China is paying a high price for its hostage diplomacy

Re The bitter lessons of Meng and the pair of Michaels, Sept. 28

I find the column by Wenran Jiang insulting. I understand Jiang’s desire to act as apologist for Xi Jinping and his Communist Party of China as Jiang is founding director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta.

Jiang questions whether Canada should have arrested Meng in the first place.

Perhaps Jiang has not heard about treaties, in this case an extradition treaty, or, like China, does not believe they should be upheld. He states that the minister of justice could have ended the process at any point.

How long, then, before Xi would again use hostage diplomacy against any other Canadian citizen, knowing that he could bully Canada to do whatever he dictated in any set of circumstances.

And what about the lesson that Xi Jinping should learn from this: hostage diplomacy has its consequences.

China has destroyed decades of slowly attained good will in Canada and around the world

In February 2021, 57 other countries supported Canada for a joint condemnation of hostage diplomacy.

This was aimed directly at China.

Ray Phipps, Markham