China played dirty to get Huawei’s 'princess' back — too dirty even to tell its own people

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-26/huawei-meng-wanzhou-china-played-dirty-birtles/100491980

Family and supporters of two diplomatic hostages held in China for almost three years have celebrated their arrival home in Canada, as the woman they were traded for, Meng Wanzhou, was given a hero's welcome in the city of Shenzhen.

The trio's return to their respective homes caps a historic three-year standoff between the world's two superpowers, with Canada and the Chinese company Huawei caught in the middle.

Upon arriving home to Calgary, one of the two Canadians Michael Kovrig said "It’s fantastic to be back home in Canada".

He'd endured more than a thousand days locked in a Chinese prison with limited access to lawyers and no ability to speak to visitors outside of a monthly consular visit.

Meng Wanzhou, the wealthy daughter of Huawei's boss Ren Zhengfei sometimes dubbed a princess by Chinese media, told Chinese state TV as she departed Canada: "If it wasn't for a strong motherland, I wouldn't have my freedom today."

She had earlier thanked the Canadian government "for upholding the rule of law", after being freed to leave Canada when US prosecutors suddenly abandoned their three-year effort to extradite her to the US.

She was wanted for bank and wire fraud charges relating to Huawei's alleged efforts to subvert US sanctions and sell equipment to Iran.

The merits of the US claims will now never be tested in court, but China always viewed the case as a blatant political attack on a fast-rising Chinese company.

Her 2018 arrest came as the Trump administration ramped up pressure on Huawei to curtail its overseas expansion into the 5G networks of the world.

Whatever the aim at the time, it's hard to believe the Trump administration would have pursued her arrest had it foreseen the consequences.

And now that the saga is over, taken on face value, Meng Wanzhou's release back to China this weekend is a big victory for Beijing.

From the moment she was arrested in late 2018 when Canadian authorities executed an arrest warrant on behalf of the US as she transited through Vancouver, China's government has publicly and privately lobbied hard for her release.

When its security agents took the brutal step of detaining analyst and former diplomat Michael Kovrig in Beijing and businessman Michael Spavor in the north-eastern city of Dandong just 10 days later, there was one objective:

Pressure the Canadians and/or the Americans to abandon their legal process.

When China's leaders then approved the ghoulish step a few weeks later of hastily retrying a convicted Canadian drug smuggler in a one-day show trial and sentencing him to death, they had one objective:

Bring Meng home.

When they approved the sentencing of a further three Canadian citizens to death for drugs crimes, the same objective likely prevailed.

Now, just four weeks shy of a decision in a torturously-long extradition process, the Americans have blinked.

China has averted the tremendous humiliation of having the daughter of the head of one of its most celebrated companies being put on trial in a court of its greatest rival — the United States.

As Meng's chartered flight from Canada entered Chinese airspace, headlines buzzed with excitement.

Crowds rushed to Shenzhen airport to greet her with flowers.

China's government ordered its state-run media to celebrate with wall-to-wall coverage of Meng thanking "the motherland" and the Communist Party, while other articles framed her release as a sign of China's strength.

There was just one thing missing.

There's been absolutely no mention in China's media of the Canadians being released in order to get Ms Meng back.

"Hostage diplomacy has worked", said Natasha Kassam, a China specialist at the Lowy Institute who previously worked as a diplomat in Beijing.

"There's no doubt Beijing sees this as a victory and there's no incentive to not try this again in the future," she said.

But admitting to 1.4 billion citizens that China played such a ruthless and dirty game to get its way appears a step too far for Beijing's propaganda chiefs.

China's conundrum

The censorship of Kovrig and Spavor's release from Chinese jails reflects how awkward it is.

For almost three years, Chinese government spokespeople and state media have repeatedly denied the obvious link between their arrests and Meng Wanzhou's.

As Meng's legal team was making final submissions in a Canadian court in August seeking to avoid extradition, a closed Chinese court sentenced Michael Spavor to 11 years in jail for obtaining state secrets.

Details were scarce of what he supposedly did wrong.

Michael Kovrig was also tried in a Beijing closed court, with Chinese government media reports of their trials never drawing any direct link to Meng.

Foreign Ministry spokespeople bristled at claims of "arbitrary detention", throwing the accusation back at the US and Canada.

Now China's censors have been scrubbing comments off social media sites that question why two men accused of such serious crimes against China could be suddenly released.

Was the government lying about their espionage crimes? Was it lying about their case not being linked to Meng's? Would China, a self-proclaimed "rule of law country" run by an authoritarian one-party state, take hostages to get its way?

The Chinese are not quite nuclear ready. Yet.

The Sth China Sea is being closely monitored by the US.

The deadliest war humanity has ever seen is at the door.

And the tragedy is this : many have yet to realise this. Covid19 is a convenient distraction. I'm not saying it's not real. It is. Make no mistake. It's real. A bio weapon which plays a part in all this. But whilst we're being distracted by it .... the real politics of our time is being played. Quietly. Concentration camps, people going missing, extreme censoring of the media and well written propaganda - the Nazis were cruel but they did not have modern day technology as well.

"All is fair in love and war."     ?

Isn't it ?



Politics, is war [warfare].

"The end, justifies the means."     .....and the other moral ways of men.  ?



Choose.

Lisa Jones wrote on Sep 26^th, 2021 at 8:40am:


The Nazis had it much easier. In comparison the internet is a nightmare for the Chinese regime. In the 30s and 40s it was quite easy for the state to control a couple of television and radio stations and broadsheet newspapers. The information flow was all one way, from a few centralised outlets. Now everyone can send an email or post a response.

Belgarion wrote on Sep 26^th, 2021 at 10:07am:

Tick, Tick, Tick...

Yadda wrote on Sep 26^th, 2021 at 3:16pm:

The Chinese regime exploited our human instinct for acquisition and greed by exploiting the poor and underprivileged within Chinese society.

freediver wrote on Sep 26^th, 2021 at 4:08pm:

Even did them the favour of selecting them from their traditional rural villages and bussing them to their confinement in dormitories next to the factories to work 996 (9am to 9pm 6 days a week).

freediver wrote on Sep 26^th, 2021 at 4:20pm:

Yes... the British did the same thing to the rustic classes at the beginning of the 19th century...

It gave the likes of Charles Dickins a platform to lay bare the evils of industrialisation and prompted Karl Marx to develop and publish his theories on communism, which was a reaction to the plight of the British lower classes being exploited by the aristocracy and middle and upper-middle classes.