Kovrig is a senior advisor at the International Crisis Group and a former Canadian diplomat, but he is best known to Canadians as one of the “two Michaels” who were detained by Chinese authorities in 2018, in response to the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the Vancouver airport on a U.S. extradition request.
“I was detained by state security officers when I was coming back from dinner and they abducted me and held me hostage for 1,019 days,” said Kovrig. “I spent about nearly six months in solitary confinement, being relentlessly interrogated, and then another two years in a detention centre, confined to a single cell.
“It was a gruelling ordeal, not just for me, but for my family. And frankly, it’s something I’ve spent the last few years, as has my family, recovering from. Now we’re all doing pretty well, but it hasn’t been an easy journey. An experience like that gives you a lot of trauma and lot of heavy things to carry.”
He explained that when China began the process of market liberalization, many hoped it would have a democratizing effect, but that has now been exposed as a “fantasy.” Kovrig said it was not totally surprising that the Chinese government used him and Michael Spavor as “chess pieces,” although he did not expect that it would kidnap a former diplomat such as himself.
(Sidebar: I've heard that line more times than I can count.)
“I think what that experience did, unfortunately, was really help me appreciate the very limited prospects for changing that regime and the way it thinks, and the urgency and importance of taking robust measures to protect Canada and Canadians from the things that that government does. The days of engagement and dreaming that we could change China by bringing that government into an international system, into a liberal trading order, that fantasy is gone,” he said.
Despite the threat posed by China’s Communist leaders, the country is a manufacturing powerhouse, one that countries like Canada are increasingly looking to do business with in the face of souring relations with the United States. Kovrig agrees that we cannot ignore China as a trading partner, but believes the Canadian government should be patient and focus first on increasing trade with friendlier nations.
(Sidebar: again, how does one trade with a nation that held one hostage?)
“It’s better to prioritize stronger economic trade and investment and security relations with other countries — with Europe, with the Indo-Pacific countries, with ASEAN, Latin America, Africa. Ideally, Canada should focus and prioritize relations with Japan, South Korea, other like-minded democracies, members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, for example, and then come to China with a relatively strong hand,” he said.
This might be Kovrig's way of re-directing Canada but bluntness would be appreciated here.
You cannot trade with communists.
Ever.
It's time to cut China off.
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