This appears to be an aspect of the anti-corruption drive that has been holding billionaires and politically connected people high up in the Chinese government to account of the law, with Xiao Jianhua caught in financial fraud.
The controversy here isn't that China took Xiao Jianhua in to face the law, but that he was taken from Hong Kong, where an agreement with Britain gives its former colony de facto autonomy within its small borders until 2047 - which disallows Chinese police from entering there on their own until that time.
I haven't seen any reports yet about whether there has been cooperation with the Hong Kong provisional government (which would make his capture legal). Then, it's hard to determine exactly what happened as the source linked here hasn't done that investigation yet - and is reporting on rumors that there was a small (but notable if true) sovereignty violation.
It's not clear to me whether the anti-corruption drive arises out of a genuine antipathy towards corruption or as a means for Xi Jinping to consolidate personal power. This is especially hard because it seems likely that every Chinese bigwig is at least somewhat corrupt, and high-level Chinese power politics is opaque enough that it's not clear if only Xi's rivals are being targeted.
I really don't know how to unpick that knot, but I don't think it's an angle that should be ignored.
It seems to me that it's an actual genuine effort, given that the publicity of the drive has damaged Chinese public confidence in their institutions of government (high profile corruption is often featured in the news) and because many of the people taken to court have been in Xi Jinpeng's own circle and have represented for him a loss of personal power in the party. I haven't read much about Xi's personal power growing all particularly much during the anti-corruption drive, and there is a legitimate question whether he will be revoted to lead the party during the congress next year (though it is expected to continue).
Definitely this angle on understanding the drive should not be ignored. An attempt to corroborate it - to unpick the knot - would require a great amount of study of the Chinese People's Party, of Xi Jinping's constituency, and both the consistency of and the timing of charges brought to bring in the high level fraud. Documents and communications from Jinping or his circle discussing "who to go after" would represent a smoking gun (of course we haven't even smelled anything like this).
I read an expose from Foreign Policy where they tried to build a case that Xi Jinping has been using it to consolidate power, but it was very clumsy and as its predictions and information came into question the investigative direction taken by the expose has been abandoned (as far as I can tell).
The way the anti-corruption drive has proceeded, as I understand, has been in tracking how government finances are being used and that the Chinese Government tends to find - using traditional accounting audits - rings of people who are enriching themselves using various schemes (though many times really obvious transfers into personal accounts). So far it has appeared that the anti-corruption effort has both been making an actual positive effect on government efficiency and that it has been primarily non-political and untargetted, focusing more on finding abuse of public funds than in chasing after any officials in particular.
I would be inclined towards genuine antipathy towards corruption.
I have a brother that at one point regularly dealt with top levels of Chinese government. His summary was, "China is a country of crooks ruled by honest men; the USA is a country of honest men ruled by crooks." He's not sure which is worse in the end.
Based on that, I would bet on the top levels of the Chinese government being basically ethical (albeit within an ethical system that values life and liberty a lot less than we would).
And this is the exact same argument that is made by oligarchs everywhere... Oligarchs pillage their own countries and people, then when it goes south they escape to the west, claiming they're political refugees, and perpetuate the cycle of corruption.
You know China very well. There is no genuine antipathy towards corruption in Chinese ruling group. However, there is genuine antipathy towards corruption benefiting opponents in Chinese ruling group.
The anti-corruption campaign is the official reasoning to clean up high positions of competing groups to the current leadership. Common practice when a new leader starts.
Thus, if people think the reason is not yet known, then they are probably correct.
This is a fairly generous interpretation. The more realistic view is that this is part of an on-going purge of Xi Jinping's foes. I don't think history is going to see this as anything other and this kind of thing is fairly common in China. The strict "anti-corruption" legislation gives the PRC leadership quite the leeway to punish those who they deem their enemies. This is a typical ploy in autocratic regimes.
As with the bookstore employees, there won't be a thorough investigation and the "truth" will always be in doubt because that is how China likes it. Instead, we have to rely on rumors and such, again, because China.
It is pretty obvious what happened, and again, HK has been going in this direction now for a couple of years.
I don't have a lot of sympathy for this man's problems. When you're making your billions from the corruption in the Chinese state, you run the risk of ending up on the wrong side of it. It's no different than any other organized crime.
I will be very surprised if Canada does or says anything of significance, given that these people are politically unpopular and causing issues for British Columbia. China has all the power here. The best I imagine he will get is a diplomat to issue a strongly worded protest that has no teeth.
I am a Canadian citizen who lives in British Columbia and is not Chinese or of Chinese descent. The fact that a Canadian citizen was "seized" is very concerning to me and I hope that our government gets on top of this swiftly.
I also don't see any facts on which you can base your corruption claim.
>I also don't see any facts on which you can base your corruption claim.
"Some of his most successful deals involved buying stakes in midsize financial institutions in smaller Chinese cities, often through a complex web of shell or dummy corporations. When Citigroup and other investors agreed to buy a big stake in the Guangdong Development Bank, for instance, one of Mr. Xiao’s investment vehicles — Puhua Investment — took an 8 percent interest, and then just weeks later transferred it to another state financial institution. Few analysts or journalists knew he was involved.
While shell companies are widely used in China as investment vehicles, securities experts say they can also be employed to hide the ownership stakes of public officials, providing cover for favors distributed by businessmen. Their frequent use by Mr. Xiao has fanned speculation that he gets privileged access to deals involving state assets and that he shares the benefits with the families of the ruling elite."
[...]
"But a review of corporate registration records has found that on at least three occasions during the last five years, companies affiliated with Mr. Xiao have struck deals that appear to have benefited the relatives of China’s highest-ranking leaders."
> I also don't see any facts on which you can base your corruption claim.
The Canadian government hides most everything from it's citizens, especially when it comes to China. Statistics on real estate transactions using money from overseas are considered none of our business. People operating illegal hotels out of houses while not paying taxes on revenue? Just fine. Egregious tax evasion? No problem. Buying citizenship, driver's licenses, etc? A-ok.
All of these things are happening, but none of them are considered "facts", and you certainly won't ever see any facts if the government refuses to enforce the law on certain subsets of the population.
I think parent is making a good point. See, in corrupt/poor countries when someone becomes a billionare he does not get the benefit of doubt. The entire legal and executive systems are so rotten and shady that there is no legal way for someone to become that rich unless they play dirty regardless of their capabilities, luck, education or great ideas.
> Mr. Xiao’s fortunes rose after his graduation from the university in 1990, where he had been head of the official student organization and stayed loyal to the government during the pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989.
This guy is Canadian and Antiguan in name only, he's Chinese-born and trying to use his resources to escape the government that created his wealth. Of all the human rights/border violations that China commits, this isn't a good poster child.
That's probably why they forcibly moved him across the border, taking a step to normalize the behavior, before moving on to more sympathetic targets in the future.
The fact of the matter is that in political situations, there is a calculated risk taken by both states in a diplomatic conflict. At the end of the day it is about power and what resources are required to fight this. China has the upper hand here.
On the Chinese side, they have renditioned a Chinese-born, Chinese-made, PRC-living billionaire from a Chinese SAR that's more "one country, one and a half systems" and slipping further as China can get away with it. This man's rendition is likely part of an anticorruption initiative that started a few years back, given that it was done by Chinese security services. He pissed off the wrong people in the Party and now he is having to deal with it.
As the man is a Canadian citizen, the Canadian government now has to decide how much to protest this action. Protesting actions against their citizens requires political will and/or capability of enforcement. China has already stepped over the usual line and stolen him away anyway; will the Canadian state act? This is where I am skeptical. I don't believe that the Canadian state will find that this man is worth burning more than a little diplomacy on, maybe a protest or two.
Fighting this action requires burning political capital. There is a province in which these people have become woefully unpopular; unless a lot of Canadians get really angry, there is little reason for the Canadian state to do more than informally protest through an ambassador and at best a back room dealing or two to free him (e.g. we will share financial data on Chinese-Canadian citizens if you give us our citizen back.) Either way, by making the first move China has extracted something from Canada.
To add: I also believe that the UK will not do anything regarding this rendition. They have enough international issues to deal with re: EU/Brexit and I doubt they will feel that Hong Kong is important enough to their shrinking empire to push back on China with this.
US/CIA does "extraordinary rendition" all the time and sends missiles into sovereign states via drone daily. Whether or not one objects doesn't matter if there is no way to deter the behavior. If China sees no consequences China will do as China pleases. Law is irrelevant.
I agree that I don't like seeing China wandering into Hong Kong, but the way China acts, the "one country, two systems" thing really is in name only. China will eventually subsume all of Hong Kong as they see fit. The question is whether it is done subversively or not. As of right now, the subversive actions are costing them less on the world's stage so they'll keep chipping away at the SAR until it is at least controlled by puppets of the PRC government.
> given that these people are politically unpopular and causing issues for British Columbia.
so who are you speaking for when you use the blanket term "these people"? Are Chinese Born Canadians and other East Asian Canadians included in your labels?
I'm seeing more and more of these anti-Chinese comments popping up on reddit /r/vancouver and frankly annoyed to see similar fear mongering and FUD spreading fake comments outside of that cesspool of bitter and shut in crowd.
What the hell does British Columbia have to do with this man? He made his money in China and he got kidnapped. What possible blame do you place on this person or the government of BC? As far as I am aware, Canada has never successfully extracted hostages or expats in physical trouble by foreign government or militias.
There's no Seal Team Six and CSIS really isn't tasked with Jason Bourne styled missions which you are thinking of.
I interpreted "these people" to mean wealthy Chinese-born Chinese nationals who are taking their wealth out of China and parking it in British Columbia real estate. This would exclude Canadian-born Canadian citizens of East Asian descent.
This man obtained Canadian citizenship. He must have ties to one province or another. British Columbia is the most likely candidate since it is on the West Coast.
> There's no Seal Team Six and CSIS really isn't tasked with Jason Bourne styled missions which you are thinking of.
I'm not sure how you extrapolated my post to this extreme. I replied to a poster below as to how I am viewing the politics of the situation in more detail, if you'd prefer to get a more reasoned view than the "gut summary".
I'm not anti-Chinese. I don't live in Vancouver. It would be rather strange for me to be anti-Chinese; see my bio. I personally get a lot of benefit from East Asia. If anything, you could say that I am in many ways pro-Chinese, but I support the Chinese people.
What I do have is a strong dislike for people like this man, who have made billions for themselves through graft, rent-seeking, and cronyism by ingratiating themselves with the party elite. Much of this man's economic wealth is extracted from ordinary Chinese people. When I wrote "these people" I was not talking about Chinese: I was talking about Chinese nationals that made their wealth through corruption and exploitation instead of providing true value to their greater countrymen, then run off to a Western sovereign state in hopes that their actions don't catch up with them.
> I'm seeing more and more of these anti-Chinese comments popping up on reddit /r/vancouver and frankly annoyed to see similar fear mongering and FUD spreading fake comments outside of that cesspool of bitter and shut in crowd.
It's not really an 'anti-Chinese' sentiment I'm seeing. It's more that British Columbians aren't happy with the effects of the influx of global capital and high net worth individuals on Vancouver. An additional factor into the negative attitudes around the influx of high net worth foreigners there is a sense (coupled with a fair bit of evidence) that many of these real estate speculators and high net worth individuals aren't playing by the rules and are avoiding taxes and other rules.
I understand that this is a sensitive issue, but your point would be stronger if you dropped the tone by several degrees. In this case, you seriously misrepresented the parent and turned what should be a very civil conversation into the polarized bullshit that absolutely ruins the internet.
> so who are you speaking for when you use the blanket term "these people"?
I'm not the GP, but I think it very clearly means corrupt people.
Still, I have almost as much problem taking China's government accusation of corruption on face value as I have believing somebody can honestly become a billionaire in China.
From your link: "She then said Xiao had contacted her and did not want to exaggerate the incident, according to the report."
I'm not sure the incident could be exaggerated, given China's propensity to execute those convicted of corruption/embezzlement. They kidnapped a billionaire in another country with the likely intent to kill him sooner or later.
Hong Kong is not a country. It is an autonomous territory. It has only a little higher legal status than someplace like Guam or Puerto Rico, and that tiny bit is only there because of the sufferance of the higher government.
Hong Kong does not have an army (even US states have their own militias). It does not defend its own borders. It does not negotiate its own diplomatic affairs.
However, HK is still subservient to its parent government in terms of legal matters. Taking a foreign national would be a political affair that Hong Kong has no actual right to adjudicate.
The only thing Hong Kong has is a separate legal system, immigration control, and its own delegates in international bodies like the WTO.
Mossad abducted Adolph Eichmann in Argentina and took him to Israel. US Navy Seals raided and killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. Indian army stormed across the LoC and destroyed terrorist camps in Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Chinese police captured Xiao Jianhua in Hongkong and took him across the border.
When are these actions justified? Only when someone is a killer or a torturer or a terrorist? Or are they okay in case of (allegedly) corrupt billionaires as well? Tough question, imho.
I don't have a good answer for where the line is, but at least in the cases of bin Laden and Kashmir, normal channels for arrest and extradition wouldn't have worked. I'm less sure about Eichmann, but according to Wikipedia, Argentina had a history of refusing to extradite Nazis.
In this case, China shouldn't have had any trouble getting Hong Kong authorities to arrest and extradite this person, so it doesn't seem like the same thing.
> In this case, China shouldn't have had any trouble getting Hong Kong authorities to arrest and extradite this person, so it doesn't seem like the same thing.
Given the current political situation in Hong Kong, this may not be a valid assumption.
All diplomatic power boils down to the lowest common denominator which is military capability.
A weaker country can claim foul all they want but the military capable country will simply ignore it when it is in their interest and act with force which will see no resistance from a weaker country.
Power justifies as well as corrupt those who wield it.
As I grow older, I seem to be coming to the same conclusion again and again - there is nothing right or wrong, moral or amoral. Power is what matters. Heck, entire notion of "Government" can be boiled down to "entity with monopoly on force" for a given area.
"After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he obtained Swedish residency, and later became a naturalised citizen of Sweden, upon which he renounced his Chinese citizenship."
He has a teenage daughter in Sweden today.
He was holidaying in Thailand when he was kidnapped by Chinese agents. (Thailand obeys China...)
The "offical" Sweden is scared about negative trade consequences (China punished Norway quite thoroughly just because the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a Chinese citizen) so they pretend like nothing has happened.
Gui Minhai eventually showed up in an obviously staged segment in Chinese state TV where he confessed to some crime he hadn't committed, and then begged Sweden to leave him alone, since he was now back in China "ready to answer to his crimes".
This is one of the most shameful aspects of Sweden that I know today, as a Swede. There is no way we would accept this unless there was quite a lot of trade at risk... and even considering this, it feels so wrong to give into them this easily.
This is a man who when he escaped to Sweden in the 80s trusted that Sweden would stand up for him.. Little did he know that the social democratic government (this is the same party that the assasinated Olof Palme used to run) would let him down so badly. :/
The creepiest part of that incident is that after weeks of no communication, the bookseller "wrote" an email to his daughter saying that he is alright and not to worry about him.
Hong Kong has fallen, democracy there officially died after they refused to let those two legislators swear in.
Not sure whose idea it was to let HK get handed over to the commies back in the 1990's, why Taiwan didn't make a louder claim to it, or why HK didn't assert its right to independence from extraterritorial governments altogether.
At that point, Hong Kong was entirely dependent from the fresh water provided by the mainland, to the point that if the taps were ever closed, hundreds of thousands would have died before alternative sources would have been available. You cannot just ship enough water for 6.5M people, and HK authorities were scared that if they started constructing desalinization systems, PRC would pressure them to stop doing that with the threat of immediately cutting off the water. PRC had effective power over HK before they were granted legal power over it.
Before the time of the transition they stressed that all the current treaties for water were written to end at the time of transition, and that they would not be willing to renegotiate them.
Any attempt to keep HK or to turn them over to Taiwan would have resulted in mass death and evacuations.
Given the cold shoulder he's given Taiwan's president, who is also the first female leader democratically elected in Asia, and how he barely responded to Wang Yi's belligerent behavior in Canada, I'd say Trudeau will do nothing.
When it comes to might vs right, Canada generally sides with might. To be honest, other than the US, the only country I can even imagine standing up to China for the well-being of a 3rd party is Japan.
I wonder, what would the world be like today if the UK had refused to give back Hong Kong? Or, they could have refused to switch recognition from ROC to PRC, and then handed Hong Kong to ROC instead?
The US and the UK basically gave the PRC everything they wanted in switching the UN's China seat from ROC to PRC. They could have driven a much harder bargain – e.g. have two Chinas in the UN, just like it has two Koreas and used to have two Vietnams, two Germanys, two Yemens, etc; then HK and Macau could have been given back to ROC instead of PRC. But the US and UK were so obsessed with using PRC to spite the Soviets, they weren't thinking about what it would mean 20, 30, 40 years later when the Soviet Union was defunct.
China needed strong assurances from the US and UK that formally splitting from the Soviet Union wouldn't see the American alliance then turn against China in a divide-and-conquer strategy.
Could we have gotten a better deal? I'm not sure. Given the earlier incursion into Vietnam and Korea, the military support of the ROC and the militarization of the First Island Chain, I can't imagine that anything short of the very strong reassurance the alliance pursued with the "One China Policy" would have been acceptable.
The move is one of the only things heralded of the scandal-plagued Nixon Administration as a wild success for the United States, and is even often credited for being the key diplomatic victory that ultimately won America the Cold War.
Did the US-China alliance win the Cold War? To what extent did it contribute to the fall of the Soviet Union? I think most of the reasons why the Soviet Empire fell were internal factors rather than external pressures, and the US-China alliance made at best a marginal difference to the outcome.
Indeed, what did the US and its allies actually get out of their anti-Soviet alliance with PRC? Nixon hoped that it would help the US in Vietnam; but obviously it didn't – South Vietnam lost the war and they probably would have lost it just the same even if Nixon's China trip never happened. More broadly, I honestly can't see any military benefits for the US and its allies from the deal. The various potential military hotspots – Vietnam, the Korean peninsula, the South China Sea – would probably be in much the same state if the US-China deal never happened. Obviously some sort of understanding with PRC had to be reached eventually, since pretending ROC was the government of the whole of China wasn't tenable in the long run, but the US could have extracted some major concessions from PRC in exchange for recognition instead of basically conceding to PRC all its major objectives – an alliance against the Soviets was not a huge concession from PRC given that PRC and USSR were already mutually hostile since the Sino-Soviet split of the early 1960s.
Many people say that Nixon's decision was a great strategic move, but I am unconvinced – the US got some short-term assistance against the Soviets which it didn't really need and didn't make much difference anyway; in exchange, the US put itself in a weaker strategic position vis-à-vis China for many decades to come.
And of course, China's economic development since the 1980s has provided many economic benefits to the US and its allies. But, that still could have happened even if there was a more assertive US policy towards PRC, such as a "two Chinas policy" of recognising both PRC and ROC and maintaining diplomatic relations with both. Under this model, it would not be essential that PRC itself abandon the "one China" position, merely that it be willing to accept trade and diplomatic relations with countries that adopted the "two Chinas" position instead. If the US had made that the price for US-PRC trade from the outset, I think Beijing probably would have come around to paying it. In the 1970s, the US was a vastly richer country than PRC (the gap is still there but it has closed a lot in the last 30-40 years), and PRC had far more to gain from US trade than vice versa, so the US arguably had more power to set the ground terms for the relationship – but the US despite having the far stronger hand chose not to play it.
The Brits' hands were tied. Modern Hong Kong is comprised of three parts, Hong Kong island, Kowloon, and the New Territories. Hong Kong Island and Kowloon were ceded to UK, while the New Territories had only been _leased_ for 99-year (1898 - 1997), which in 1980s accounted for around 90% of the land and 40% of the population of Hong Kong.
If the Brits had obtained permanent rights in the New Territories, the situation would have been different. But they hadn't and by contract had to return Hong Kong to China.
It has been argued, though, that they should have returned Hong Kong to Republic of China.
Readit News
The controversy here isn't that China took Xiao Jianhua in to face the law, but that he was taken from Hong Kong, where an agreement with Britain gives its former colony de facto autonomy within its small borders until 2047 - which disallows Chinese police from entering there on their own until that time.
I haven't seen any reports yet about whether there has been cooperation with the Hong Kong provisional government (which would make his capture legal). Then, it's hard to determine exactly what happened as the source linked here hasn't done that investigation yet - and is reporting on rumors that there was a small (but notable if true) sovereignty violation.
I really don't know how to unpick that knot, but I don't think it's an angle that should be ignored.
Definitely this angle on understanding the drive should not be ignored. An attempt to corroborate it - to unpick the knot - would require a great amount of study of the Chinese People's Party, of Xi Jinping's constituency, and both the consistency of and the timing of charges brought to bring in the high level fraud. Documents and communications from Jinping or his circle discussing "who to go after" would represent a smoking gun (of course we haven't even smelled anything like this).
I read an expose from Foreign Policy where they tried to build a case that Xi Jinping has been using it to consolidate power, but it was very clumsy and as its predictions and information came into question the investigative direction taken by the expose has been abandoned (as far as I can tell).
The way the anti-corruption drive has proceeded, as I understand, has been in tracking how government finances are being used and that the Chinese Government tends to find - using traditional accounting audits - rings of people who are enriching themselves using various schemes (though many times really obvious transfers into personal accounts). So far it has appeared that the anti-corruption effort has both been making an actual positive effect on government efficiency and that it has been primarily non-political and untargetted, focusing more on finding abuse of public funds than in chasing after any officials in particular.
I have a brother that at one point regularly dealt with top levels of Chinese government. His summary was, "China is a country of crooks ruled by honest men; the USA is a country of honest men ruled by crooks." He's not sure which is worse in the end.
Based on that, I would bet on the top levels of the Chinese government being basically ethical (albeit within an ethical system that values life and liberty a lot less than we would).
Deleted Comment
Thus, if people think the reason is not yet known, then they are probably correct.
This is a fairly generous interpretation. The more realistic view is that this is part of an on-going purge of Xi Jinping's foes. I don't think history is going to see this as anything other and this kind of thing is fairly common in China. The strict "anti-corruption" legislation gives the PRC leadership quite the leeway to punish those who they deem their enemies. This is a typical ploy in autocratic regimes.
It is pretty obvious what happened, and again, HK has been going in this direction now for a couple of years.
Makes me wonder if the real purpose the objective here was to keep him from naming names in public/open court?
I will be very surprised if Canada does or says anything of significance, given that these people are politically unpopular and causing issues for British Columbia. China has all the power here. The best I imagine he will get is a diplomat to issue a strongly worded protest that has no teeth.
I also don't see any facts on which you can base your corruption claim.
"Some of his most successful deals involved buying stakes in midsize financial institutions in smaller Chinese cities, often through a complex web of shell or dummy corporations. When Citigroup and other investors agreed to buy a big stake in the Guangdong Development Bank, for instance, one of Mr. Xiao’s investment vehicles — Puhua Investment — took an 8 percent interest, and then just weeks later transferred it to another state financial institution. Few analysts or journalists knew he was involved.
While shell companies are widely used in China as investment vehicles, securities experts say they can also be employed to hide the ownership stakes of public officials, providing cover for favors distributed by businessmen. Their frequent use by Mr. Xiao has fanned speculation that he gets privileged access to deals involving state assets and that he shares the benefits with the families of the ruling elite."
[...]
"But a review of corporate registration records has found that on at least three occasions during the last five years, companies affiliated with Mr. Xiao have struck deals that appear to have benefited the relatives of China’s highest-ranking leaders."
from: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/world/asia/tiananmen-era-...
not conclusive, but he certainly walks like a duck
The Canadian government hides most everything from it's citizens, especially when it comes to China. Statistics on real estate transactions using money from overseas are considered none of our business. People operating illegal hotels out of houses while not paying taxes on revenue? Just fine. Egregious tax evasion? No problem. Buying citizenship, driver's licenses, etc? A-ok.
All of these things are happening, but none of them are considered "facts", and you certainly won't ever see any facts if the government refuses to enforce the law on certain subsets of the population.
This guy is Canadian and Antiguan in name only, he's Chinese-born and trying to use his resources to escape the government that created his wealth. Of all the human rights/border violations that China commits, this isn't a good poster child.
The fact of the matter is that in political situations, there is a calculated risk taken by both states in a diplomatic conflict. At the end of the day it is about power and what resources are required to fight this. China has the upper hand here.
On the Chinese side, they have renditioned a Chinese-born, Chinese-made, PRC-living billionaire from a Chinese SAR that's more "one country, one and a half systems" and slipping further as China can get away with it. This man's rendition is likely part of an anticorruption initiative that started a few years back, given that it was done by Chinese security services. He pissed off the wrong people in the Party and now he is having to deal with it.
As the man is a Canadian citizen, the Canadian government now has to decide how much to protest this action. Protesting actions against their citizens requires political will and/or capability of enforcement. China has already stepped over the usual line and stolen him away anyway; will the Canadian state act? This is where I am skeptical. I don't believe that the Canadian state will find that this man is worth burning more than a little diplomacy on, maybe a protest or two.
Fighting this action requires burning political capital. There is a province in which these people have become woefully unpopular; unless a lot of Canadians get really angry, there is little reason for the Canadian state to do more than informally protest through an ambassador and at best a back room dealing or two to free him (e.g. we will share financial data on Chinese-Canadian citizens if you give us our citizen back.) Either way, by making the first move China has extracted something from Canada.
To add: I also believe that the UK will not do anything regarding this rendition. They have enough international issues to deal with re: EU/Brexit and I doubt they will feel that Hong Kong is important enough to their shrinking empire to push back on China with this.
Deleted Comment
If Colombian police came to Miami to snatch some drug lord, you'd object presumably, no matter your sympathy for the criminal.
I agree that I don't like seeing China wandering into Hong Kong, but the way China acts, the "one country, two systems" thing really is in name only. China will eventually subsume all of Hong Kong as they see fit. The question is whether it is done subversively or not. As of right now, the subversive actions are costing them less on the world's stage so they'll keep chipping away at the SAR until it is at least controlled by puppets of the PRC government.
so who are you speaking for when you use the blanket term "these people"? Are Chinese Born Canadians and other East Asian Canadians included in your labels?
I'm seeing more and more of these anti-Chinese comments popping up on reddit /r/vancouver and frankly annoyed to see similar fear mongering and FUD spreading fake comments outside of that cesspool of bitter and shut in crowd.
What the hell does British Columbia have to do with this man? He made his money in China and he got kidnapped. What possible blame do you place on this person or the government of BC? As far as I am aware, Canada has never successfully extracted hostages or expats in physical trouble by foreign government or militias.
There's no Seal Team Six and CSIS really isn't tasked with Jason Bourne styled missions which you are thinking of.
This man obtained Canadian citizenship. He must have ties to one province or another. British Columbia is the most likely candidate since it is on the West Coast.
I'm not sure how you extrapolated my post to this extreme. I replied to a poster below as to how I am viewing the politics of the situation in more detail, if you'd prefer to get a more reasoned view than the "gut summary".
I'm not anti-Chinese. I don't live in Vancouver. It would be rather strange for me to be anti-Chinese; see my bio. I personally get a lot of benefit from East Asia. If anything, you could say that I am in many ways pro-Chinese, but I support the Chinese people.
What I do have is a strong dislike for people like this man, who have made billions for themselves through graft, rent-seeking, and cronyism by ingratiating themselves with the party elite. Much of this man's economic wealth is extracted from ordinary Chinese people. When I wrote "these people" I was not talking about Chinese: I was talking about Chinese nationals that made their wealth through corruption and exploitation instead of providing true value to their greater countrymen, then run off to a Western sovereign state in hopes that their actions don't catch up with them.
It's not really an 'anti-Chinese' sentiment I'm seeing. It's more that British Columbians aren't happy with the effects of the influx of global capital and high net worth individuals on Vancouver. An additional factor into the negative attitudes around the influx of high net worth foreigners there is a sense (coupled with a fair bit of evidence) that many of these real estate speculators and high net worth individuals aren't playing by the rules and are avoiding taxes and other rules.
I'm not the GP, but I think it very clearly means corrupt people.
Still, I have almost as much problem taking China's government accusation of corruption on face value as I have believing somebody can honestly become a billionaire in China.
No-one knows why he's there. The issue is more with Chinese agents operating on Hong Kong soil. They shouldn't be.
I'm not sure the incident could be exaggerated, given China's propensity to execute those convicted of corruption/embezzlement. They kidnapped a billionaire in another country with the likely intent to kill him sooner or later.
Hong Kong does not have an army (even US states have their own militias). It does not defend its own borders. It does not negotiate its own diplomatic affairs.
However, HK is still subservient to its parent government in terms of legal matters. Taking a foreign national would be a political affair that Hong Kong has no actual right to adjudicate.
The only thing Hong Kong has is a separate legal system, immigration control, and its own delegates in international bodies like the WTO.
If the story gets too big, the Chinese government might be forced to make an example of him.
When are these actions justified? Only when someone is a killer or a torturer or a terrorist? Or are they okay in case of (allegedly) corrupt billionaires as well? Tough question, imho.
In this case, China shouldn't have had any trouble getting Hong Kong authorities to arrest and extradite this person, so it doesn't seem like the same thing.
Given the current political situation in Hong Kong, this may not be a valid assumption.
A weaker country can claim foul all they want but the military capable country will simply ignore it when it is in their interest and act with force which will see no resistance from a weaker country.
Power justifies as well as corrupt those who wield it.
It is not clear if any border violations occurred in this attack.
"After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he obtained Swedish residency, and later became a naturalised citizen of Sweden, upon which he renounced his Chinese citizenship."
He has a teenage daughter in Sweden today.
He was holidaying in Thailand when he was kidnapped by Chinese agents. (Thailand obeys China...)
The "offical" Sweden is scared about negative trade consequences (China punished Norway quite thoroughly just because the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a Chinese citizen) so they pretend like nothing has happened.
Gui Minhai eventually showed up in an obviously staged segment in Chinese state TV where he confessed to some crime he hadn't committed, and then begged Sweden to leave him alone, since he was now back in China "ready to answer to his crimes".
This is one of the most shameful aspects of Sweden that I know today, as a Swede. There is no way we would accept this unless there was quite a lot of trade at risk... and even considering this, it feels so wrong to give into them this easily.
This is a man who when he escaped to Sweden in the 80s trusted that Sweden would stand up for him.. Little did he know that the social democratic government (this is the same party that the assasinated Olof Palme used to run) would let him down so badly. :/
Not sure whose idea it was to let HK get handed over to the commies back in the 1990's, why Taiwan didn't make a louder claim to it, or why HK didn't assert its right to independence from extraterritorial governments altogether.
Before the time of the transition they stressed that all the current treaties for water were written to end at the time of transition, and that they would not be willing to renegotiate them.
Any attempt to keep HK or to turn them over to Taiwan would have resulted in mass death and evacuations.
When it comes to might vs right, Canada generally sides with might. To be honest, other than the US, the only country I can even imagine standing up to China for the well-being of a 3rd party is Japan.
There have been plenty of other female leaders elected in Asia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elected_or_appointed_f...
Dead Comment
The US and the UK basically gave the PRC everything they wanted in switching the UN's China seat from ROC to PRC. They could have driven a much harder bargain – e.g. have two Chinas in the UN, just like it has two Koreas and used to have two Vietnams, two Germanys, two Yemens, etc; then HK and Macau could have been given back to ROC instead of PRC. But the US and UK were so obsessed with using PRC to spite the Soviets, they weren't thinking about what it would mean 20, 30, 40 years later when the Soviet Union was defunct.
Could we have gotten a better deal? I'm not sure. Given the earlier incursion into Vietnam and Korea, the military support of the ROC and the militarization of the First Island Chain, I can't imagine that anything short of the very strong reassurance the alliance pursued with the "One China Policy" would have been acceptable.
The move is one of the only things heralded of the scandal-plagued Nixon Administration as a wild success for the United States, and is even often credited for being the key diplomatic victory that ultimately won America the Cold War.
Indeed, what did the US and its allies actually get out of their anti-Soviet alliance with PRC? Nixon hoped that it would help the US in Vietnam; but obviously it didn't – South Vietnam lost the war and they probably would have lost it just the same even if Nixon's China trip never happened. More broadly, I honestly can't see any military benefits for the US and its allies from the deal. The various potential military hotspots – Vietnam, the Korean peninsula, the South China Sea – would probably be in much the same state if the US-China deal never happened. Obviously some sort of understanding with PRC had to be reached eventually, since pretending ROC was the government of the whole of China wasn't tenable in the long run, but the US could have extracted some major concessions from PRC in exchange for recognition instead of basically conceding to PRC all its major objectives – an alliance against the Soviets was not a huge concession from PRC given that PRC and USSR were already mutually hostile since the Sino-Soviet split of the early 1960s.
Many people say that Nixon's decision was a great strategic move, but I am unconvinced – the US got some short-term assistance against the Soviets which it didn't really need and didn't make much difference anyway; in exchange, the US put itself in a weaker strategic position vis-à-vis China for many decades to come.
And of course, China's economic development since the 1980s has provided many economic benefits to the US and its allies. But, that still could have happened even if there was a more assertive US policy towards PRC, such as a "two Chinas policy" of recognising both PRC and ROC and maintaining diplomatic relations with both. Under this model, it would not be essential that PRC itself abandon the "one China" position, merely that it be willing to accept trade and diplomatic relations with countries that adopted the "two Chinas" position instead. If the US had made that the price for US-PRC trade from the outset, I think Beijing probably would have come around to paying it. In the 1970s, the US was a vastly richer country than PRC (the gap is still there but it has closed a lot in the last 30-40 years), and PRC had far more to gain from US trade than vice versa, so the US arguably had more power to set the ground terms for the relationship – but the US despite having the far stronger hand chose not to play it.
If the Brits had obtained permanent rights in the New Territories, the situation would have been different. But they hadn't and by contract had to return Hong Kong to China.
It has been argued, though, that they should have returned Hong Kong to Republic of China.