Canada needs strategic clarity on engagement with China
Canada’s detention of Huawei chief operating officer Meng Wanzhou at the request of Washington has outraged the Chinese government and Chinese public. Despite Ottawa’s explanation that Canada’s independent judicial branch is simply carrying out its extradition treaty obligations to the U.S. without political interference, Beijing has warned Ottawa of “grave consequences” if Meng is not released.
With reports confirming that former Canadian diplomat, and current employee of the International Crisis Group, Michael Kovrig, has been detained by the Chinese government, we are witnessing the beginning of a tit-for-tat escalation of diplomatic crisis, with Beijing carrying out its threat fast and furious.
This puts Canada in a tough spot. If it continues to hold Meng and eventually surrenders her to U.S. authorities, Beijing will retaliate further. If Canada frees Meng, the Trump administration will see Canada as an unreliable ally, leading to more problems in an already strained bilateral relationship.
Facing Beijing’s mounting pressure, the Trudeau government needs to communicate with the Chinese government and the Chinese people through all available means that a deteriorating Canada-China relationship does not serve the strategic and national interests of both countries.
The Trump administration has been pressing Ottawa hard in limiting its free trade talks with Beijing, as reflected in the Article 32 of the recently signed U.S.-Canada-Mexico trilateral trade agreement, which was referred to by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross as a “poison pill” against China and reluctantly accepted by Canada.
Washington also lobbied hard to push Huawei out of Canada’s 5G next generation mobile network, even as Canada’s own assessment concludes that its vigorous testing system can manage the related national security concerns.
The hard-liners in both U.S. and Canada are advocating no less than a coalition to label China as the new Soviet Union and contain its rise. Beijing should exercise caution in not punishing Canada hard over the Meng case, and inadvertently forcing Canada into a confrontation path with China.
As for the U.S. extradition request of Meng, Canadians should have no illusion to believe the case is just a routine legal procedure from the U.S. It was only recently that ZTE, another Chinese telecommunications manufacturer, was convicted in violation of U.S. sanctions against Iran, and agreed to pay a heavy fine to settle the litigation with the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Instead of following the same practice, the Trump administration chose to have its Department of Justice conduct a high-stake criminal extradition procedure against a Huawei senior executive for allegedly a similar offence.
This is happening in the middle of a heated trade war between the U.S. and China, and among the new cold war rhetoric of the Trump cabinet hawks, who openly claimed China as a global rival in general and Huawei’s technological advances as a threat to U.S. techno-supremacy in particular.
It is also a fact, as revealed by Edward Snowden and inconveniently omitted by the mainstream media, that the U.S. National Security Agency hacked into Huawei corporate network years ago, stayed there and harvested vast amounts of corporate and personal data but found no evidence of Huawei’s connection with the Chinese military and the government.
To exclude Huawei not only from the U.S. market, as it is the case now, but also from markets of other U.S. allies, remains a U.S. political, strategic and commercial objective.
Rex Tillerson, former secretary of state, has just reminded us recently that President Donald Trump had repeatedly pressured him to do things against the law.
It is against this background that Ottawa must employ its independent judicial system as a double-edged sword: explaining to Beijing how the process works, and yet at the same time scrutinizing the U.S. extradition request, when it arrives, with two key qualifications.
First, does what Meng is accused of constitute a crime in Canada? Second, is the U.S. request politically motivated? If the U.S. fails to provide sufficient evidence on either or both accounts, the Canadian courts and minister of justice should reject the extradition request, not as a cave-in to the pressure from China, but a demonstration that Canada’s judicial system is no pawn for a new U.S. cold war against China.
In the coming weeks and months, how to handle Meng’s case will require both strategic vision and skilful diplomacy. All parties involved should strive to defuse the tension and reach a compromised settlement that causes the least damage to Canada-China-U.S. relations.
Wenran Jiang is a senior fellow at the School of Public Policy & Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, and a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars.