CHINA GETS NASTIER, BUT TRUDEAU’S LIBERALS STILL GROVEL

If I’ve written this column properly, I will have committed an offence punishable by a 10-year prison term under Article 38 of the national security law that the People’s republic of China has now unilaterally imposed upon the people of hong Kong. The law not only criminalizes acts committed in hong Kong, but applies as well to any act committed “outside the region, by a person who is not a permanent resident of the region,” that can be construed by China’s Ministry of State Security as “inciting hatred” against President Xi Jinping’s wicked and corrupt regime in Beijing.

Advocating for sanctions against senior Chinese Communist party officials for their genocidal reign of terror in East Turkistan, which appears on Chinese maps as Xinjiang, should surely count as a contravention of Article 38. So would calling for sanctions against regime officials under Canada’s Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act — our “Magnitsky” law — for their trampling of the rights of hongkongers under the Sino-british Joint declaration, the legally binding 1984 treaty that was to intended to ensure the autonomy of hong Kong until at least 2047, and which is now a dead letter.

It would be better still if the Government of Canada would take these measures as an explicitly open defiance of Article 38, as a gesture of solidarity with the millions of hongkongers who have so bravely waged their freedom struggle in the cause of what the Trudeau government vainly describes as “Canadian values.” This would be an especially fitting line of attack for Canada, or rather a line of defence, in light of Beijing’s kidnapping of the Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, 82 weeks ago.

At least it would be something, and anything would be better, no matter how timid, than to persist in the agonizing catatonic paralysis that has been the defining feature of Canada’s approach to Xi Jinping’s barbaric assaults on international norms and human decency ever since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were re-elected last October.

This can be at least partly explained by the Trudeau government’s absurd zealotry in the cause of accommodating, placating and pleasing Beijing, which was the defining feature of Trudeau’s first term. An abrupt 180-degree turn, in order to put Canada’s approach to China more in line with overwhelming Canadian public opinion, was never going to be an easy thing to manage — especially when it would have to be done over the dead reputations of dozens of disgraced and fatally compromised China “experts” in the Liberal foreign policy establishment.

So the job keeps getting put off. A decision on whether to permit Beijing’s “national champion” huawei to do its dirty work in developing the architecture and infrastructure of fifth-generation (5G) digital connectivity in Canada was supposed to be announced before last October’s election. While the united States, united Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and several other key liberal democracies have all told huawei with varying degrees of emphasis to go away, Canada still dithers.

Last Friday, Foreign Affairs Minister François-philippe Champagne told the Toronto Star that what Canada needs is a “new framework” for Canada-china relations, one based on clear rules and standards, and “Canadian interests” and “values” and “principles” like human rights. Which was odd, because last december, Champagne told the CBC exactly the same thing. “Consular cases” like the Kovrig and Spavor abductions need not interfere with trade, Champagne said, but in any event, what was clearly needed was “a new framework” in dealing with China.

But there is no new framework, and here we are, still benumbed and immobilized. despite the persistent warnings from the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, huawei continues to mine its vast network of research arrangements with universities across Canada. huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, still enjoys her mansions in Vancouver’s posh Shaughnessy neighbourhood while her lawyers belabour the B.C Supreme Court with objections to forestall her extradition to face bank fraud and sanctions-evasion charges in the u.s.

Canada has been denied consular access to Kovrig and Spavor in their prison cells since last January, on the spurious excuse of the COVID-19 situation. Instead of being summoned to present himself on a daily basis to report in detail on the health and well-being of Kovrig and Spavor, Chinese Ambassador Cong Peiwu amuses himself by calling around to various mayors and business executives to traffic in the usual imbecilities, and by granting audiences to journalists who dutifully report his latest sloganeering threats and warnings.

It’s a good thing, one might say, that at least Canada has announced it will not be honouring its extradition agreement with hong Kong, which is now a city every bit as unfree as Shenzhen or Shanghai. And Canada will no longer be selling rubber bullets and pepper spray to the despised hong Kong Police Force. This is what we are expected to count as some sort of progress.

But the federal government has not shuttered any of the 13 trade offices Canada maintains across China, which is something we should have done ages ago, and something we could still do. No measures whatsoever have been taken to respond to Beijing’s belligerence by, say, advising the Chinese Communist party that once the coronavirus crisis passes it should not expect a return to the days of 140,000 of their students enrolling in Canadian universities every year.

Ottawa has not issued exit orders to a single Chinese diplomat in Canada, even though Amnesty International and more than a dozen human rights and pro-democracy groups have documented an elaborate embassy-sanctioned campaign of harassment, including death threats, aimed at intimidating Chinese expatriates in Canada. Ottawa has ignored appeals for a central law-enforcement unit to track these indecencies. Canada could also follow Australia’s example with a Foreign Agents registration Act to curb the Chinese Communist party’s extensive influence-peddling rackets in Canada, but the Trudeau government will of course do no such thing.

It is perhaps no wonder, then, that a shabby, morally slovenly capitulation to Beijing, in the form of a proposed “prisoner swap,” Meng for the two Michaels — the greasy bargain that former prime minister Jean Chrétien has been floating ever since december 2018 — is seriously entertained by certain sections of Canada’s punditry and foreign policy establishment.

It’s the sort of ethical obscenity that the Trudeau government’s paralysis has predictably invited, and the proposition came from the same quarter that has given Xi Jinping every reason to believe his hostage-taking stunt would be successful in the first place. It is no wonder Beijing is convinced that Canada can be pushed around in these ways.

There is no “new framework.” Kovrig and Spavor are mere consular cases, and in the meantime, it’s business as usual.

No measures whatsoever have been taken to respond

to beijing’s belligerence.