ANDREW COYNE, CHINA ON DETAINING TWO CANADIANS.
A pattern has been repeated, with the disappearance of first Michael Kovrig ... then Michael Spavor. There is no use calling this anything but what it is: kidnapping.
Canadian authorities might have guessed how China would respond to the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei executive accused of violating U.S. sanctions on Iran.
In 2014, after Canada arrested Chinese businessman Su Bin, wanted in the U.S. on espionage charges, China seized Christian aid workers Kevin and Julia Garratt. They were held in isolation cells with lights that never went off: for six months, in her case, more than two years in his.
Now the pattern has been repeated, with the disappearance of first Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat now working in China with the non-profit International Crisis Group, then Michael Spavor, an entrepreneur known for promoting tourism and trade with North Korea.
There is no use calling this anything but what it is: kidnapping. Official claims that Kovrig and Spavor engaged in activities that “endanger the national security” of China are as spurious as the accusations of spying against the Garratts. Certainly no evidence has been produced against them, nor is there any reason to expect any. There is no due process in China, no independent judiciary, no right of habeas corpus. Canadian authorities were only granted consular access to Kovrig four days after his detention. It’s not clear they even know where Spavor is.
By contrast Meng is already out on bail, while a judge considers whether there is sufficient evidence against her to warrant her extradition to the United States. For the crime of carrying out our obligations under the Canada-U.S. extradition treaty, Canada has not only had two of her citizens abducted, but must endure lectures on human rights from emissaries of one of the world’s foremost practitioners of torture, forced confessions and indefinite detentions.
Meanwhile, having done right by our American allies — and paid the price for doing so — our reward from the president of the United States was a comment suggesting he would intervene to free Meng if it would help close a U.S.China trade deal.
He was quickly and publicly rebuked by officials in his own administration (“What we do at the Justice Department is law enforcement,” John Demers, assistant attorney-general, told a Senate committee. “We are not a tool of trade.”) but not before he had seemed to validate Chinese charges that Meng was being used as a pawn in a larger political and economic game.
Not only did that leave the government of Canada stranded in its insistence on the rule of law — Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland issued a statement reminding “our extradition partners” not “to politicize the extradition process or use it for ends other than the pursuit of justice” — but it may even have undermined the extradition case against Meng.
Not that the Trudeau government is entirely blameless. It can fairly be accused of naiveté or worse in its relations with China until now. (It is painfully ironic to recall that it was even willing at one point to talk about an extradition agreement with Beijing.) It may be that this pliant stance has contributed to China’s current belligerence. The present crisis is an opportunity for a rethink.
The most immediate task is to secure the release of the two Canadians, or at the very least to prevent China from escalating further in pursuit of its demands for Meng’s release. This must not involve concessions on our part; there must be no reward to China for its lawlessness. In particular, there can be no prospect, assuming the courts rule the extradition can proceed, of the minister of justice exercising her power to deny the U.S. request, and if there ever were, China’s outrageous bullying has foreclosed it.
Rather, China must be made to see that actions have consequences. The country is in a more than usually nationalist mood, with the dictatorship’s active encouragement. It desires to be seen and acknowledged as the major world power that it is. Yet its behaviour, in this case at least, more nearly resembles that of North Korea.
More prosaically, China has economic ambitions that depend upon access to foreign markets: hence its interest in striking freetrade agreements with Canada and other nations. Its potential trading partners, however, remain wary — partly out of misplaced fears of Chinese economic might, partly because of well-founded concerns about national security and human rights.
This gives Canada some degree of leverage. It is more usual to talk about the irresistible allure of China’s market of 1.4 billion consumers; even now, Canadian business leaders are fretting at the harm Meng’s arrest has done to their chances in the country. But Canada, despite the disparity in our populations, is as much a prize to China. If a respected G7 country like Canada were to sign a freetrade agreement with China, other western countries would be quick to do likewise.
The Meng case puts an end to any of that, at least for now. We can do business with countries that do not share our values. We cannot do business with countries that make hostages of our citizens. More broadly, we will need to enlist allies in the service of impressing upon China the unacceptability of its actions. We are hardly alone, after all, as the subjects of attempted Chinese political interference.
Freeland and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan are in Washington for talks with U.S. officials, with the Meng case high on the agenda. But it is time other countries with experience in dealing with China’s thuggishness — Germany and Australia, for example — were brought in. If China is to be induced to observe basic norms of international conduct, a common front will be required. It cannot be allowed to continue playing one country off against another.
Either China can join the community of civilized nations, with the trade and economic benefits that go with it, or it can carry on like a rogue state. It cannot do both.
THE PRESENT CRISIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR A RETHINK.