Article content continued

Photo by The Canadian Press/THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Mark Schiefelbein

Chinese citizens are no longer safe in Canada

There is a general consensus among democratic nations that the Chinese arrests of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig were made for purely political purposes. As the European Union wrote in a December statement, the arrest of the two Canadians endangers “legitimate research and business practices in China.” In response, the Chinese government has asserted that, actually, Canada is the one arbitrarily locking people up. “It is Canada, instead of China, that has arbitrarily detained foreign citizens under the pretext of law,” Hua Chunying said at a press conference earlier this month. Meng’s arrest is routinely described as “illegal” in the Chinese press and questions are raised about whether more Chinese will soon fall prey to her fate. “Is Canada still safe?” reads a mid-December post on China.com. The Chinese government, in fact, has issued official travel warnings for Chinese citizens going to Canada, urging them to exercise caution because of Canada’s “arbitrary detention” of Meng. In an editorial for the Hill Times, Lu Shaye accused Canadians of being fuelled by “Western egotism and white supremacy” and holding Chinese citizens to a double standard.

Photo by The Canadian Press/Justin Tang

“China is not afraid of trouble”

As a country that hasn’t won its own Stanley Cup in 25 years, Canadians would be familiar with the idea of a national inferiority complex. China has this problem on steroids. Colonial domination, the loss of several opium wars, brutal occupation by Japan before and during the Second World War; Communist China often refers to the 100 years preceding their 1949 revolution as the “Century of Humiliation.” Thus, a consistent theme of many Chinese accounts of the Meng arrest is that while Canada and other Western powers may have once been able to get away with this, times have changed. A Dec. 25 post in the news section of Chinese search giant Baidu cheered that China speaks with strength and that Huawei will only become more powerful as a result of Canada’s actions. It also called on all Chinese to fight against “foreign enemies” by supporting Huawei. “China is not afraid of trouble,” wrote the People’s Daily, adding that it would be a “mistake to underestimate the confidence, will, and strength of the country.” Hua Chunying even cited the 1840 Opium War with Great Britain in order to justify the planned execution of Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian who was originally serving a 15-year prison term for drug smuggling until a Chinese court suddenly upped his punishment to death. “The severe harm of drugs following the Opium War in 1840 is still very much alive in Chinese people’s memory and we will never allow drug traffickers of other countries to put the lives of Chinese people in jeopardy,” she said.