Canada could tell China to release our prisoners — or else. But ‘or else’ what?

Opinion

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This article was published 18/03/2021 (1334 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

China’s courtrooms are sealed off, our Canadian diplomats are shut out, and our “two Michaels” remain locked up in limbo until further notice.

We are at our moment of maximum helplessness.

One trial came on Friday, a second hearing is expected Monday. Convictions to come at a moment of China’s choosing.

Timed for maximum impact.

The verdicts will mean everything and nothing, for conviction rates are just shy of 100 per cent in a judiciary controlled by the Communist Party. The sentences will be daunting, but they are not destined to be served out in full.

Our fellow citizens are merely pawns and precursors for a future compromise deal. Before the resolution comes the rhetoric, and before the de-escalation comes the escalation.

Brace yourself for reflexive demands, here at home, for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to retaliate and excoriate. Critics will call on Canada to stand up for itself and finally show Beijing we mean business.

Release our fellow Canadians — or else. Or else what?

The two Michaels — and by extension, all of us — have been held hostage for more than two years. China’s hostage diplomacy culminated with a two-hour secret show trial Friday for expatriate entrepreneur Michael Spavor.

Canada’s chargé d’affaires was barred at the door of Spavor’s courtroom hearing, in violation of treaty obligations requiring consular access to trials. Career diplomat Michael Kovrig faces the same choreography Monday, with China breaking every rule in the book.

Canadians are in the dock, but we are a sideshow. To map out our next move, we must remember that we are bit players and bystanders on a bigger stage.

Little we do matters to China, unless we do as it says — by releasing Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou before she can be extradited to the U.S. Or as many Canadians are imagining or mumbling out loud, we might revoke her bail or place her under harsh conditions amounting to torture, mirroring the treatment of the Canadians detained in China.

But of course we can’t, because our judiciary operates independently and is bound by the rule of law. China does as it pleases because its judges are appendages of the political apparatus, but Canada is not China.

And so we are powerless spectators to a superpower confrontation being played out in Washington and Beijing — and in Anchorage, where the main players from the two rival countries lectured and hectored one another from across a bargaining table Thursday. China unleashed its new brand of “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy, with a defiant public harangue of the U.S. aimed at domestic audiences.

The unprecedented display does not augur well for fantasies of a Canadian riposte and diplomatic resolution. In fact, Canada’s escalating rhetoric hasn’t stayed China’s hand, any more than American tactics have given it pause.

A recent Parliamentary declaration accusing China of genocidal actions in Xinjiang might have been the right thing to do, but it hasn’t righted any wrongs. There can be little doubt our politicians felt less constrained about lashing out at China of late.

But if they entertained quiet hopes that our public critiques — on genocide, Hong Kong’s autonomy or hostage diplomacy — would make Beijing think twice about the two Michaels, the show trials on Friday and Monday should put an end to any such fantasy or faint hope. Deciding to “get tough” or resolving to no longer “pull our punches” won’t get us anywhere — neither further ahead nor behind.

Our Parliamentary declarations are perhaps not entirely pointless, but they are largely beside the point. As long as China remains a rogue state and an economic bully, we can neither extricate ourselves diplomatically, nor isolate ourselves economically.

America got us into this mess. America, together with other like-minded countries, can and must help get us out of it.

Therein lies our leverage and our sole recourse. We must align ourselves with others feeling the lash of China’s growing superpower pretensions and economic ambitions.

While our collective voices are stronger, let us not imagine that public declarations or symbolic sanctions will win the day. On the eve of the diplomatic talks in Anchorage, the U.S. imposed sanctions on 24 top Chinese officials last week for overriding their country’s treaty promising to respect Hong Kong’s autonomy.

China’s response? It promptly announced the Canadians would face trial.

So much for bending Beijing’s will. China is determined to make an example of the two Michaels, and all Canadians, so that all other middle powers — and the other superpower — will learn the steep price to be paid for defying its will.

Nothing Canada has done on its own, or can do alone, will change that. That doesn’t mean we must acquiesce to Beijing’s diktats, merely that we must rally other countries whose citizens are also being held hostage by Chinese tactics — notably Australia, India, the Philippines, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S.

International relations are too often governed by the law of the jungle, not the rule of law. This is not a morality play but a brutal chess game, and we are far from the end game.

Martin Regg Cohn is a Toronto-based columnist focusing on Ontario politics and international affairs for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @reggcohn