The Huawei row is now a full-blown diplomatic incident between China and Canada. Two months ago, on the very same evening that presidents Trump and Xi met to agree a temporary ceasefire in their trade war, Canadian authorities arrested the queen of the Chinese tech world, to be extradited to the US. Meng is the daughter of Chinese telecoms company Huawei’s founder, and she herself is the company’s chief financial executive. The arrest provoked a furious reaction in China, and in the days following her arrest, two high profile Canadian citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, were arrested on vague ‘national security’ grounds. Tit for tat arrests? It’s hard to see how these were anything but despite Beijing’s insistence otherwise.
This row has only worsened in recent weeks, with Canada putting Meng on house arrest and other Canadians falling foul of the Chinese authorities (one Canadian drug smuggler had his sentence increased from 15 years to the death penalty, again somewhat too coincidentally). China’s response to Meng’s arrest has been knee-jerk and horrific for those involved. It’s understandable, then, that this week, more than 140 former diplomats and China experts from across the world signed an open letter to Beijing, demanding the release of Kovrig and Spavor.
But I’m not convinced that, worthy gesture as this is, the letter will quite achieve its mission. If the signatories, such as Lord Patten, former governor of Hong Kong, and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former foreign secretary, really understood China, they’d know that a stunt like this not only would not help – but could make matters much worse. If there’s anything that Beijing hates more than its telecoms being banned, it’s moralistic foreign finger-pointing.
As ever with trying to understand how China sees the world and why it does what it does, one must consider its recent history. Every Chinese person is brought up steeped in stories of the Opium Wars, the century of humiliation, and the Eight-Nation Alliance, of which Britain was a member. Haven’t heard of that last one? That’s because it was a foreign intervention enacted far away from and with little impact on London – but for the Chinese, the 1900 invasion by the allied forces of Britain, France, Prussia, Russia, America, Japan, Italy, and Austria-Hungary is one of the most important moments in their national consciousness. Beijing fell and was occupied by invading forces, the imperial family only returning with the permission of foreign governors. It is one of the most passionately hated episodes in Chinese history for the Chinese, seen as a perfect example of western cultural and military imperialism, and cleverly emphasised by a history syllabus that milks the national humiliation as much as it can. This open letter mirrors the makeup of the alliance, with signatories being British, Swedish, Canadian, American, Australian, German, Japanese and Italian diplomats and academics. It will hit too close to home for many Chinese.
What’s more, such a stunt is incredibly vulnerable to government manipulation. The humiliation narrative is extremely effective for getting ordinary Chinese to defend the Party, as they believe that they are defending their nation. Even if your man on the Chongqing omnibus doesn’t hear or care about the letter, it will be all too easy for the government to remind him of foreign imperialism then and now; of the Eight-Nation Alliance and the bloody opium. You can be sure that the letter will be used for political point-scoring when (or if) Chinese media hears about it in the days to come.
A gesture like this would certainly be worth incensing the Chinese and the government for if it worked to free Spavor and Kovrig. But again, these experts ought to have known better. History teaches us that when you play hardball with Beijing, Beijing buckles down and continues on its trajectory ten times harder. Consider the Chinese response to the violent suppression of democratic protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The weeks-long siege of Beijing’s main square and surrounding areas by student protestors was finally ended when the military moved in, with fatal consequences. The international community came together to condemn China. The Chinese response? Then-leader Deng implored his comrades to hold their nerve – don’t worry yourselves about the foreign finger-pointing; keep your heads down and do your jobs. And they did, ensuring that the most impressive achievements of China’s hybrid market authoritarianism was still in the years to come.
Rightly or wrongly, releasing Meng is the sure-fire way to secure Spavor and Kovrig’s freedoms. In China’s eyes, Meng was arrested unlawfully, and it’s time for the foreign governors to stop moralising from afar.
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