Canada’s relations with China have become increasingly tense recently, resulting in trade sanctions and the arrest of citizens. Should Canada get tougher with China? Anastasia Lin, an ambassador on Canada-China policy for the Macdonald-Laurier Instititue argues yes, while Robin V. Sears, a public and government relations expert with years of experience working in China, argues no.

I’m a Chinese-Canadian. When I was crowned Miss World Canada in 2015, hoping to get a bigger platform to speak about human-rights issues, the Chinese Communist Party tried to silence me by threatening my father and other relatives in China. My family and I were left to defend ourselves against the might of the regime.

I felt frightened and alone. My family was in danger because I had exercised my right to free expression as a Canadian citizen. And my government was not there to support me. I met bureaucrats and diplomats at Global Affairs Canada, asking them to raise the issue with their Chinese counterparts. They insisted the situation was “complex” and they had no “action responsibility.” The best they could do was “monitor” such cases, like my father’s.

My story illustrates the nature of Communist China. To intimidate overseas Chinese critics, the party uses their families in China for leverage, targeting their livelihoods, reputations and connections. This unprincipled regime functions purely on the basis of fear and reward. Its leaders fear strength and dominate people by exploiting their fear and greed.

For all its economic power and pretence of modernization, China is ruled by the same unrepentant totalitarian state that has killed some 65 million citizens over 70 years. It is the same regime that mowed down peaceful students in Tiananmen Square in 1989. It is the same government that is locking up over a million Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps. It is the same government that arrests innocent Chinese citizens and slaughters them for their organs.

The party takes a similar approach to foreign states and businesses. It pressures governments to act contrary to their democratic principles. It forces foreign companies to turn over their intellectual property as a precondition of doing business in China and otherwise manipulates the domestic Chinese economy to secure unfair advantages.

Western countries, including Canada, have long believed that “engagement” — such as accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 — will change China for the better. Instead, Beijing has exploited the rules for its own advantage while failing to abide by them.

Since December, China has imprisoned two Canadian citizens, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, in an effort to pressure Canada to release Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, who faces U.S. fraud charges. China has also held Sun Qian, a dual Chinese-Canadian citizen, since her arrest in February 2017, routinely torturing her because she is a Falun Gong practitioner while our political leaders remain silent.

In this context, Canada’s tired “business as usual” appeasement strategy must be abandoned. China will not be persuaded by passivity, and Canadians languishing in Chinese prisons won’t be released until we stand up to Beijing. We must take a tougher stance on China, with consistent, measured, and firm responses in order to show that its attempts to coerce Canada will never work.

We should continue to engage our allies in the region to support us in this current dispute, but that will require we prove willing to stand up for ourselves by taking bold action — and we have many tools at our disposal.

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For example, Canada should improve our relationships with like-minded countries, such as Taiwan and India, apply Magnitsky sanctions against officials involved in the inhumane treatment of Uyghurs, and pass laws to combat Chinese influence operations in Canada.

We should accept the findings of the China Tribunal and advance further investigations into the organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience. We should also expel or arrest Chinese officials in Canada suspected or known to be engaged in espionage. And the government should ban Huawei from involvement in Canada’s 5G.

By taking a tough stance, China’s bullying tactics will finally be met with resistance. Not only is this morally right, but it is the only way to protect Canadian interests in this dispute.

For decades, the world has turned a blind eye to Communist China’s atrocities in the naive hope that prosperity would lead to political liberalization. This approach now threatens to erode the freedoms Westerners take for granted. If free nations stand up for our principles, it will preserve our own liberty and give hope to the Chinese people, who have endured seven decades of repression.

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Anastasia Lin is an actor, human rights activist and former Miss World Canada. She is the ambassador on Canada-China Policy for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a senior fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. “ Badass Beauty Queen ,” a documentary about Lin's story, is available to view online.

Federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer “getting tough on China” conjures an image of a dimple-cheeked short-panted schoolboy in the ring with a 300-pound wrestler. Excruciating to contemplate. China’s swift angry dismissal of criticism about unrest in Hong Kong by the U.K. and the U.S. is a pretty good predictor of the impact of “tough-talking” Canadians.

Our short-term goal is to assemble a wide coalition of allies, to protest loudly and in private. China cares deeply about its global approval. It is beginning to reverberate in Beijing that its global approval level is now heading to a 30-year low and falling. But Canada shouting alone is not painful. Twenty OECD nations regularly raising hell, more so.

Now that another Canadian appears to have been arbitrarily arrested the need for strong allies has gone up. But none of this will prevent another clash. A more subtle long-term approach is needed to have any hope of permanent change.

Nearly half a century ago, on a snowy day in November outside Helsinki, a semisecret discussion was launched. It gave birth to one of the great unsung successes of the Cold War era. The Helsinki Accords helped form the foundation of détente. What became the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe started as a Soviet effort to separate Western Europe from the U.S., and to deepen its hold on Warsaw Pact nations.

By the skill and craft of statesmen like Willy Brandt, the West German chancellor and his counterparts in Austria and Finland, “the Helsinki Process” was by 1975 flipped to become a framework for rights and freedoms for all Europeans. Nonetheless, the Accords were greeted with skepticism, even derision.

Today, it provides a forum for dialogue among 57 nations on human rights, security, refugees, and press freedom — among many other files. Canada was always at the table, where the OSCE’s genius slowly unfolded. It became the forum where the Soviets could be held accountable for their treatment of dissidents. The forum helped create the atmosphere that allowed arms negotiations to succeed. Crucially, it helped keep the post-Communist era from sliding into chaos.

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Joe Clark tried to craft a similar stability building structure in the Pacific. The Americans were not keen and the project failed. But Clark’s instinct was surely correct — today even more so.

Those nations, including Canada, need an independent, trusted forum for private debate and confidence-building. There is no effective one now where, for example, respect for marine boundaries or cybersecurity, can be debated. Perhaps it’s time to build an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Pacific Asia.

No, this will not gain the release of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor or other prisoners of leverage. They will be released as a result of international pressure and a wider agreement between China and the U.S. We need to be careful that our campaign does not make good election fodder, at the expense of the treatment of our prisoners. The experience of fighting for the release of Soviet dissidents was that unrelenting quiet pressure was more effective than a megaphone.

Why did the Soviet Union sign the Helsinki Accords? Many reasons, but high among them was an improvement in international perception. If China can be made to understand that there is an escape from its reputational downward spiral, is that not more likely to succeed than our public anger alone? Willy Brandt’s quiet Ostpolitik — his strategic engagement with the Soviets — first enraged the Americans and was later embraced by them, because it worked.

As Henry Kissinger has said many times in recent years, we may only hope that the statesmen at the beginning of this century have greater success at integrating a rapidly rising and dissatisfied power into the community of nations, than did their forbearers with Germany, at the beginning of the previous century, “else the 21st century risks becoming as tragic and bloody as was the last.”

Tough talk alone will not win our prisoners’ release. Worse, it does nothing to prevent a rerun the next time conflicts flare. Years of tough, focused diplomacy in harness with our key allies and friends around the Pacific might.

Who knows, maybe a “Singapore Process” launched under the sponsorship of the world’s most successful ministate, one very adept at diplomacy with China, might be the trigger for real sustainable change.

RS member of the Canada China Business Council, spent 12 years living in Hong Kong and Tokyo, acting as trade diplomat, business consultant and executive search consultant. Robin V. Sears , a principal at Earnscliffe Strategy Group and a boardmember of the Canada China Business Council, spent 12 years living in Hong Kong and Tokyo, acting as trade diplomat, business consultant and executive search consultant.

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