La France Hong Kongisée

Quand la Chine vient récupérer ses fugitifs en France

La chasse à l’homme planétaire que mène Pékin pour rapatrier des suspects a lieu sans demande d’extradition et à l’insu du pays où ils se trouvent.
Par Harold Thibault et Brice Pedroletti

Sous la présidence de Xi Jinping, la Chine ne ménage pas ses efforts pour rapatrier ses fugitifs.

Les opérations menées conjointement à l’étranger par ses organes anticorruption et de sécurité, baptisées « Sky Net » et « Fox Hunt », ont permis de rapatrier près de 3 000 suspects depuis la fin 2012.
Mais cette chasse à l’homme planétaire révèle des surprises lorsqu’elle a lieu à l’insu du pays refuge – ce qui s’est passé avec la France, qui a pourtant signé avec la Chine un accord d’extradition. 

C’est en effet par un communiqué publié en mars sur le site de la Commission centrale d’inspection disciplinaire (CCID), le bras anticorruption du Parti communiste chinois, que les diplomates français ont découvert l’une de ces opérations.

Pas de demande d’extradition et autorités non informées
La commission félicitait la région autonome du Ningxia d’avoir réussi, le 24 février, le « rapatriement en douceur » d’un suspect. 

« C’est la première fois que notre police s’est rendue en France pour convaincre quelqu’un de se rendre depuis l’Europe », pouvait-on lire.
Avant sa fuite en France, en 2014, Zheng Ning était le numéro deux du groupe chinois Zhongyin, l’un des leaders mondiaux du tissage de cachemire, dont le siège est au Ningxia (nord-ouest). 

Ni le Quai d’Orsay, ni le ministère de la justice, ni celui de l’intérieur n’ont été sollicités, ou même informés par la partie chinoise de son intention de récupérer le suspect, qui faisait l’objet d’une notice rouge d’Interpol.
« Ils pouvaient faire une demande d’extradition, ils ne l’ont pas faite. C’est très problématique », explique une source française à Paris, qui poursuit : « L’idée que leurs équipes de police viennent opérer sur le territoire français est totalement inacceptable, il est impensable qu’on se laisse faire. » 

Mais Paris n’a toujours pas obtenu les « explications » réclamées il y a des semaines.
La France n’est pas la seule concernée. 

Le Canada et les Etats-Unis se sont inquiétés ces deux dernières années de la venue sur leur territoire d’agents chinois en visa de tourisme pour pousser des suspects à rentrer, en les menaçant notamment de représailles contre leurs familles au pays s’ils refusaient.

Un traité d’extradition entre Paris et Pékin en vigueur depuis 2015
Au Ningxia, le sort de Zheng Ning, 52 ans, reste un mystère. 

Tout comme la manière dont il a été persuadé de rentrer. 

Un responsable du bureau des affaires extérieures locales, An Jiansheng, affirme : « Le cas est à l’examen et il n’y aura pas de réponse avant le verdict. »
L’intéressé a été inculpé en juillet 2016 par un tribunal local au côté du fondateur et PDG de Zhongyin, Ma Shengguo, dans une affaire de fraude aux déductions de taxe à l’exportation portant sur 120 millions de yuans (15,5 millions d’euros). 

Le baron du cachemire, condamné uniquement à une peine avec sursis après avoir rendu l’argent, est depuis discrètement revenu aux affaires.
Sur l’immense site industriel de Zhongyin, un responsable marketing croit savoir que l’ex-numéro deux pourrait bénéficier de la même clémence. 

Une source locale, qui connaît l’affaire, en doute : «On ne sait pas à ce stade si Zheng Ning sera relâché ou si son cas sera transféré à la justice. » 

M. Zheng, poursuit cet interlocuteur, semble « avoir de sérieux problèmes ».
Avec la Chine, les Français avaient pourtant joué le jeu. 

La ratification d’un traité d’extradition signé en 2007 a longtemps été repoussée mais a finalement eu lieu en 2015, malgré les critiques des organisations de défense des droits de l’homme.

Brutalité, opacité et risque de torture
Les enquêteurs anticorruption opèrent de manière brutale et opaque, en dehors d’un système judiciaire déjà stigmatisé pour ses failles : refus de la séparation des pouvoirs, faible protection des droits de la défense, et enfin taux de condamnation des prévenus supérieur à 99 % du fait d’un recours systématique aux aveux faisant courir le risque de la torture.
En septembre 2016, la France avait procédé à la première extradition : celle de Chen Wenhua, accusé d’avoir détourné plus de 2,6 millions d’euros de fonds publics. 

A l’époque, les autorités françaises garantissaient qu’elles suivraient son retour en Chine au plus près, mais, depuis, elles reconnaissent être sans nouvelles.
Un deuxième suspect, une femme nommée Feng Jinfang, a été transféré mi-janvier. 

Une troisième personne, une dénommée Lili Chen, est accusée d’avoir monté une pyramide de Ponzi de plus de 30 millions d’euros non remboursés aux déposants. 

Elle a fait l’objet d’un avis favorable à l’extradition fin avril, lors de sa présentation devant la chambre de l’instruction de la cour d’appel de Paris, mais s’est pourvue en cassation.
La partie française souligne qu’elle n’a pas vocation, sous couvert de droits de l’homme, à héberger tous les malfrats issus de Chine qui viendraient trouver refuge dans l’Hexagone. 

De plus, la France a besoin de la Chine, tant dans la coopération économique que dans la lutte contre la criminalité.
Le traité d’extradition avec la France, de même que celui qui existe avec l’Espagne, est souvent érigé en modèle par la Chine, qui n’est parvenue à convaincre à ce sujet aucun des « five eyes » du renseignement – Washington et ses quatre grands alliés anglo-saxons les plus proches.

« Police politique »
Le parlement australien a repoussé fin mars une ratification du traité avec la Chine, au grand dam de Pékin, qui voit nombre de fugitifs opter pour cette destination, ainsi que pour le Canada et les Etats-Unis. 

« Il y a un intérêt judiciaire mutuel, mais ce n’est pas le genre de pays envers lequel on veut créer une obligation par un traité, car il ne garantit pas un procès équitable », résume Andrew Byrnes, professeur de droit international à l’université de Nouvelle-Galles du Sud, à Sydney.
La Chine présente ces extraditions comme une validation de son système judiciaire par les pays qui signent, estime Nicholas Bequelin, directeur d’Amnesty International pour l’Asie orientale. 

Mais en retour, ces Etats se trouvent pris dans un engrenage, juge-t-il : la Chine crée des « précédents de coopération » qui compliquent ensuite le refus d’extraditions dans des cas plus ambivalents où sont menacées la liberté d’expression ou d’autres libertés fondamentales.
« La police en Chine, contrairement à de nombreux pays, a une double mission : mission de maintien de l’ordre, mais aussi mission politique de protection du monopole du pouvoir du Parti. C’est une police politique assumée, mais dans la représentation à l’étranger, la Chine tente de gommer cet aspect », relève M. Bequelin.
La nomination à la tête d’Interpol, fin 2016, de Meng Hongwei, un vice-ministre de la sécurité publique chinoise, a un peu plus alarmé les ONG : « Le fait d’avoir un président chinois crée au sein de la bureaucratie d’Interpol une réticence à entraver des demandes qui viennent de la Chine », poursuit M. Bequelin.
Fin avril, Interpol avait diffusé avec la plus grande célérité une notice rouge à l’encontre d’un milliardaire en exil aux Etats-Unis, Guo Wengui, qui accuse les familles de dirigeants du Parti communiste chinois d’être à la tête d’empires financiers. 

La notice rouge fut opportunément publiée le jour de la diffusion annoncée d’une interview en direct de M. Guo par la radio Voice of America.

Rogue Nation

The Saga of a Sydney Academic Stuck in China Spotlights the Limits of Beijing’s Soft Power
By Charlie Campbell / Beijing

Feng Chongyi
Last week, Li Keqiang visited Australia. 

There he announced plans for joint mine, rail and port projects and removed the last restrictions on imports of Australian beef to China, an industry already worth $300 million annually to local ranchers. 

“It is time for China and Australia to enter into an era of free trade across the board, which means that we need to have free trade between our two countries in wider areas,” Li told reporters in the Australian capital, Canberra.
Li’s visit was the latest salvo in a concerted Chinese charm offensive in Australia, one that has taken on new impetus since the election of U.S. President Donald Trump. 

In one of his first acts, Trump nixed U.S. involvement in the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade bloc, which the Australian government had lauded as bringing “tremendous” benefits for local exporters. 

When Trump spoke with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Jan. 28, the U.S. President said it was “the worst call by far” he’d made. 

The two leaders clashed over an agreement forged by the Obama Administration to accept 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention center, which Trump deemed “the worst deal ever.”
The spat threatened to derail a strategic alliance that stretches back decades — including American-led wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan — and push Canberra closer to Beijing. 

Already, China is Australia’s largest trading partner — two-way trade was $115 billion in 2014. Chinese students flock en masse to Australian universities, while Chinese consumers supped $400 million of Australian wine last year.
Still, fears of an Australian defection to China’s corner are misplaced for now, as illustrated by an incident that unfolded 4,600 miles away just hours after Li addressed reporters in Canberra. 

Feng Chongyi, a China-studies academic at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), was halted at Guangzhou International Airport attempting to board a flight back to Australia. 

He remains in Guangzhou in a "special situation," his lawyer Liu Hao tells TIME. 

No reason for the travel ban has been given.
Feng, who was born in China, is an Australian permanent resident though not a citizen, and reportedly entered China on a Chinese passport. 

Yet he was far from a dissident: he worked for UTS’s Australia-China Relations Institute, headed by former Foreign Minister Bob Carr, which has a reputation for unashamedly propagating a positive spin on the Australia-China relationship. 

Critics have even branded it the local “propaganda arm” of the Chinese Communist Party.
Feng's quasi detention stirred enough public alarm to prompt the shelving on Tuesday of a joint extradition treaty that had been on the books for 10 years and was finally due to be ratified by the Australian parliament. 

Most embarrassingly, the nixing came just hours after Li departed following his five-day visit. 

The incident stood to demonstrate that however closely entwined the two nations become economically, China’s poor human-rights record and repressive legal system will bridle how deep any alliance could ever be.
“Since the Trump election, China has gone on a bit of a charm offensive with Australia,” says Professor Nick Bisley, an Asia expert at Australia’s La Trobe University. 

“But it's far too early days to mark Australia out as a country that’s turning or even ripe for the turning.”
Australia’s wariness is partly prompted by China’s ham-fisted attempts of gaining domestic political leverage. 

In 2013, Chinese hackers stole the blueprints for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s (ASIO) new $480 million headquarters. 

The building remained empty until very recently. 

In October, Labor Party Senator Sam Dastyari was forced to resign from the shadow cabinet after it emerged that a Chinese government-linked company had paid a private travel bill. 

The 33-year-old is known for being sympathetic to Beijing’s expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea.
The Dastyari case prompted Australian intelligence services to map the flow of Chinese money and businessmen into Australia, augmenting demands for an end to foreign donations to political parties. There are also calls to ban Confucius Institutes from Australian universities. 

The Chinese government-funded cultural-promotion bodies have been accused of espionage and brazenly advancing Beijing’s political agenda.
“The China soft-power thing is taken very seriously by Australian security agencies,” says Carlyle Thayer, emeritus professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy. 

“And the realists in defense are very concerned about the South China Sea.”
The ideological gulf is good news for Washington. 

Speaking in Singapore earlier this month, Australian Minister Julie Bishop said that the "United States must play an even greater role as the indispensable strategic power in the Indo-Pacific ... While nondemocracies such as China can thrive when participating in the present system an essential pillar of our preferred order is democratic community." 

Still, deep economic ties between Australia and the U.S aggrandize the bedrock of shared values. Although China ranks top in Australia for trade, American investment dwarfs all competitors, standing at $660 billion in 2015. 

Unease at China’s underhand tactics is partly responsible. 

In April, the Australian government blocked the $283 million sale of the Kidman beef ranch — the world’s largest, roughly the size of Ireland — to Chinese investors as it was deemed "contrary to the national interest." 

The same reason was given for preventing a Chinese firm from buying a controlling stake in Australia’s largest electricity network in August.
“It’s hard to overstate how strong and deeply rooted the [U.S.-Australia] relationship is on both sides of the Pacific,” says Bisley. 

With China, he adds, “it’s a high-value but not a deep relationship.”

Rogue Nation

Former CSIS directors question Canada’s pursuit of extradition treaty with China
By STEVEN CHASE, ROBERT FIFE AND NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE

OTTAWA and BEIJING — Two former Canadian spymasters are questioning the wisdom of pursuing an extradition treaty with China, an undertaking the Liberal government announced shortly after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made his first official visit to the Asian power.
Australia paused efforts to enact a similar accord with China this week in the face of opposition, even from within Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s own party.
China immediately appealed to the Trudeau government not to follow Canberra’s lead. 

A cross-Pacific extradition treaty “is for mutual benefit. It deserves serious consideration,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Tuesday. 

But Ward Elcock, who served as director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service from 1994 to 2004, said Tuesday he doesn’t think Canada should ink an extradition deal with China.
Long demanded by China, an extradition treaty would commit Canada to transferring fugitive Chinese officials to a country known for biased courts and harsh interrogation methods – and where the death penalty can be imposed even for non-violent crimes.
He raised concerns about whether Canada would be able to obtain sufficient guarantees that individuals shipped back to China would be treated properly.
“The reality of the Chinese justice system is it is totally unlike our justice system, so we will have almost no guarantees in sending somebody back to China – even for what we would regard as a normal criminal prosecution,” Mr. Elcock said.
“Unless you were to extract specific guarantees from the Chinese with respect to things like [the] death penalty or whatever, I don’t think you would have any assurances that the Chinese justice system would provide the kind of fairness that we would expect in a trial procedure in Canada.”
Mr. Elcock said China is seeking such a treaty not only because it wants to more easily repatriate fugitives but also because it’s “looking for approval … as a great power”
Another former CSIS director, Reid Morden, said it would be extremely difficult for Canada to conclude an extradition treaty with China that would measure up to Canadian standards for human rights.
Mr. Morden, who headed the spy agency from 1988 to 1992, said China has shown little interest in improving human rights, pointing to the “fairly strident” comments that China’s new ambassador to Canada made to The Globe and Mail last week.
In his first interview since arriving in Canada in March, Ambassador Lu Shaye said that China does not want human rights to be used as a “bargaining chip” in free-trade talks with Canada.
“I don’t see how you could do an extradition treaty until you make up your mind on how tough you are going be on human rights and the peculiarities of the Chinese judicial system,” Mr. Morden said. “Getting a sufficient number of assurances and guarantees that would stand up to what is supposedly our test over human rights would be extremely difficult.”
In his interview with The Globe, Mr. Lu acknowledged that Canada has been dragging its feet on negotiating an extradition treaty, but did not elaborate on the reasons for the delay.
“China is very willing to discuss and sign the extradition treaty with Canada,” he said. 

“However, it hasn’t started maybe because Canada has some concerns. We hope to strengthen our co-operation in judicature and law enforcement, jointly cracking down on all crimes including abuse of power and economic crimes and making all crimes intolerable.”
This weekend, a senior Canadian official cast doubt on Ottawa’s willingness to complete an extradition treaty with China so long as its system remains permeated with abuses.
An agreement to hold bilateral talks on an extradition treaty was reached in Beijing on Sept. 12 between a top Communist Party official and the Prime Minister’s national security adviser Daniel Jean. 

A day later, a Chinese court ordered the deportation to Canada of jailed Canadian missionary Kevin Garratt.
“The two sides determined that the short-term objectives for Canada-China co-operation on security and rule of law are to start discussions on an Extradition Treaty and a Transfer of Offenders Treaty as well as other related matters,” according to an official communiqué released at the time.
The two men also agreed to finalize negotiations on a pilot project “where Chinese experts will be invited to assist in the verification of the identity of inadmissible persons from mainland China in order to facilitate their return from Canada to China.”
Canada usually forbids the extradition of people to countries with the death penalty, although Chinese fugitives have been repatriated on the condition they are not executed and that Canadian diplomats are permitted to visit them in prison.
During an official visit to Ottawa last September, Li Keqiang made it clear that high on China’s agenda is an extradition treaty to enable Beijing to seek the return of corrupt officials. 

More than 40 other countries, including France and Australia, have signed extradition treaties, he said.
But Australia’s Prime Minister had to shelve his country’s extradition treaty with China on Tuesday after a revolt from members of his own party made it clear it would not survive a vote in the country’s Senate.
Australia’s stern rebuke to China serves as a warning to Canada and other Western countries about the merits of co-operating with an autocratic regime whose judicial system condones torture and is susceptible to political interference.
“As long as China’s justice system is controlled by an authoritarian party, it would be very difficult for Canada to ensure that its extradited nationals are going to be given a fair trial,” said Maya Wang, China researcher for Human Rights Watch and one of the authors of “Special Measures,” a landmark report documenting abuses in the shuanggui system. 

That system is used by China’s Communist Party to extract confessions in a sweeping corruption crackdown that has extended to countries such as Canada.
Ottawa, Ms. Wang said, “should set clear benchmarks for China – abolishing shuanggui, freeing rights lawyers and committing to an independent judiciary – before giving China’s legal system such a vote of confidence.”
China’s detention and questioning of hundreds of lawyers in the past two years has brought new attention to the country’s judicial conduct, particularly after reports emerged that those lawyers were tortured in custody.
Beijing is eager for an extradition deal with Canada to help speed the return of people it accuses of being corrupt fugitives. 

China has named Canada one of the top destinations for such people and, without the ability to extradite, has mounted a campaign of intimidation and persuasion against those it says should be brought back to China to face justice.

Axis of Evil

Australian government suspends extradition treaty with China
By NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE

BEIJING — Facing a revolt from members of his own party, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has shelved an extradition treaty with Beijing, in a major rebuke to the trustworthiness of China’s justice system.
The decision will be closely watched in Ottawa, which agreed last fall to begin talks toward a similar deal with China, although officials have more recently cast doubt on the success of such talks so long as Beijing continues the extra-legal interrogation of corruption suspects.
In Canberra, the Prime Minister’s Office pulled the treaty early Tuesday after it became clear it would not survive a vote in the country’s Senate. 

A spokesman expressed disappointment, blaming opposition parties.
The imminent ratification of the extradition pact, the first between China and a member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, had sparked new debate in Australia about the merits of closer ties with a Chinese judicial system the international community has condemned for its use of torture and susceptibility to political interference.
Australian opposition to the extradition deal brought together a coalition of bitter political enemies, as well as some of Mr. Turnbull’s own backbench and former prime minister Tony Abbott.
“In my judgment, China’s legal system has to evolve further before the Australian government and people could be confident that those before it would receive justice according to law,” Mr. Abbott told The Australian on Monday.
Australia’s government introduced a legislative instrument to ratify the treaty on March 20, the final step before placing it into effect. 

Such an instrument is not a bill and does not require a vote to pass – unless legislators vote to disallow it.
But Mr. Turnbull’s Liberal government does not possess a majority in the Australian Senate and Cory Bernardi, a senator who recently defected from the Prime Minister’s party, led an effort to kill the treaty. 

He put forward a motion to disallow that was scheduled for debate Wednesday.
By Tuesday morning, however, it became clear that sufficient opposition had gathered to defeat the treaty, and the government backed down. 

In a statement, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said the government intends to “continue our discussions with the opposition,” citing “the importance of this treaty to Australia’s national interest.”
Signed in 2007, the treaty contained provisions against extraditing people at risk of torture or execution. 

But Mr. Bernardi, citing China’s 99.9 per cent conviction rate, raised questions about the fairness of Chinese courts and doubts about Australia’s ability to enforce promises not to mistreat suspects.
“We Conservatives will remain vigilant that no such treaty should be ratified by the Australian Parliament until the rule of law improves in China,” he said Tuesday. 

Australia’s “economic future is linked to China. But you don’t suspend your own internal judgment, or your own national sense of righteousness, simply for economic reasons,” he said in an interview Monday.
In Australia’s fractured Senate, Mr. Bernardi was able to play to smaller parties and independent candidates to block the treaty, despite a last-minute attempt by the Prime Minister to defend it.
It “needs to be ratified,” Mr. Turnbull said Monday, pointing to the recent interception of a Chinese shipment of more than $100-million worth of methamphetamine destined for Australia. 

Without legal co-operation between the two countries, the Prime Minister said, those drugs “would have been on the streets in Australia destroying Australian lives.”
But the international community has grown increasingly sharp in its condemnation of China’s exercise of justice.
Reports from the U.S. State Department and the United Nations Committee on Torture have called torture a deeply entrenched feature of the Chinese system, in contravention of the country’s own laws.
In February, the Canadian embassy in Beijing signed a letter to the Chinese government with representatives of 10 other countries to jointly express concern about what they called “credible claims of torture” of detained human-rights lawyers.
China also maintains an extensive extra-legal system, known as shuanggui, which interrogates graft suspects without arresting them, and uses sleep deprivation and other tactics of psychological torment to extract confessions.
In response to a Globe and Mail report detailing abuses in that system, a senior Canadian official said this weekend that a comprehensive extradition treaty with China is unlikely to succeed if those practices continue.
In Australia, meanwhile, the extradition treaty is unlikely to be revived unless the government can respond to objections raised against it, “which in effect would require aspects of the treaty to be renegotiated,” said Donald Rothwell, a top Australian international law scholar at Australian National University.
Renegotiation “is possible in theory, but I cannot speculate on whether the Turnbull government would seek to expend the political and diplomatic capital to do so,” he said.
Ratifying the extradition treaty would have amounted to a show of faith in Chinese justice, said Stuart Clark, a litigator who was president of the Law Council of Australia last year when it published a 30-page report opposing the treaty.
“Australia should not be endorsing, tacitly or otherwise, that system by allowing people to be returned in circumstances where they can’t be guaranteed a fair trial,” he said.
Shelving the treaty, he said, is “the right decision. There were not appropriate protections. And what is meant to be offered up as a fair trial in China is inconsistent with the concept in Australia.”

Guilty by association: China targets relatives of dissident exiled in Canada

By Nathan Vanderklippe

Weidong Xie came to Canada three years from Beijing China where he was a federal judge. His son was violently detained on Dec. 31.

On the last day of 2016, Xie Cangqiong and his new wife slipped into the underground parking lot at their Beijing apartment complex, ready to go out and celebrate his grandfather’s upcoming 100th birthday.
But when they arrived at their car, they noticed something wrong. 

Their tires had been slashed. 

Moments later, men clothed in black surrounded Mr. Xie, who is 27. 

He struggled to break free and howled in pain.
In a shaky video shot by his wife, he is briefly visible, held in the air by a group of men. 

“My husband’s leg is broken,” she says. 

The two had married only a week before, on Christmas Day. 

One of the men turns to her: “We are enforcing the law. You must co-operate with us.”
Moments later, the young man was gone. 

The family was told he was taken nearly 1,300 kilometres south to Hubei province, although they have not been able to locate him at detention facilities there. 

Police say he is suspected of embezzlement.
His family believes his real crime in the eyes of Chinese authorities is being the son of Xie Weidong, 60, a former Supreme People’s Court Justice who moved to Canada in 2014 and has been an outspoken critic of China’s justice system. 

Chinese authorities accuse the elder Mr. Xie of corruption. 

But bringing him back from Toronto would also silence him.
Mr. Xie has refused, saying he will be tortured if he goes.
So authorities have targeted his relatives, a common tactic in China as escalating government attempts to quash dissent test the limits of old methods of asserting control, such as jailing and sometimes torturing those accused of crimes.

The flourishing of international travel has made it far simpler to leave China, while social media allows those outside the country to maintain connections with large numbers of people back home.
Family members still in the country are being locked up instead.
Four months ago, Mr. Xie’s sister was detained. 

Now his son. 

He fears others will follow. 

Already, relatives have been barred from leaving China, including his son’s new wife, who has been told she cannot attend overseas conferences for work.
“They are using the methods which hurt me most,” he said in an interview.
“The whole family has fallen into extreme terror. They don’t dare to even call each other. My son was arrested for no reason, and everyone in the family knows him. Are they going to be arrested next?” he said.
Mr. Xie snorts at the charges against his son, who is accused of embezzling funds from a company the younger man himself controls. 

“He has the right to allocate company assets where he wants,” he said.
But Chinese authorities appear to be employing a tactic that has become common during sweeping recent campaigns against dissidents – campaigns whose reach has, like with Mr. Xie, extended far beyond China’s borders. 

“They’re using these cruel measures to force me to go back for questioning,” Mr. Xie says.
Exacting revenge on families is a Chinese practice that dates to ancient imperial times, a system of “guilt by association” that resulted in the execution of all relatives of a guilty person.
“It’s of course completely illegal,” said Jiang Jue, a scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who studies criminal procedures in China. 

“There is no legal basis for such tactics.”
For someone pursued by the Chinese state, the arrest of family members can cause feelings of intense personal guilt, amplified when others discover what has happened, and public support turns into public criticism, Dr. Jiang said.
One dissident told her that the detention of a loved one “turned many people against him. They said he was a selfish man, who did not give enough consideration to his family members.”
The prevalence of such tactics in the Chinese justice system illustrates its unreliability and should serve as a warning to the Liberal government in Ottawa, which has agreed to discuss an extradition treaty with China.
In some cases, the punishment for relatives can last for years. 

Liu Xia

Liu Xia has been kept under house arrest since 2010, when her husband, activist and writer Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize. (China has imprisoned Mr. Liu.)
And the pressure can take many forms. 

Canadian Miss World beauty-pageant contestant Anastasia Lin angered China last year by criticizing its treatment of Falun Gong practitioners. 

After she went public, her father, who ran a successful business in China, watched orders dry up. Money has grown tight and he has struggled at home.
“My cousin told me that his wife left him because he can’t even pay his son’s tuition any more – it’s that bad,” Ms. Lin said. 

“My worst fear is that one day [my father] just disappears.”
Reached by telephone, Ms. Lin’s father said “Don’t call me,” and hung up.
Such tactics have also been used against some of the hundreds of human-rights lawyers and activists arrested by authorities in the past year, as Chinese despot Xi Jinping seeks to reassert the primacy of the Communist Party.
“You see the authorities acting more swiftly to prevent family members from leaving to go abroad, or harassing them so they do not speak out for their loved ones,” said Maya Wang, China researcher for Human Rights Watch. 

Even very young children have been harassed she said, with at least one child prevented from attending kindergarten.
“Harassment against family members is part of an intensified campaign against activists,” she said. 

“People who speak out against the government pay a huge price.”
Mr. Xie worries that his son will be detained for years, as Chinese authorities have done to You Ziqi, a Canadian woman held in Chinese custody for bribing Mr. Xie while he was a Supreme Court judge. (It is because of her confession that Chinese authorities say they want Mr. Xie to come back; she says she was tortured into admitting guilt.)
Detention of his family members “could continue as long as I refuse to go back,” Mr. Xie said. 

“If I return, it’s possible they will get released. But if I do not confess guilt, they will be arrested again.”

China has sought to force him back, issuing an Interpol red notice against him, which acts like an international arrest warrant. 

Mr. Xie has disputed that notice, but his North American lawyers have so far been unsuccessful.
He is also fighting for permanent-resident status in Canada, where the government has said he is criminally inadmissible, a decision that is now under judicial review.
Mr. Xie, meanwhile, is left trying to sort out where his own breaking point lies. 

“My father is 99 now. If they bother my father, should I give in?” he said.
The experience has left him more disillusioned about the way justice is delivered in the system where he once held a senior role, before quitting in disgust.
In China, “the law often becomes a joke,” he said.
But, he added, others have endured even harsher treatment. 

“I am not the worst. There are many more.”