Beijing is no friend of Canada’s

For many years, a lot of smart people have been warning our federal government about drawing too close to China. Canada is a trading nation, and an open society, and of course we must engage with the world, even those nations that disagree with us on fundamental issues. But Canada must still have its eyes wide open to the true nature of the regimes we’re dealing with. The Canadians who’ve been sounding that alarm regarding the unscrupulousness of China’s communist regime all these years look even wiser this week in light of Beijing’s petty and vindictive attacks against us, although they’re likely not much in the mood for a victory lap.

One of them is the National Post’s Terry Glavin. His columns here and elsewhere have closely tracked the growing entanglement of Canadian business and political interests (largely but not exclusively among Liberal Party types) with the Beijing regime. Glavin has warned us, again and again, that we must not permit ourselves to be fooled by Beijing’s friendly overtures — its “macabre propaganda,” as he recently called it. They are no friend to Canada or the West generally, he’s argued, consistently and loudly. And he has not been alone.

There were other warning signs, too. But Ottawa did not listen. Canadian prime ministers of both parties, but especially Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau of late, have been so drawn to China’s wealth and its possible benefits to our economy that our government have lost sight of what the communist rulers of 1.4 billion people truly value.

It’s not human rights, surely. The UN Human Rights Council, in one of its rare bursts of focus on a country other than Israel, slammed China last month for its imprisonment of approximately one million Uyghurs, a minority group in China that practices the Islamic faith and has long been the target of crackdowns by Beijing. Horrific reports of oppression and abuse of Uyghurs are not new. Nor are they isolated. China’s suppression of minority rights, particularly religious rights, is well documented; just last week, authorities arrested 100 Christians for belonging to an “illegal” church. Economic freedoms are also severely curtailed. And the Chinese internet is valued for the surveillance needs of Beijing’s paranoid, Orwellian police state as much as it is for educating and entertaining the Chinese people.

But we knew all this. It’s hard to make the case that China values the international rule of law, either. It has spent huge sums of money in recent years literally dredging up silt and soil around scattered rocks near (and not so near) its shores, creating manmade islands that it now claims as its sovereign territory. The islands are now bristling with missiles and radars, and function entirely as force-projection assets of the Chinese military. At the same time, Chinese-flagged vessels have been aggressively asserting territorial and resource claims around these islands, including at times directly challenging the naval forces of Japan and Philippines. We knew all that, too. China can also hardly be said to value the sovereignty of other nations. As mentioned above, many countries that share ocean areas with the country have felt the increasing pressure of China’s military might pressing against their shores. But not all the pressure is military. China has been using its economic clout to pressure companies in the West to affirm China’s preferred version of maps and titles for disputed territories (as when Air Canada recently agreed to list Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, as a city in China). The Chinese regime continues to seek to limit the freedoms of the people of Taiwan, who broke away from the mainland after Chinese Communists seized power. China also spies aggressively all over the world, including in Canada, helping itself to military and commercial technology without regard for international norms of conduct or legal standards.

This, too, was no secret. And yet Canada insists on treating China as something very close to a friend, while ignoring what China has plainly and openly signalled: that it values only power, and seeks only that and the respect it brings. It has not been shy about this. We’ve just pretended not to notice.

Until now, at least. China’s bellicose reaction to Canada’s entirely legal and appropriate detaining of Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese telecom executive sought by the United States on serious charges, has clearly revealed the character of the regime. Diplomatic protests were lodged, which is fine. Economic consequences were floated, which is regrettable but also to be expected. But China has now detained two Canadians in China, on entirely concocted national security grounds, and is holding them prisoner (with none of the protections our legal system has provided to Meng, who is even now out on bail). The message couldn’t be clearer: you detain one of ours, we detain two of yours. It’s crude, but not hard to decipher.

China has detained Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor on claims they were endangering national security, a laughable charge Beijing routinely uses as a convenient tool to lock up innocent people. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo correctly called their capture “unlawful” and “unacceptable.” They should not have been detained in the first place. They are very possibly being abused, if not outright tortured. But their arrests, though appalling, may prove useful in one way: they ought to make it impossible for our prime minister, or any future prime ministers, to keep turning a blind eye to the criminal and thuggish nature of Beijing’s rulers. Ignoring the plight of Muslims in concentration camps, and the ongoing persecution of Chinese Christians, all for daring believe in a god other than communism, has proven easy enough for Canadian leaders. Perhaps the wrath being directed at innocent Canadians will make it harder for our politicians to stop ignoring the immoral and dangerous nature of China’s rulers as easily as they’ve ignored those of us who have been warning for years that China is no friend to us.