Time for Ottawa to get tough on China
Overreaction to Meng arrest should be dealt with forcefully
Now that China is poised to execute a Canadian in its feud with Canada, it’s time for Ottawa to shed its overly diplomatic approach to the crisis and deal with China in the language it understands — that of tough countermeasures. More on that later. First, some crucial context. The Canada-China crisis began Dec. 1 when Canada acted on a U.S. request to arrest Meng Wanzhou, among China’s most prominent citizens, when she was changing planes at Vancouver’s international airport.
Meng is chief financial officer and heir apparent to her father as CEO of China’s Huawei Technologies Co., world’s biggest maker of telecom equipment. She is alleged by the U.S. to have used bank fraud to disguise Huawei’s suspected violations of a U.S. trade embargo on Iran.
The U.S. is not targeting Meng, but Huawei, a technology powerhouse with an R&D budget that matches that of Apple Inc. and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Huawei is also one of Canada’s top 100 R&D spenders.
Huawei is a linchpin in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s campaign to achieve world leadership in 21st-century technologies by 2025, quite likely at the expense of Silicon Valley.
As it happens, the UN Security Council’s sanctions against Iran were lifted as part of the 2015 pact in which Iran agreed to cease its nuclear-weapons program. But the U.S., at President Donald Trump’s direction, has withdrawn from that pact. The U.S. alone now rejects Security Council Resolution 2231 that lifts the sanctions.
That is, only U.S. interests are served in the arrest of Meng, 46.
Also, it is highly unusual for an OECD country to arrest a top corporate executive of a domestic or foreign enterprise for crimes allegedly committed by an employer. (Personal cupidity is another matter.)
For example, when he was CEO of Halliburton Co. in the 1990s, Dick Cheney was not arrested for the sanctionbusting business the oil-services firm did in several countries under U.S. embargo, including Iran.
Neither was the CEO of Toronto-Dominion Bank when it and more than a dozen other global banks paid fines for violating America’s sanctions on Iran.
In China’s view, not easily disputed, Canada’s arrest of Meng made Canada a collaborator in America’s decadelong attempt to contain the commercial ambitions of China and of Huawei. Huawei is the world’s only enterprise currently able to build an entire “5G,” or next-generation, wireless network.
As such, Canada was begging for trouble in arresting Meng. Justin Trudeau was given a heads-up a few days before Meng’s arrest, but unwisely chose not to prevent it. The prime minister has said he was respecting his justice ministry’s sole preserve over extradition matters. If that indeed is the case, Trudeau needs a tutorial on realpolitik.
And so, Meng was detained, with predictable, dreadful consequences.
The editor of China’s statecontrolled Global Times has said that “Arresting Meng Wanzhou is bringing terrorism to state and business competition.” That is the over-the-top spirit of the Chinese statecontrolled media’s relentless Canada-bashing since Dec. 1, which accuses Canada of doing America’s bidding in trying to crush China’s economic ambitions.
How could China see it otherwise, asks Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University professor and veteran of geoeconomic analysis. The U.S. request that Canada arrest Meng “is almost a declaration of war on China’s business community,” Sachs wrote soon after her arrest.
But if America’s transparent efforts to protect laggard U.S. companies from formidable Chinese competition have gone too far, Beijing has once again grossly overreacted to a slight — as Ottawa should have anticipated.
When Ottawa last year blocked a Chinese state takeover of a Canadian engineering firm, an enraged Beijing reacted as though Canadian agents had been detected spiriting away chunks of the Great Wall with a plan for reconstructing them at the Royal Ontario Museum.
In retaliation for the Meng arrest — though China, of course, denies that motive — Chinese authorities quickly took into police custody three Canadian nationals in China.
One of those, a teacher, has since been released. But the other two, a former Canadian diplomat and an entrepreneur, remain imprisoned under wretched conditions. It appears that at least 13 Canadian nationals have been arrested in China since Meng was arrested. Not content with that, Beijing upped the ante Monday, reopening the case of a Canadian national earlier sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for drug smuggling.
In a one-day hearing, Robert Lloyd Schellenberg was sentenced to die. As no new com- pelling evidence was presented in court, the link to Meng’s detention is obvious.
It’s worth noting Beijing’s reaction to Canada’s successful appeal for worldwide support to spare Schellenberg’s life and get the other Canadians released. The European Union, the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Australia have rallied to Canada’s side.
Beijing regards that support as a gang-up to thwart its national interests. This week it lectured Canada to “respect the rule of law, respect China’s judicial sovereignty, correct mistakes and stop making irresponsible remarks.”
Remember those words. They tell you that China is oblivious to the rogue-state nature of its conduct.
“Rule of law”? China is a vigorous and unapologetic human-rights abuser. The Schellenberg case is a reminder of China’s kangaroo courts. And China is widely alleged to be the world’s biggest thief of intellectual property.
Like other western countries, Canada wants to increase its business with China. Indeed, we seek a free trade deal with China.
But for now, China needs to know in forceful ways that its continued brutal treatment of Canadians will come at a heavy price:
á This is a time for severing diplomatic relations with China.
á It’s also appropriate for Ottawa to revoke its approval of the $40-billion LNG Canada megaproject in B.C. unless state-owned PetroChina relinquishes its stake in the consortium.
á And Ottawa should suspend Huawei from further development of 5G networks in Canada.
Canada also needs to release Meng Wanzhou, not in exchange for the imprisoned Canadians, but because she should not have been arrested in the first place.
Our extradition treaty with the U.S. contains abundant loopholes that enable Canada to release her.
Finally, Ottawa needs to remind Beijing that Canada has welcomed with open arms a Huawei that does extensive business in Canada.
That’s a sharp contrast with the U.S.; Britain and other major European economies; Australia; and New Zealand. Those are among the many jurisdictions that have banned Huawei or are close to doing so, mostly at American urging.
The world’s biggest police state has few friends in the world. It’s time for Canada to tell China that it’s about to lose one of those, and its strongest friend in the West — a Canada that Beijing relies on for much of the raw materials and technological prowess that fuels China’s industrial revolution.