Canada-China Relations

"We were not very pleased by the request, but it's an open conference.The answer was quickly taken -- Yes." 

"We want to promote contact between different cultures and different knowledge and people with different perspectives."

"I think it's all good that countries are talking to each other. If there are contacts between militaries of different countries, even if they're adversaries, it's good to have channels of communication."

Professor Pierre Jolicoeur, Royal Military College Kingston, Ontario

People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers march next to the entrance to the Forbidden City (L) after the opening session of the National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing on May 22, 2020. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images)

 

Bejing has a habit of covertly seeking information, from scientific to manufacturing to state secrets from developed countries of the west in the interests of hastening its own advances in science, technology, medicine, and manufacturing. By whatever means possible, either through cybertechnology or installing Chinese expatriates living elsewhere burdening them with a commitment to furthering the interest of their nation of birth and alternately convincing non-Chinese to act on Beijing's behalf.

China is a huge country with the world's largest population. Investors and business interests from abroad are keenly interested in the prospective market that the huge population represents. Beyond cheap labour that enabled China to scoop up the world's manufacturing and export crown, outsiders are drawn to the country for the potential they hope to reap in expanded business opportunities. But there too, Beijing has its demands, that trade secrets be open to China as a condition of setting up shop in China.

China does not recognize copyright and is infamous for stealing designs and producing counterfeits for a market eager to accept cheap look-alikes, be it designer label clothing or luxury-brand watches. China today is not the China of yesterday. It has bounded by great leaps over the backs of slower, more consciously law-abiding international nations' corporations to infiltrate a presence, move up an executive ladder and abscond with trade secrets to become a competitor and ultimately outcompete and distroy its source.

“Several interactions [occurred between Chinese military jets and the RCAF’s patrol aircraft flying in international airspace near Japan.]"

"In some instances, the RCAF aircrew felt sufficiently at risk that they had to quickly modify their own flight path in order to increase separation and avoid a potential collision with the intercepting aircraft.”

Department of National Defence

Its rocketry technology has now advanced to the stage where it is busy building its own space laboratory, sending up its own satellites for global intelligence gathering. Investing in the cultivating of rare earth properties to become a major stand-alone possessor of assets that control areas of the technology market. Its long tentacles of control have reached into the West to interfere in politics at the most basic levels to the most sophisticated.

Beijing knows how to take actions that make other nations sit up and take notice.You can't help noticing after all, when your citizens are suddenly arrested and imprisoned and given stiff incarceration sentences on the pretense of planning to harm China's security. As was done to Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor when Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was taken into custody in Canada on an extradition request from the U.S. 

Exceedingly strained relations between Canada and China became more tense as two years passed and the two remained in Chinese prisons on sedition charges. Other Canadians were given death sentences for drug running by specially convened courts. Meng was Chinese royalty. When she struck a deal with the U.S. to return to China, the two Michaels were released after close to three years. Soon after came the Royal Military College turn as host of the annual conference of the International Society of Military Sciences; national defence universities from ten democracies...Canada the Netherlands and Portugal among them.

Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are back in Canada, after nearly three years of detention in China, September 25, 2021. Photo by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau/Twitter

 

 

Then came a request from the Peoples Liberation Army military science academy to allow their members to attend the conference. A conference the Chinese armed forces had attended in 2018 in Warsaw and 2019 in Vienna with some of its high-ranking military officers in attendance. The Royal Military Academy conference theme was "resilience and cohesion in the face of new forms of disruption", with one session dealing with "China and Russia's information space attacks on democracy".

The request moved from the RMC to the Department of National Defence and the office of the Deputy Minister of Defence before it was sent back down to the Royal Military College with no recommendations for or against. At the meeting, discussions of open-source information available to anyone, representing no matters of high sensitivity; the conference held through the internet where invitees could Zoom in. 

That was late 2020, but before then, Chinese soldiers were present in Canada to participate in winter military exercises under an accord signed by a previous government in 2013. At that time top military leaders in Canada felt the arrangement should be cancelled, urged by the United States. Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs urged against cancelling the arrangement, expressing concern it might sour relations with China at a time that Canada was attempting to free the two Michaels from Chinese prisons.

The 2020 conference was an open academic event, an unclassified level with "broad international representation". Finland for one had organized a panel discussion on military technology from a "conceptual"perspective based on open-source material.

"[Leaving engagement with China to the discretion of various federal departments leads to] chaos."

"We’ll have chaos as long as individual departments and the [CAF] run their own [self-serving] China policies."

"As long as China is engaging in genocide/crimes against humanity, Ottawa should tell the PLA to stay home."

Canada’s former ambassador to China David Mulroney

Military exercises at Canada's CFB Petawawa.

Chinese Diplomacy

"It has long been a fully proven fact that this is an incident of political persecution against a Chinese citizen, an act designed to hobble Chinese high-tech companies."

"The so-called 'fraud' charges against Ms.Meng Wanzhou are purely fabricated."

"Canada should draw lessons and act according to its own interests."

"General Secretary Xi Jinping made important instructions."

Hua Chunying, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson 

 

"The U.S. government concocted the incident to repress Chinese high-tech companies and obstruct China's development."

"[Meng's arrest was the culmination of a] dirty [U.S. game to destroy Huawei.] Over the past two years and more the U.S. wasted no time in suppressing Huawei, cooking up disinformation to smear Huawei and coercing its allies to boycott Huawei."

China's ambassador to Canada, Cong Peiwu

Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou landed back in China on Saturday morning after a B.C. court dropped her extradition case following a plea agreement with the United States. CBC

 

So there, Canada, smarten up! Beijing does not appreciate upstart nations interfering in its smooth sailing. To act on a request by a neighbouring country with which you have an extradition agreement, as is common between neighbours and allies in democratic alliances, and by the act of apprehending the chief financial officer of Huawei Technology, China's communications giant, was a very unwise decision. You have it direct from the horse's...er Communist Party of China's mouth.

China is celebrating Ms.Meng's release from her injudicious and cruel detention, languishing in one of her two Vancouver mansions, out on bail, escorted and protected whenever she goes out on a shopping expedition. Wearing an ankle bracelet that looks quite chic with her designer garments. Passing the time with her husband, taking up pleasant distractions like calligraphy, painting, corresponding with friends and supporters, and shopping, shopping, shopping. Truly an ordeal.

Days after her apprehension in December of 2018 two Canadians on business in China were summarily arrested and a year later charged with espionage. The reasoning being that if Canada feels it is justified in detaining a very important Chinese citizen, daughter of the founder of Huawei no less, Beijing feels justified in incarcerating under harsh conditions befitting the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, businessman Michael Spavor and diplomat Michael Kovrig. 

And while Ms.Meng had high-priced lawyers arguing her case in a Vancouver courtroom and to the media at large, exonerating her from any purported wrong-doing the two Michaels were denied lawyers and only sporadically permitted Canadian consular assistance. Held for close to three years on spurious charges, undergoing interminable interrogation sessions, occupying solitary jail cells where the light is never turned off, sentenced to fifteen years of their lives in prison.

But never discount diplomacy and the capacity of two nations at a competitive tension-war to finally accommodate one another by each agreeing to sacrifice a principle. For China the losing-face principle, for the United States, something very similar sourced from an unseemly jostling for advantage in a cut-throat world of upsmanship and prestige and market control.

Is everybody happy? Meng Wanzhou is feted in China as a 'survivor' of cruel Western imperialist skulduggery. Beijing boasts of its uncompromising stance of national dignity; no one, no government, no human-rights group may sling arrows at its performance as a world-class bully, swallowing Tibet, threatening Taiwan, yanking democracy out from under Hong Kong's unique status, imprisoning Uyghurs, imposing its ownership on airspace and contested geographies with Japan, India, Philippines, Vietnam.

And Beijing, with concrete verification that threats and intimidation and 'wolf' diplomacy are the characteristics that have proven hugely successful for it, will now carry on while plumbing the abysmal depths of dictatorial officiousness, proven to work marvellously well; ultimatums designed to make other nations cower, and when they fail to, smoothly engaging in self-righteous propaganda assuring the Chinese public that all is well with their world, Beijing and the CCP is in charge...

 

Return to Canada of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig

"I think now that we've got the two Michaels back it's time for us to stop pussyfooting around, it's time for us to make a clear statement about where we stand in the region."

"And we can't condone a number of other things China is doing. The violation of their own international commitments to respect the autonomy of Hong Kong, systematic cultural genocide of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, increasing drumbeats of war on the Taiwan Strait, these are all completely unacceptable geopolitically and from Canadian values perspective."

"So we have to position ourselves on the right side of history on these issues."

"There has traditionally been a lack of consensus within the Canadian foreign policy establishment as to whether it's better to try to engage China and accommodate China, or basically stand firmer on principles when Canadian principles and values conflict with Chinese principles and values and Chinese foreign policy goals. I think it's time to get beyond that."

David Welch, professor of political science, University of Waterloo

China's Ambitions And The Call To Boycott The 2022 Winter Olympics

"I know how hard our athletes are  training for Beijing. But we are approaching a point where it won't be safe for Canadians, including Olympic athletes, to travel to China."

"The denial of Robert Schellenberg's appeals must be seen for what it is: a foreign government planning to take the life of a Canadian for political reasons. The use of the death penalty is abhorrent. But to impose it for political reasons is inexcusable."

"We're proud of our athletes we're celebrating. But we also have to recognize the actions of a country that wants to host the Games to bring people together. And we will have to think long and hard on whether we reward a country like that with the Games."

Federal Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole

 

Since the arrest by RCMP at the Vancouver airport in December of 2018 of Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Huawei Communications on a U.S. extradition warrant, relations between Canada and the People's Republic of China have deteriorated beyond redemption. Beijing's savage reaction to the arrest of Ms.Meng under international law is seen by the Chinese Communist Politburo as a criminal offence against China which accuses Canada of racism, of defying the norms of international law, and of a conspiracy with the U.S. to hobble and harm China's technological future.

Penalties for offending China were swift and harsh, from its diplomats scathingly accusing Canada of human rights abuses, to the shocker of two Canadians being arrested in China and charged with espionage, and another Canadian charged with smuggling drugs into China suddenly seeing a new trial where his original 15 years' imprisonment sentence was changed to the death penalty. China halted grains and hog exports from Canada as another punishing tool. And more recently denied the appeal sought by Robert Schellenberg of his death sentence.

On its part, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has tread warily and on relations with China, continuing to invest in China, seeking to placate Beijing, and Canadian corporations continue their joint ventures with China. Appallingly, the Canadian government sought a joint venture with CanSino, a Chinese pharmaceutical, on a COVID vaccine, and the Public Health Agency of Canada continued to pursue research collaboration with Chinese scientists. While all other members of the Five Eyes intelligence community have shut China's communication giant Huawei out of their 5G upgrades, Canada still has failed to do so.

That Canadian athletes are prepared to present themselves at the 2022 Winter Olympics to compete in their categories as though there was nothing amiss with China, its abysmal human rights record, its threats to Hong Kong and Taiwan, its occupation of Tibet, its vicious campaign against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and its persecution of Canadian citizens on trumped-up charges to avenge the arrest of a Chinese citizen, is unthinkable.

"We condemn the verdict in the strongest possible terms and call on China to grant Robert (Schellenberg) clemency" declared Canada's ambassador to China, Dominic Barton from the appeals hearing in Shenyang. As to whether the arrest of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, both charged with espionage, and Mr. Kovrig now sentenced to 11 years in prison, with Mr. Spavor's trial and sentence to come at a later date, Beijing holds them as human ransom for the release of Meng Wanzhou.

The trial of Canadian Michael Kovrig, who has been held in China since December 2018 on espionage charges, occurred in a closed Beijing courtroom on Monday, March 22, 2021, with the verdict to be announced at an unspecified later date. Here, the Canadian Embassy's chargé d'affaires Jim Nickel, centre, and U.S. Embassy Acting Deputy Chief of Mission William Klein, left, arrive with other diplomats and journalists at No. 2 Intermediate People's Court in Beijing to request entry to the trial. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Beijing, and above all Xi Jinping, is anxious to have the world community look favourably on China. The Summer Olympics that took place in Beijing in 2008 pleased the Chinese Communist Party very much, allowing it to demonstrate to the world just how friendly, how technologically advanced, how capable and  how caring China is. And the world flocked to Beijing, admiring it for the splendid spectacle it put on for television audiences in a full display of Chinese artistic talents and penchant for pageantry.

Much has happened on the world stage since then. China consolidating its position as a trade behemoth, advancing its technological prowess, partially on the stealth project of purloining other states' secret advances. Since then the world has become familiar with slave labour in Xinjiang province, of Beijing cracking down on Hong Kong democracy, and threatening Taiwan militarily. But it didn't stop there; India has been warned over its disputed Himalayan border, Australia for its impudence in striving for more information about the Wuhan virus, and the Philippines and Japan for contesting China's sovereignty claims on land and sea.

And the world rewards the People's Republic by preparing to send their athletes once again to China, to add to its prestige in recognizing it as an emergent world power that may soon surpass the status of the United States in that and any other realm of influence and power. Because it is such an outstanding world citizen of a nation. While China runs amok in taking political prisoners to force other countries to its will, and it gathers rare world resources for its singular use and development, the Olympics is a slate-cleaning device to awe and influence the world, alerting it to the grandeur that is China; from its Imperial past to its Communist present.

The Rigour of Twitter Diplomacy

"I'm disappointed that there hasn't been more on this [official, emphatic reaction from the government of Canada in response to Beijing's human rights abuses in cracking down on journalists exploring the Chinese Communist Party's secrecy during the initial stages of the emerging novel coronavirus]."

"China does not respect other countries that are weak. And so to sit back quietly, meekly, is not an approach that will win us respect in Beijing."

Margaret McCuaig Johnston, formerly member, Canada-China Joint Committee on Science and Technology, former senior official, Department of Finance

"[The statement by Ottawa is] indicative of the extent to which the Chinese regime has been able to suppress any Canadian government standing for the rules-based international order."

Charles Burton, China expert, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Ottawa

"We really need to build on the expression of concern in that tweet and make it very clear how seriously we take this case."

"Zhang Zhan's case is one that Canada needs to rise to with real seriousness and urgency."

"What we have seen from Canada is absolutely not enough."

Alex Neve, former chair, Canadian Coalition of Human Rights in China

The former lawyer, citizen-journalist, 37, Zhang Zhan was detained in May  YouTube/Screenshot

Canada cannot depend on China to act within the boundaries of international law, but China can depend on Canada not to make too great a fuss in the international community over Beijing's human rights abuses. Despite that Canada prides itself on its rigorous support of human rights. Just not prepared to rock the boat where China is concerned. Trade and investment dependency can do that to the pride and dignity and principles of a country, leaving its government to look fairly sanctimonious about a subject reputedly dear to its heart.

 

China makes itself indispensable to weaker countries of the world, those just emerging from third world status with struggling economies, hoping time will give them their just due. And there is China, willing and eager to make gigantic investments in these countries from Europe to Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, to North America. Growing its indispensable presence as a progress-enabler, an investor in infrastructure, an investor and trade 'partner', a reliable partner in extracting natural resources as it steadily monopolizes ores and agriculture, fossil fuel and minerals.

Beijing brooks no criticism, and Canada's current government is anxious to avoid raising the CPC's irascible hackles. Though Beijing has punished Canada through abducting its citizens, trashing its trade, darkening its reputation with slander, and holding it in contempt, Canada hesitates to criticize directly and to counter-threaten consequences for unprincipled and bullying behaviour toward it by China. Instead, like a vulnerable child that tells a bully that his father or big brother will soon arrive to protect the quivering, quavering child, Canada has appealed to its fellow democracies to close ranks and pressure Beijing on Canada's behalf.

But those collegial governments are busy criticizing Beijing themselves with few holds barred, for its human rights violations. Demonstrating that principles are not forsaken for fear of irritating an influential, powerful bully into reactive consequences. With the arrest of yet another Chinese citizen- journalist whose unforgivable sin against her country's interests was to chronicle the government's response to the pandemic, foreign diplomats have expressed their nations' outrage at China's blatant suppression of facts and hounding of messengers of the news.

The young Chinese journalist, Zhang Zhan was sentenced on December 28 to four years in prison for the unspeakable crime of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble"; no laughing matter despite the feeble nature of a crime so serious the vendor must be shut away in a prison cell for years. The United States, United Kingdom and European Union lost no time in loudly issuing explicitly official statements of condemnation for the silencing of yet another journalist who in her resolve to discover the truth and disseminate it will pay dearly for her choice of action.

She already is, having gone on a hunger strike to protest her government's method of ridding itself of 'trouble-makers'. She is being force-fed against her wishes, the result of which she is in declining health, at age 37; a "citizen journalist" who among others, set out to record the coronavirus initial outbreak in Wuhan, helping to shine a spotlight on the Communist Party of China's draconian lockdown and efforts to conceal the immediacy of a serious threat to global health.

According to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the mockery of a trial had "shown once again it {China) will do whatever it takes to silence those who question the Party's official line, even regarding crucial public health information". The EU called for Ms.Zhang's immediate release, and the British foreign office spoke of Ms.Zhang and 12 Hong Kong activists as  having been "tried in secret, raising further serious questions about access to legal counsel in Mainland China."

And Canada? Its foreign affairs department sent out a tweet as an official response: "Canada is very concerned following the 4-year sentence of citizen=journalist Zhang Zhan. We call for her immediate release and that of others who report on the COVID-19 pandemic in China, including Fang Bin, Chen Mi and Cai Wei." The backstory is, of course, Canada's inability to launch a counter-response to China's abduction of two Canadians on spurious charges of endangering China as espionage agents.

Where Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor -- two innocent men who just happened to be vulnerable to being scooped up in retribution for Canada having honoured an extradition request by the  United States by detaining Meng Wanzhou, the CFO of Huawei Communications. which elicited a string of derogatory slanders from Beijing and the arbitrary arrest of the two Canadians, along with trade punishment -- are victimized, held incomminocado, their futures uncertain, their present a hell. 

Canada's natural resource sector has been treated for years as a handy bank-deposit venue enabling China to extend its worldwide grasp of resources to feed its growth as a compelling trade Goliath with aspirations to overtaking the United States as the world's super-power and largest trading depot. The situation of the last two years emphasizes Canada's growing dependence for its economic growth on China for trade and foreign direct investment. Precisely Beijing's long-range plan globally.

Zhang Zhan was jailed by Chinese authorities over her coverage of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. (AFP)

Beijing Playing Prison Warden on the World Stage

"You may have a very small chance of being the one they decide to detain, but it's years of your life."

"I have lots and lots of friends and relatives in China, as well as a business. But I feel like it's just not worth the risk."

"[The company has however compartmentalized information to protect the organization on the ground], because you never know what can be construed in the wrong way."

"We’ve become very careful about that sort of thing [unintentionally arousing Beijing's ire, and facing arbitrary detention in China]. And we didn’t used to be."

Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder J Capital Research, Northeast U.S.

"Beijing's record of detaining individuals in retaliation for the perceived transgression of their home government should be a geopolitical risk on the radar of every C-suite executive."

Hugo Brennan, Asia analyst, risk consultancy firm Verisk Maplecroft

"We have received calls from member companies about the possibility of arbitrary detention."

"Our view is that the risk is small, but it's not zero."

Ker Gibbs, president, American Chamber of Commerce, Shanghai

 

"It works because, while it is shocking, deeply harmful for the detainee and places enormous political pressure on the foreign government, it is also judged by foreigners as sufficiently rare as to be a manageable risk, something that doesn’t really disrupt profitable business for China."

David Mulroney, former Canadian ambassador to China

Increasingly, Westerners with business interests in China are beginning to reassess the risks of travel to a country that has increasingly made use of 'detention diplomacy' to register its displeasure with other countries' attitudes toward Beijing's policies and behaviour and specifically that of the Chinese Communist Party ruling elite. Business executives now consider the risk of being carried off by security agents in China, to become yet another casualty of geopolitical tensions that have emerged between Beijing and the West, most specifically the United States.

The arbitrary detention and charging of two Canadians with espionage and endangering the security of China when they were taken into custody in 2018 following hard on the detention of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou on an extradition warrant by the United States which saw the RCMP arrest Ms.Meng at a stopover at Vancouver International Airport in December of that year appears to have initiated a new strategy for China, of coercive diplomacy.

Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor remain imprisoned, subject to human rights violations imposed by the CCP, including denial of access to a lawyer, while Meng Wanzhou is free on bail to live in her two luxury Vancouver mansions while her extradition case winds its way through the court in accordance with Canadian and international law. Since the detention of the two Michaels other countries have had to deal with their nationals taken into detention in China, Australia among them. 

This new way of 'influencing' and demanding the attention of other countries to China's growing clout through the world community has not endeared it to the countries being targeted who also have raised the issue of human rights violations with respect to Chinese Uyghurs' detention and brain-washing, and Beijing's hard-handed anti-democracy clamp-down of Hong Kong, along with its threats to Taiwan, added to Beijing's assertion of rights-of-possession in the South China Sea and its territorial aggression against India.

Anne Stevenson-Yang of J Capital Research has realized riveting reservations around returning to China to advance her business interests as research director of her company, prepared now to give up her frequent business trips to China. The risk of being taken in by security agents and imprisoned on charges having nothing in relation to reality fails to appeal to her sense of self-preservation. She and her husband and children moved to the U.S. six years ago from China, now she fears the risk of returning for any reason, personal or business.

A dozen executives, diplomats, consultants and academics have given their opinions in interviews, asking their names be withheld for security purposes, many of them believing an increased risk in travel to China will instruct them in future plans to avoid making themselves vulnerable, with the potential of ending up in prison. Passage of a security law in Hong Kong has failed to reassure that China's closed justice system can be relied upon to mete out justice, as it were. 

Police, prosecutors and courts are known to hew the Communist Party line. Under Chinese law authorities are able to arrest 'suspects' and maintain incarceration for prolonged periods without trial under the newer and increasingly wide-ranging national security laws. Chinese citizen Haze Fan, a Bloomberg News staffer, was recently detained in Beijing with China confirming that she is being held by the Beijing Municipal National Security Bureau on suspicion of 'endangering national security', but authorities refuse to release details of her case. Mostly, without doubt, since there are none.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp representing the largest chipmaker in China was placed by the Trump administration on a blacklist along with over 60 other Chinese companies, leading the Chinese Ministry of Commerce to threaten retaliation to the move denying Chinese companies access to American technology, from software to circuitry. A move that has increasingly soured China on all relations with Western sources. 

China maintains it is being maligned by the label of "hostage diplomacy", being "totally groundless". No one, they stress, who respects the law of the land would have any reason to fear arrest. In turn Chinese executives express concern at the visit of spokeswoman Hua Chunying, U.S. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman this month, claiming Meng Wanzhou's arrest to be "100 percent a political incident". Zhao Lijian, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman hinted political intervention lifting proceedings against Meng "could open up space for resolution to the situation" of the two Canadian Michaels.

Data on eight categories of "coercive measures" was compiled in a recent report produced by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute noting actions such as those Beijing has embarked upon have sharply risen in the past few years through arbitrary detention, execution, popular boycotts, pressure on specific companies, state-issued threats and restrictions on official travel, investment, trade and tourism. Beijing's novel initiatives on how to make friends and influence countries.

"I know a lot of business people who are out of China now and are very afraid of going back", one executive asking for anonymity, stated; he and others, in particular former government officials working as consultants have become increasingly wary. The U.S. State Department warned American citizens they face risk of arbitrary arrest and exit bans; to avoid unnecessary travel to China -- and the Canadian Foreign Affairs department has issued a like warning. Little wonder relations are frayed.

The Panopticon Is Already Heren  The Atlantic

Xi Jinping is using artificial intelligence to enhance his government’s totalitarian control—and he’s exporting this technology to regimes around the globe.

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.