U.S. think tank leaders urge China to release Canadian researcher, citing threat to ties

By Emily Rauhala

Louis Huang holds a placard calling for China to release Canadian detainees Michael Spavor, left, and Michael Kovrig outside a court hearing for Huawei Technologies chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver on March 6. 

A high-profile group of think tank leaders and scholars is calling for the release of a Canadian policy adviser being held in China, warning that his detention threatens U.S.-China relations at a critical moment.
In a rare joint statement published Monday, leaders working for leading U.S. and international institutions said the arrest of Michael Kovrig of the International Crisis Group on vague allegations of endangering national security is having a “chilling effect” on efforts to improve the bilateral relationship.
The statement comes more than three months after Kovrig was detained in China in retaliation for the arrest in Vancouver of Chinese technology executive Meng Wanzhou. 

The United States and its allies have said Kovrig’s detention is unlawful and have called for his immediate release.
It also comes as the United States and China remain locked in a tense dispute over trade, technology and other issues — a dispute the signatories worry will deepen if independent policy institutions are no longer able or willing to conduct research in China.
“At this moment of testing for the bilateral relationship — defined by growing differences and suspicions between our governments — we believe these efforts and the partnerships we’ve built with counterparts in China over many years are more important than ever,” the statement said.
“Michael’s arrest has a chilling effect on all those who are committed to advance constructive U.S.-China relations. We urge China to release Michael so that he can return to his family.”
The statement is a show of unity and resolve from U.S. think tanks and academic leaders across the political spectrum. 

Signatories include senior leaders from the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Hudson Institute, as well as former diplomats such as Anne-Marie Slaughter and Nicholas Burns.
In January, a group of academics and former diplomats signed a letter calling for Kovrig and another Canadian, businessman Michael Spavor, to be released.
That letter, signed by 116 scholars and 27 former diplomats from 19 countries, warned that researchers were getting nervous about traveling to China.
“We who share Kovrig and Spavor’s enthusiasm for building genuine, productive, and lasting relationships must now be more cautious about traveling and working in China and engaging our Chinese counterparts,” it said.
The arrests are part of a conflict that has put Canada in the middle of a broader standoff between the United States and China.
Kovrig is a former diplomat who had worked since 2017 as an adviser for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, conducting research on northeast Asia, including China, Japan and the Koreas.
He was detained in December in a retaliation for the arrest of Meng, chief financial officer for Huawei Technologies, who was wanted on U.S. charges.
Meng was arrested at Vancouver’s airport on Dec. 1. As China scrambled to secure her release, Chinese authorities detained Kovrig and, later, Spavor.
Not long after, Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, a Canadian serving time in China for smuggling drugs, was hastily retried and sentenced to death.
As Meng awaits her extradition hearing from the comfort of one of her family’s multimillion-dollar houses in Vancouver, Kovrig and Spavor are being held without charge and with no access to lawyers.
The International Crisis Group thanked colleagues for urging Kovrig’s release.
“We are extremely grateful and heartened by the support shown by the prominent signatories from the research community and by the fact that they have come together as one on this issue,” said Robert Malley, the organization’s president and chief executive.
“Many members of that community wish to constructively engage with China. Michael’s arbitrary detention can only scare them away.”

Chinazism

Scholars and Ex-Diplomats Warn of Chill After Canadians Detained in China

By Chris Buckley and Catherine Porter

The Canadian embassy in Beijing, this month. Dozens of former diplomats have signed a letter warning that China’s recent arrests have made their work “unwelcome and risky in China.”

BEIJING — Warning that China’s arrest of two Canadians has created a dangerous chill for people working on policy and research in that country, more than 100 academics and former diplomats have signed an open letter calling for the two men to be immediately freed.
Made public on Monday, the letter was an international cry of concern from people who work and study in China, saying the arrests threaten the flow of ideas with Chinese academics and officials that is essential for policy work and research aimed at narrowing international rifts.
The letter warned China that the detentions will result in “greater distrust.”
Its signatories included 27 diplomats from seven countries and 116 scholars and academics from 19 countries.
“Meetings and exchanges are the foundation of serious research and diplomacy around the world, including for Chinese scholars and diplomats,” the letter said. 

The arrests, though, “send a message that this kind of constructive work is unwelcome and risky in China.”
Timothy Brook, a professor of Chinese history at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and one of the signatories, said in a phone interview, “If China wishes to be seen as a full and responsible member of the international community, it needs to set itself a much higher standard than this.”
“To punish Canada,” he added, “is really for China to say: ‘We have no friends in the world and we want no friends in the world. We will do just what we want on the terms that we want.’”
The Chinese police detained the two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, last month as officials in Beijing scrambled to press Canada to free Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese technology executive, arrested in Vancouver on Dec. 1, and held for extradition to the United States on fraud charges.
The Chinese government was enraged by Meng’s arrest.
The arrests of the Canadians, as well as a death sentence for drug trafficking given to a Canadian man by a Chinese court last week, have plunged Canadian-Chinese relations into their worst tensions in decades.
But the roster of signatories shows that the arrests of the two men have sent shivers far beyond Canada, and well beyond diplomatic concerns.
“The letter is important as a forum for China specialists to stand up and be counted, to speak up to defend one of our own,” said Anne-Marie Brady, a professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand who studies Chinese politics and who also signed the letter. 

“We know it could be any one of us.”
“At the very least, speaking up in this way will keep the two men safe from harm,” Ms. Brady added. “The public campaign ensures the whole world is watching as China uses Canadian citizens as pawns in a wider geopolitical standoff.”

Michael Kovrig, left, a former diplomat, and Michael Spavor, an entrepreneur with high-level contacts in North Korea, have been detained in China.

Other signatories were Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a former British foreign secretary, and Chris Patten, the former European commissioner for external relations. 

Two former American ambassadors to Beijing — Winston Lord and Gary Locke — also signed, as did six previous Canadian ambassadors to Beijing.
“Chinese actions are becoming out of line with international laws and global norms,” said Susan Shirk, an American signatory who served as deputy assistant secretary of state for China and the region.
“If the Chinese government and Communist Party feel they can simply detain people as part of what appears to be a dispute that’s really with the United States and Canada,” she said, “that puts all our bridge building efforts at risk.”
Also signing was Gareth Evans, the former Australian foreign minister who is president emeritus of the International Crisis Group, the nonprofit organization that Mr. Kovrig has worked for since 2017, after leaving the Canadian foreign service.
Since Mr. Kovrig and Mr. Spavor were detained, the Canadian government has campaigned for and received international support from a growing list of countries, including Spain, which last week demanded the men receive “fair, transparent and impartial treatment.”
The letter echoes that multilateral approach and defies the traditional Chinese foreign policy of isolating countries, said David Mulroney, a former Canadian ambassador to China.
“Maybe this represents a new approach, not that people are ganging up on China, but that the international community says this isn’t appropriate,” Mr. Mulroney said. 

“The old isolate-and-dominate approach won’t work anymore.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has rejected the idea that the arrests and death sentence for the Canadian men were retribution for Meng’s arrest.
Even so, Chinese officials and media comments have argued that their country must defend itself. The open letter said experts and officials considering going to China would have to weigh the risks in the wake of the arrests.
Mr. Kovrig was seized at night from a street in Beijing about nine days after the Canadian police arrested Meng, the chief financial officer of Huawei, a Chinese technology giant.
She has been released on bail in Vancouver and is awaiting a decision on whether the Canadian government can extradite her to the United States, where prosecutors have accused her of bank fraud linked to business deals with Iran that contravene American sanctions.
As a diplomat and then an adviser for the International Crisis Group, Mr. Kovrig specialized in Chinese foreign policy, especially its role in North Korea and other Asian trouble spots. 

In China he attended meetings with Chinese officials and academics, and was interviewed on Chinese television programs.
Mr. Spavor, who was arrested soon after Mr. Kovrig, is a businessman who has made a specialty of securing access and business in North Korea. 

The Chinese government has said both men are suspected of “harming national security,” a vague charge that can include espionage.
Last week, in a further escalation of the tensions between China and Canada, a court in northeast China sentenced to death a Canadian man, Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, who was convicted of drug smuggling. 

Mr. Schellenberg’s lawyer said the death sentence was extraordinarily swift, coming on the same day as his retrial, which had been ordered at an appeal hearing in later December.

Rogue Nation

China's arrest of innocent Canadians sends a chilling message to investors
By Elise von Scheel and Katie Simpson 

Canadian entrepreneur Michael Spavor, left, and former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig were taken into custody by Chinese authorities last month. 

China is sending the wrong message to the international investment community with its recent move to arrest and detain two Canadians on suspicion of endangering national security, says the employer of one of the detained men.
"I'm focused on getting him out and one thing I can say for sure, the one thing he wasn't doing is endangering China's national security," said Robert Malley, president and CEO of the International Crisis Group. 

Former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig was in China working for the Brussels-based think-tank when he was taken into custody by Chinese authorities last month.
"China's economy is facing some headwinds and so is going to want to attract businesspeople, is going to want to show it's open for normal business," Malley told CBC News. 

"Now is not the time to have a little asterisk near that 'Open for business' [sign] saying, 'Open for business, but you can't be sure what's going to happen to those of you who come here.'"
Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor were taken into custody separately in early December, shortly after Canadian officials arrested Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer for Huawei Technologies. 

Meng was detained in Vancouver on Dec. 1 for extradition at the request of U.S. officials, who accuse Huawei — a leading global supplier of telecommuncations equipment — of using a Hong Kong shell company to sell equipment to Iran in violation of American sanctions.
Canadian officials were quick to push back against the detentions of Kovrig and Spavor. 

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said the government is deeply concerned by the arbitrary detention of the two men.

Robert Malley, president and CEO of the International Crisis Group, shares his thoughts on the detention of his employee Michael Kovrig and the message China is sending. 

Malley said his company is working to secure his employee's freedom.
"Michael [Kovrig] was not doing anything that other people would not have been doing," he said.
Malley said Kovrig was in China to talk to officials and members of the diplomatic community about the situation on the Korean peninsula and China's investments in Africa.

Wrong message, wrong time
Malley said he wouldn't comment on whether China is a safe destination for business travelers, but argued the Chinese are playing this situation badly.
"This is not the message they want to be sending," he said, adding that if the two men were to be released soon, it would send a reassuring signal to the international business community.
According to Statistics Canada, Canada imported $45.4 billion in goods and services from China in 2017, while exporting $28.8 billion to China.
While Freeland wouldn't say whether the Canadians' detentions look like retaliation for Meng's arrest, she said it would be "highly inappropriate" if that were the case.