VANCOUVER—Former British Columbia MLA Richard Lee recently revealed to Global News that during a 2015 visit to Shanghai, Chinese authorities arbitrarily arrested him at the airport. Chinese officials demanded that Lee provide them with the password to his government phone, and after detaining him for several hours, told Lee to leave China on the next flight back home.

The Chinese government never provided a reason for his detention, but Lee believes that his ordeal was linked to his political views: Every June 4, Lee publicly commemorates the victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre by participating in a candle-lighting service in Vancouver.

The Prime Minister’s Office has acknowledged receipt of Lee’s allegations. If pressed by Ottawa, Beijing may come up with a fake legal rationale as to why it held Lee in custody without specific allegations. But the real rationale seems clear enough: Those who criticize Beijing’s policies will face retribution.

Although Lee’s arrest is a brazen example of China’s attempts to set the parameters of Canadian discussion and debate, it is by no means the only one.

Just weeks ago, China’s new ambassador to Canada, Cong Peiwu, publicly warned Canadian lawmakers about signalling support for the protests in Hong Kong. Referring to the United States’ recently enacted Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, Cong threatened that “if somebody here really tries to … have this kind of law … it’s very dangerous.” Viewed as a one-off, Cong’s warning might not seem that inflammatory. But as China grows in power, remarks like Cong’s will become increasingly common.

China has long exerted an influence on Canadian corporate free speech as well. Canadian businesses eager to make money in China have learned that the quid pro quo for continued market access can include submission to Beijing’s world view. Last year, for example, Air Canada quietly complied with a Chinese governmental request to list Taipei as a part of China. Refusal to do so likely would have prevented Air Canada from winning new routes in the China market.

The greatest irony is that the Chinese government regularly stresses the principle of non-interference. Beijing claims not to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs and argues that foreign countries have no right to criticize Chinese domestic policies. Beijing’s treatment of Canada demonstrates the duplicity of their non-interference doctrine. The detention of a Canadian politician and the confiscation of Canadian government property constitute interference. Warning Parliament not to debate a topic constitutes interference.

Ottawa has failed to meaningfully respond to these oversteps. Perhaps the prime minister fears that a public response to Chinese encroachment would further complicate the already-frosty bilateral relationship. But silence and inaction have their own costs, too. If Beijing discovers that it can treat Canada as a vassal state without so much as a word of reproach, it will only continue to do so.

At the very least, the prime minister or his new Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne should issue a public statement criticizing Lee’s detention and Ambassador Cong’s remarks. The government must make clear that China has no right to define the terms of Parliamentary debate and that Canadian politicians and private citizens have every right to speak out against Beijing’s policies.

As proof that middle powers do stand up to China, Trudeau might look to recent remarks by Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. The Swedish branch of PEN International recently gave a human rights award to Chinese-Swedish book publisher Gui Minhai, who remains detained in China. After the Chinese ambassador warned the Swedish government not to participate in the awards ceremony, Löfven appropriately declared that Sweden “would never cave in to this kind of threat. Never. We have freedom of speech in Sweden and that is the point, period.”

A similar statement may be too much to ask of our own prime minister. But such a statement would demonstrate that when pressed, Canadians hold to their values. The current approach — silence — is cowardly, and in the long term is likely to result in an even more inequitable relationship with China.

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Preston Lim is a J.D. candidate at Yale Law School. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton and represented Canada as a Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University, where he received a master’s of Global Affairs. He has worked as a policy adviser to MP Erin O’Toole and has been recognized by China Hands magazine as a Top 25 under 25 Leader in US-China Relations.

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