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.
Labels: Australia, Beijing, Canada, Chinese Communist Party, Hostage Diplomacy, Huawei
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