A lot of noteworthy things are being buried by the avalanche of news about the COVID-19 pandemic. One that passed last week was the fact that two Canadians have now spent more than 500 days of captivity in China.

If anything, the pandemic has made the conditions of their detention even worse. They’ve been in prison lockdown since early February, cut off from almost all contact with family and consular assistance.

The “two Michaels,” Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, were in an awfully tough spot before the pandemic struck.

They were arrested in December, 2018, on trumped-up espionage charges that could carry the death penalty, in clear retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the senior executive of Chinese telecom giant Huawei, after U.S. authorities requested her extradition.

The two Michaels are pawns in a legal fight between Washington and Beijing, with Ottawa trying to avoid being crunched in the middle.

But the way the COVID-19 crisis has unfolded shows that’s not the half of it. China’s rulers are showing themselves to be even more ruthless, more secretive, and more intolerant of criticism as the weeks go by.

There are, of course, the increasingly pointed questions about how far Chinese authorities went in covering up early signs of the coronavirus outbreak in Hubei province, which has now spread around the globe.

Those criticisms aren’t just coming from the likes of Donald Trump. Countries like Britain and France are urging an investigation into China’s mismanagement of the pandemic, as are people like Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian justice minister and renowned human rights campaigner.

Cotler signed a statement condemning China for covering up early signs of the pandemic’s spread and persecuting Chinese doctors who tried to get the news out. He calls it “China’s Chernobyl,” the moment when the system’s internal flaws inflict damage on the entire world.

No wonder China’s government has become ultra-sensitive. When the Trudeau government issued a mild statement last week expressing concern about the latest crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, the Chinese embassy in Ottawa snapped back with a statement of its own accusing Canada of “gross interference” in China’s internal affairs.

In fact, it was well within the bounds of normal diplomatic language. Canada has a long-standing and legitimate interest in making sure China lives up to its commitment to preserve democracy and legality in Hong Kong, given that some 300,000 Canadian citizens live there.

The Canadian government has generally stifled itself on China’s abuses of power in the interests of safeguarding its trading relationship with Beijing and keeping alive the possibility that the two Michaels will eventually be released.

And instead of joining the chorus of condemnation over China’s handling of the pandemic, Ottawa has instead focused on cooperating to fight COVID-19. It even shipped tons of emergency medical equipment to China in the first days of February, before the pandemic hit Canada.

For this Ottawa has been rewarded with vituperation from Beijing at the slightest criticism, and ordinary Canadians have likewise been told, in effect, to shut their mouths.

Such was the fate of a Canadian think-tank, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, last week when it issued the open letter signed by Cotler and dozens of others accusing Beijing of bungling the crisis. The Chinese embassy labelled that a “malicious slander” and accused the institute of acting as a tool of “anti-China forces.”

Right now the priority must clearly be fighting COVID-19, and if that means muting official criticism of Beijing for the moment, so be it. But once the crisis eases, Canada and other countries must not forget what it’s shown about how China treats both its own people and the rest of the world.

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It makes it all the more unlikely, for example, that Ottawa will be able to trust Beijing enough to permit Huawei to help build this country’s 5G wireless network.

The pandemic is revealing a lot of ugly things. One is the true nature of China’s rulers.

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