China's State Terrorism

Don’t Let the Chinese Take the World Hostage

By Hal Brands

Take no prisoners.
Discussions of what China’s rise will mean for the world often take on an abstract, impersonal quality. 

We use terms like “international order,” “geopolitical competition” and “balance of power.” 

Yet the case of Michael Kovrig, the Canadian ex-diplomat who has been unjustly detained in China for nearly two months, reminds us that the rise of a brash authoritarian power comes with profoundly human consequences.
No less, this episode shows how Xi Jinping’s China risks alienating those foreign observers who have worked hardest to build connections and understanding between Beijing and the outside world.
Kovrig certainly fits this description. 

He is fluent in Mandarin and served at posts in Hong Kong and Beijing. 

Since 2016, he has been covering China for the International Crisis Group, a non-governmental with a strong reputation for objectivity and quality. 

Kovrig’s work for ICG has covered an array of issues: China’s role in U.S.-North Korea diplomacy, its involvement in the conflict in South Sudan, and its growing global military footprint.
The official story about Kovrig’s detention in early December is that his work ran afoul of China’s laws on NGOs, which impose strict restrictions and reporting requirements on foreign institutions operating in that country. 

But it’s hard to see his arrest as anything other than geopolitical blackmail by the Chinese government.
The timing of Kovrig’s detention and the commentary of quasi-official mouthpieces such as the Global Times make clear that he was picked up as revenge for the Canadian government’s arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of telecom giant Huawei. 

After Meng was detained for violating U.S. financial laws and sanctions on Iran, China arrested Kovrig and another Canadian citizen. (According to reports, up to 13 Canadians have since been detained by the Chinese.) 

Beijing then re-tried a Canadian citizen accused of drug trafficking and sentenced him to death. 

In essence, China has responded to a Canadian-American law-enforcement decision it didn’t like by arbitrarily punishing Canadians.
Kovrig is thus a reminder that authoritarian regimes behave in inhumane ways as a matter of habit. 

It is a clear warning that, as China becomes more powerful, foreign citizens who displease Beijing will be at risk so long as they are within reach of Chinese authorities. 

All of Canada’s democratic allies must stand firmly against this sort of hostage-taking. 

They must condemn, on as multilateral a basis as possible, Chinese behavior; make clear that they will not be bought off or bullied into silence by Beijing’s economic influence; and demonstrate that China will face public pressure and isolation in international diplomatic forums until Kovrig and others who have been been unjustly detained are released. 

The alternative to hanging together is being coerced separately — and having one’s citizens deliberately victimized — the next time a diplomatic row with China occurs.
Yet Kovrig’s saga also carries dangers for China, because it risks weakening some of that country’s most important links to the outside world. 

Kovrig’s work and tweets make clear that he was not naïve about China. 

He was skeptical, for instance, about allowing Huawei to build critical 5G networks in the U.K. 

Yet in his role with ICG, Kovrig worked to give the wider world an objective understanding of Chinese politics and policies; he interacted regularly with Chinese officials, organizations, citizens; he appeared on Chinese television and in other media. 

In doing so, Kovrig has been one of many foreign experts who have sought to improve the West’s understanding of China, promote better communication and exchanges, and thereby contribute to constructive relations between Beijing and the world.
In recent years, China has shown a remarkable talent for alienating these people. 

Late last year, the Hoover Institution released a report detailing Chinese efforts to influence the U.S. political system, as part of a broader strategy for manipulating democratic politics overseas to dull the global response to China’s rise. 

China’s influence operations, the report concluded, often “involve use of coercive or corrupting methods to pressure individuals and groups and thereby interfere in the functioning of American civil and political life.” 

Notably, many of the members of the working group that helped produce the report are academics and former officials who had argued for greater engagement with China in the past.
Kovrig’s arrest imperils those efforts. 

In mid-January, the Canada warned its citizens “to exercise a high degree of caution in China due to the risk of arbitrary enforcement of local laws.” 

The U.S. State Department issued a similar warning. 

Business leaders have grown wary of traveling to China. 

Moreover, Kovrig’s case is impeding longstanding talks involving influential U.S. foreign policy figures and their Chinese counterparts. 

A number of think-tank colleagues in Washington have told me that their employers are restricting travel to China. 

People who have traveled regularly to China over a period of years now say, quite understandably, that they are hesitant to go back.

Visits to China, interactions with Chinese officials, and other such exchanges offer valuable insights into Beijing’s ambitions and behavior. 

What Beijing doesn’t seem to realize is that this is bad news for China.
A country that still needs foreign investment and technology will not benefit from making foreign CEOs wonder whether they or their employees should take the risk of traveling there. 

A country that harps on how it is misunderstood and mistreated by the West will not benefit from constricting critical channels of communication. 

“NGOs, journalists, and diplomats all play a role in connecting China to the wider world,” said David Mulroney, Canada’s ambassador to China from 2009 to 2012. 

“The alternative is a China that is isolated, poorly understood and cut off from important ideas and conversations.”
Kovrig’s case is tragic on a human level; it should be a clarion call for the world’s democracies. 

It is also an example of how China is weakening the relationships and exchanges that are so important to its own future.

China’s Canadian Hostages

Chinese abuse human pawns in trade and diplomatic disputes
The New York Times

Chinese police officers patrolled in front of the Canadian Embassy in Beijing this month after a Canadian was detained on suspicion of “engaging in activities that harm China’s national security.”
Three Canadian citizens being detained by China appear to have become pawns in a political impasse between the two countries and, by extension, the United States. 

They should be released immediately.
China, already an aggressive rising power known to flout the rule of law and disregard human rights, now seems to be using hostage-taking to resolve economic and diplomatic disputes.human rights
Making matters worse, Trump has chosen to get involved, seemingly playing his own games to gain leverage in bitter trade talks with China.
Trump suggested that he might intervene to secure the release of a Chinese businesswoman arrested in Canada at the request of American authorities on Dec. 1 if it would lead to a favorable trade deal with Beijing.
That reinforced the suspicions of many in China who think that the United States is using the businesswoman, Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of the giant Chinese technology company Huawei, as a hostage, too.
As acknowledged by the Chinese government on Thursday, Beijing is now holding a “female Canadian citizen,” identified as Sarah McIver, in addition to Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were detained earlier this month.
Although Mr. Kovrig is understood to have been seen once by a Canadian consular office, few details about the three Canadians, their conditions and the charges against them have been released. 

It is not unusual for prisoners detained by China to be held in solitary confinement with the lights on 24 hours a day and be subject to prolonged interrogation, even torture.
China’s legal system is opaque and weighted overwhelmingly in favor of the government and against the ordinary people who get caught up in it.
The Foreign Ministry said Ms. McIver had been working illegally, and it’s not clear that her case is related to that of the two others. Mr. Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat working for the International Crisis Group, a Washington nongovernmental research group, and Mr. Spavor, an entrepreneur specializing in business with North Korea, were reportedly being investigated over “activities that endanger China’s national security.”
Such moves are likely to chill the atmosphere in China for other diplomats and foreign businesspeople trying to work there.
But the detentions are less a function of the personal activities of the three Canadians than retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Meng. 

She was picked up in Vancouver at the request of the United States while she was traveling to Mexico from Hong Kong.
At a bail hearing, Canadian prosecutors said Meng was suspected of helping banks violate United States sanctions against Iran. 

She is now out on bail while awaiting extradition to the United States, a process that could take weeks or even months.
The arrests have drawn a sharp protest from the Chinese government, rattled financial markets and raised suspicions among Chinese officials that at least some Trump administration officials were trying to sabotage a trade deal.

Huawei and Meng, the daughter of the company’s founder, are part of China’s corporate elite, and her detention has brought huge domestic political pressure on Xi Jinping.
Global Times, a newspaper aligned with the Chinese Communist Party, said that the impasse could be resolved quickly by Canada’s dropping all charges against Meng. 

“It is quite simple to end the crisis between China and Canada by giving back Meng’s complete freedom,” the newspaper wrote, most likely echoing the views of top officials.
There is so far no evidence that Meng’s arrest is anything more than a part of the Trump administration’s enforcement of the sanctions regime against Iran.
But Trump recently gave doubters an opening when he suggested he would intervene with the Justice Department in the Huawei case if it would help secure a trade deal with Beijing. 

The implication was that he might trade her for the two Canadians held at the time he made that statement.
“If I think it’s good for the country, if I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made — which is a very important thing — what’s good for national security — I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary,” Trump told Reuters in an interview.
Such interference in a judicial process would undermine the rule of law and encourage countries to detain each other’s citizens as a weapon of economic and political warfare.