Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday lambasted Chinese Ambassador to Canada Cong Peiwu (叢培武) for threatening the “health and safety” of Canadians living in Hong Kong. Freeland said that Cong’s thinly veiled threat was “not in any way in keeping with the spirit of appropriate diplomatic relations between two countries.”
Canadian Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole said that Cong should apologize or leave Canada — an understandable response to the ambassador’s diplomatic gaffe. China’s response was to criticize Canadian officials and the media, rather than Cong.
Canadian leaders “did not verify, but also condoned the anti-China comments spreading across the nation and made groundless accusations against China,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian (趙立堅) said.
That Zhao would assume that Canadian leaders have control over what the country’s media and public say about China shows the disconnect between the mentality of China’s communist government and that of Canada’s democratically elected government.
Another example of this was on June 6, 2016, when Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) berated a Canadian journalist during a news conference in Ottawa for asking about human rights in China and the jailing of Canadian Kevin Garratt, who was charged with espionage. Wang told the reporter that she was being “irresponsible” by asking such questions.
“Your question is full of prejudice against China and arrogance... I don’t know where that comes from. This is totally unacceptable,” Wang said, according to a report by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
This attitude is not only exhibited toward Canada. Wang threatened Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil for last month’s visit to Taiwan, and Chinese officials have threatened to arbitrarily detain Americans living in China in retaliation for the US’ detention of Chinese academics suspected of espionage.
“We are aware that the Chinese government has, in other instances, detained American, Canadian and other individuals without legal basis to retaliate against lawful prosecutions and to exert pressure on their governments, with a callous disregard of the individuals involved,” US Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said in a statement, the New York Times reported on Sunday last week.
With China’s threatening of people in democratic countries in the public eye, President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration should take advantage of that, and press the governments of other democracies, such as the US, Canada and European countries, to establish formal relations with Taiwan. The government should also have an open door to foreign individuals and firms operating in Hong Kong and China, encouraging them to move their operations to Taiwan.
China often uses its sizeable consumer market as leverage to get away with threatening others, but the message is spreading that access to China’s consumers comes at a great cost, including the safety of foreigners in China, and the need to give the Chinese government access to intellectual property, company secrets and client records. Beijing also often restricts that access at a moment’s notice.
While Taiwan’s market is smaller than China’s, Taipei does not restrict foreign individuals and firms in this way; it does not leverage access to Taiwanese consumers for political ends. Taipei is also a great hub for managing regional operations.
When China becomes diplomatically isolated and loses its leverage, maybe its behavior will change.
Taiwan and its diplomatic friends must move quickly to isolate China, which has become bolder with no significant barriers to its hegemonic behavior. Democracies must also caution their residents about the dangers of operating in communist China — a gross violator of human rights — which regularly detains foreigners at will.
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