China's Hostage Diplomacy

"People all over the world are paying attention to this. Canada has been exceptionally effective at working with other countries to bring pressure on China and they don't like it."

"It's concerning that the Global Times, which we know to be a mouthpiece of the [Chinese Communist Party], is speaking so openly about details of the accusations against Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor."

"We don't know the details because our diplomats are not allowed into the courtroom."

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, senior fellow, China Institute, University of Alberta 

"There is increasing concern within China about the ruling by Justice Holmes with regard to the U.S. extradition request. I believe the Chinese still think if the Chinese government exerts enough pressure on Canada that somehow the ruling can be manipulated into Ms.Meng's favour. That is simply a non-starter."

"I believe that the government's claims that they made Kovrig and Spavor the top foreign policy priority are difficult to verify, simply because we haven't made any kind of retaliation to provide the Chinese government with incentive to release them [Canadian hostages Kovrig and Spavor]. We've simply passively responded to what the Chinese government has been doing."

"The Chinese authorities are really grasping at straws to justify the brutal incarceration of Kovrig and Spavor for so long."

Charles Burton, senior fellow, Macdonald-Laurier Institute

Instagram photos from 2017 show Canadian Michael Spavor jet-skiing and sharing cocktails with Kim Jong-un. Instagram

 

Back in December of 2018, on arrival at Vancouver International Airport, Meng Wanzhou, the CEO of China's telecommunication giant Huawei was arrested by the RCMP, on a warrant for extradition received from the United States, with whom Canada has long had an extradition agreement. Shortly after Ms. Meng's arrest, two Canadians were taken into custody in China, charged with espionage. Their imprisonment is approaching its third year.

Ms.Meng, fighting her extradition to the U.S. in a Vancouver court while she lives in one of her multi-million-dollar Vancouver mansions after she was granted bail by the court, is living a rather comfortable confinement, able to go wherever she pleases, wearing an electronic anklet as part of the bail conditions, in the company of bodyguards. The two arrested Canadians have undergone multiple interrogations and ill treatment. They have been refused Canadian consular visits or visits from lawyers. They were officially charged a year after their arrest; their trials held in camera.

 

Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei, leaves home to attend her extradition hearing at B.C. Supreme Court, in Vancouver, on Aug. 5, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

 

Chinese diplomatic staff posted to the Chinese embassy in Ottawa have been verbally abusive while in Canada, accusing the country of 'racism' and indulging in ad hominem attacks. Other punishments have been meted out by Beijing; a death sentence for drug trafficking against two other Canadians. In a country which does nothing to stop the export by Chinese citizens to the West of deadly laboratory-produced opiates like fentanyl and carfentanil.

In the areas of trade, China has sought to punish Canada by restricting agricultural products normally entering China in wholesale amounts such as pulpwood, cereal products, oil seed products, hogs. In response Canada meekly continues to pour money into the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank which largely benefits China. Canada continues to allow government departments to sign contracts with Chinese firms with direct ties to the government in Beijing. 

 

What Canada has done is whine to its allies for a concerted collective plea to China to release Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor.

Canada appointed a new ambassador to Beijing who throughout his professional career catered to business in China; the previous ambassador was just as friendly to China and Chinese trade but publicly embarrassed the government of Justin Trudeau through recommendation that Canada come to heel with China's demands. The latest episode of this sordid drama was Michael Spavor, a businessman-entrepreneur who was stationed in Beijing and operated a tourism business in North Korea sentenced to 11 years for his purported espionage activities.

 

In this March 28, 2018, file image made from video, Michael Kovrig, an adviser with the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based non-governmental organization, speaks during an interview in Hong Kong. (AP Photo, File)

 

His secret trial which shut out Canadian diplomats, saw him sentenced on the strength of a charge that he had  taken forbidden photographs and videos of military equipment, according to a report published recently in the Global Times newspaper. And that he had passed photographs and espionage-related documents to Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat who was working as an analyst for the International Crisis Group. The secret trial for Michael Kovrig is yet to take place.

 

"Under the guise of a businessman and false pretext of commerce", charged the Global Times, Mr. Spavor entered China in 2017 and "gathered a large amount of undisclosed information related to China's national security, on which he wrote analytical reports", as a "key informant" of Michael Kovrig. Both men charged with espionage. Ms.McCuaig-Johnson, an expert on China, noted that structures like bridges and airports were listed by the Chinese government as military equipment and installations.

Speculation now revolves around the possibility that publishing this information which has heretofore been unavailable may be for the purpose of applying more pressure on Canada and to influence the decision-making in Ms.Meng's case which is awaiting a ruling by Justice Holmes on October 21. Despite all the pressure, the Trudeau government has resisted joining the consensus of the Five Eyes group of which it is a part, by declaring that Huawei telecommunications will not be involved in Canada's 5G upgrade.

A man walks inside the detention center where Canadian businessman Michael Spavor is being held on spying charges in Dandong, China on August 11, 2021.  Noel Celis | AFP | Getty Image