Many observers have been scratching their heads at Beijing’s increasingly frenzied “wolf warrior” diplomacy, with Chinese diplomats competing with one another to direct the most outlandish abuse possible on their host nations. If this were not damaging enough to its reputation in a post-COVID-19 world, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) continues to hone another tool with which to bludgeon unruly foreigners: hostage diplomacy.
In December 2018, two Canadians, former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor, were detained by Chinese authorities, just days after Huawei Technologies Co chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟) was arrested at Vancouver International Airport on a US warrant for fraud and contravening sanctions against Iran. Despite the suspicious timing, Beijing said that the incidents were entirely unrelated.
Now, after languishing without charges in China’s “black prison” system for 18 months, on Friday last week, China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate announced that it had charged Kovrig and Spavor with espionage, a crime punishable with life imprisonment.
Perhaps it is merely a quirk of fate, but just a few weeks prior to the announcement, a Canadian judge on May 27 ruled that proceedings to extradite Meng to the US could go ahead.
In addition, the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court on June 10 announced that Karm Gilespie, an Australian detained on drug charges for seven years, had been sentenced to death.
Of course, it is purely a coincidence that China and Australia are currently locked in an increasingly bitter diplomatic standoff, Canberra having the temerity to call for an international investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hostage diplomacy is a familiar Chinese tactic toward Taiwan. The depressing roll call of Taiwanese who have dissapeared in the past few years into the vortex of the “black prison” system includes human rights advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲) in 2017, Southern Taiwan Union of Cross-strait Relations Associations chair Tsai Chin-shu (蔡金樹) in 2018 and Morrison Lee (李孟居), a Hsinchu County resident who went missing in Shenzhen last year.
Reacting to the espionage charges against Kovrig and Spavor, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not mince his words.
At a daily briefing on Monday, Trudeau said: “This arbitrary detention of Canadian citizens is unacceptable and deeply concerning, not just to Canadians, but to people around the world who see China using arbitrary detentions as a means to political ends ... It has been obvious from the beginning that this was a political decision made by the Chinese government, and we deplore it and have from the very beginning.”
A prisoner swap that would entail exchanging Meng for Kovrig and Spavor has been mooted by several prominent members of Trudeau’s Liberal Party, including former Canadian deputy prime minister John Manley.
Trudeau dismissed the idea, pointing out that in Canada, the rule of law is sacrosanct. While the terrible plight of individuals wrongfully incarcerated in China is appalling, a prisoner swap would give Beijing exactly what it wants, and would encourage Xi and his cronies to engage in yet more kidnapping of foreign nationals.
Democratic nations must stand firmly together against Beijing’s crude hostage diplomacy, safe in the knowledge that such tactics would ultimately be self-defeating for China. How many foreign companies and individuals are willing to continue investing and doing business in a country where, at any moment, they might be bundled into the back of a van or have their door kicked down in the middle of the night?
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