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.