As the diplomatic ballet between China and Canada (and the USA, which started the whole thing) totters along, the downward-spiralling level of diplomatic discourse may actually be a salutary warning for any country looking to cozy up with China from a trade perspective (and that would include both Canada and the USA). China does not do cozy or warm, and the recent shenanigans has given us a public glimpse of just how bleak and frosty the soul of modern China actually is.
Beginning with Donald Trump's peremptory and largely inexplicable demand for Canada to do its dirty work and arrest Huawei CFO Meng Wangzhou, and Canada's ill-advised decision to actually do it, relations between Canada and China have followed a dizzying downward spiral. The tit-for-tat arbitrary arrests of two Canadians in China, was followed by the extraordinary retrial of Robert Schellenberg for drug trafficking offenses (his first trial took four years, partly due to the scant evidence against him - the retrial, however, took mere days to arrange, and a single day in court and a 70-minute deliberation by the judge was enough to convert a 15-year jail sentence into a death penalty). Meanwhile China's interrogation of former diplomat Michael Kovrig appears to violate all rules of diplomatic immunity enshrined in international law.
Canada then felt the need to issue a travel advisory for Canadian citizens thinking of travelling to China, due to a risk of arbitrary enforcement of laws in the country. So, of course, China did the same back, with the same justification, and followed through with complaints that Canada's actions and comments "lack the most basic awareness of the legal system" and that it should "stop making irresponsible remarks". And then, of course, the pièce de la résistance, the icing on the proverbial cake, when the Chinese ambassador to Canada accused Canada and other Western nations of "Western arrogance and white supremacy".
Meanwhile, Canada is also under pressure from most of the other members of the so-called Five Eyes group (comprising USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada) to block Huawei from any role in building the new 5G communications networks in their various countries, on the grounds of security and spying risks (principally because Chinese companies are obliged to share data with the Chinese government). Although Canada has not yet made its decision on the issue, China has already responded to even the possibility with its trademark aggressive bluster, darkly threatening that "there will be repercussions".
All in all, it's been a pretty crazy few weeks from a diplomacy point of view, and there is no end in sight (until the USA gets its act together and arranges the extradition of Ms. Meng, which apparently could take months, Canada remains in China's firing line). The normally delicate art of diplomacy has sunk, in record time, to the level of a shouting match and schoolyard taunts. Some of it may be Canada's fault, due to having being put in an impossible position by one, Donald J. Trump, but most it come straight from Beijing.
China must know that Canada had no choice in the matter, bound as they are by extradition treaties with the USA (although I still maintain they could have avoided a lot of trouble by "accidentally" managing to miss Ms. Meng). They must also know that any stunts they pull in the way of reprisals against Canada are not going to have any beneficial results - Canada can not now "lose" Ms. Meng, who is currently under house arrest at her British Columbia mansion, they are committed to continuing on the course the USA has set for them. But instead of locking horns with the much more powerful United States, whose equally arbitrary actions precipitated the whole sorry chapter, China is targeting hapless little Canada (another ploy of schoolyard bullies).
The overwhelming feeling one gets, after all this tooing and froing, is that China is very difficult to deal with, to say the least, and that the Chinese are somehow just "not like us". Edicts can come down from Beijing, and circumstances can change, seemingly at the drop of a hat. A carrot can suddenly become a very big stick. For all of its talk about the "rule of law", China will happily ignore or wilfully misinterpret any rules that it finds inconvenient. And it has become abundantly clear that dealing with any Chinese corporation also involves dealing with the Chinese state and the Communist Party of China. Moreover, the Chinese attitude toward human rights is clearly very different from ours. Put simply, they can not be trusted.
Is this the kind of nation we want to strike a long-lasting and all-encompassing trade relationship with? Sure, trade is important, but some other things are even more important.
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