Huawei's 5G aspirations have been banned, sensitive Chinese investments have been blocked on national security grounds, and internationally 'unlawful' Chinese expansion in the South China Sea has been loudly condemned.

Australia has called out Beijing's Hong Kong abuses, and that of its 're-education' of millions of Chinese Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang. It has joined "Quad" military drills with the United States, India and Japan. Sweden, with one-third of Canada's population, with 4.7 percent of its exports sent to China has banned Huawei and  terminated Confucius Institutes installed in universities, the Beijing channel for propaganda meant to brainwash susceptible students.

Canada has no long-term strategy to deal with the increasing disregard evinced by Beijing for the rights of foreign nationals. Where Chinese-Canadians are aggressively harassed within Canada. China's arbitrary detentions will continue unabated as long as nations targeted by Beijing for 'correction' of their wayward policies are unable to speak with one voice condemning the bullying and patronizing diplomacy alongside trade weaponry. And where other countries have stood  up to Beijing, Canada has consistently failed to.