Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread

[Retired AF Guy]

Well that didn't take long. China makes good on its threat.

Former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig detained in China after arrest of Huawei CFO Sabrina Meng Wanzhou in Canada


Move comes after police in Canada arrested the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies on December 1 at the request of US authorities

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 11 December, 2018, 9:52pm
UPDATED : Tuesday, 11 December, 2018, 11:46pm

A former Canadian diplomat has been detained in China while a Canadian court weighs whether to grant bail to a top Chinese technology executive who is being held in Vancouver pending a US extradition request.

The International Crisis Group confirmed in a statement on Tuesday that it was “aware of reports that its North East Asia Senior Adviser, Michael Kovrig, has been detained in China”.

“We are doing everything possible to secure additional information on Michael’s whereabouts as well as his prompt and safe release,” the statement said.

The release did not indicate the reasons for Kovrig’s detention.

The news came as a court in Vancouver is set to decide whether to grant bail for Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of China’s telecommunications giant, Huawei Technologies.

Meng was arrested in Vancouver on December at the US government’s request, which accused Meng of violating US sanctions against Iran.

The arrest had angered Beijing. Over the weekend, Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng summoned Canadian Ambassador John McCallum on Saturday night to lodge a “strong protest” and warned Ottawa of “grave consequences” from Meng’s arrest.
Canada did not inform us of Huawei executive Sabrina Meng Wanzhou’s arrest until asked, China says

Kovrig has been a full-time expert for the ICG since February 2017. He served as senior adviser for North East Asia, conducting research and providing analysis on foreign affairs and global security issues in North East Asia, particularly on China, Japan and the Korean peninsula.

More to come …

Article Link

 

[garb811]

Well, they’ve taken into custody one of Trudeau’s former advisors.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/former-canadian-diplomat-arrested-in-china-reports-1.4213122

They do not understand that at this point our courts and prosecutors are running with this, not the government.

Not to be pedantic but calling him "one of Trudeau's former advisers" might be a bit of a stretch. Looks like he was posted to Hong Kong with GAC in 2016 and was simply was one of the many who would have worked to coordinate and support the visit and he was just doing some resume inflation on LinkedIn...

 

[MarkOttawa]

Vs. Japan in East China Sea--from RAND, US implications too:

China's Military Activities in the East China Sea
Implications for Japan's Air Self-Defense Force

A long-standing rivalry between China and Japan has intensified in recent years, owing in part to growing parity between the two Asian great powers. Although the competition involves many issues and spans political, economic, and security domains, the dispute over the Senkaku Islands remains a focal point. The authors examine how China has stepped up its surface and air activities near Japan, in particular near the Senkaku Islands. They survey the patterns in Chinese vessel and air activity and consider Japan's responses to date. The authors conclude that resource constraints and limited inventories of fighter aircraft pose formidable obstacles to the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force's ability to match Chinese air activity. Given China's quantitative advantage in fighter aircraft, Japan's current approach may not be sustainable. The authors offer recommendations for the United States and Japan to manage emerging challenges.

Key Findings

China and Japan have experienced a dramatic increase in nonlethal encounters between military aircraft near Japan

    Chinese military aircraft have flown with increasing frequency near the Senkaku Islands and the Miyako Strait, which Chinese strategists regard as a critical passageway through the first island chain.
    The higher rate of activity has spurred Japan to adjust deployments and increase its acquisitions to keep pace with the growing Chinese presence and defend what Japan views as its airspace.

Military improvements are Japan's most significant effort to push back on China's increased air activities

    The Japanese government has prioritized a defense posture more focused on the region and the procurement of assets meant to strengthen the capabilities of the Japanese Self-Defense Force in island defense.
    It has also increased the Japan Coast Guard (JCG) budget and established a JCG patrol unit tasked specifically with patrolling the Senkaku Islands.

The stress of constantly responding to the Chinese air activities has added pressure to an already overstretched Japanese Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF)

    The increased operational tempo exacerbates maintenance issues, as the frequency with which aircraft require inspections and maintenance is increasing.
    Although the real-world experience that JASDF pilots are gaining is useful, the increased incursions into Japanese airspace are also negatively impacting pilot training, as pilots are unable to devote this time to the study of other missions.

Recommendations

    U.S. and Japanese officials should exchange views on ways that Japan could respond quickly and effectively to any surge scenarios involving sudden, large numbers of Chinese military aircraft flight operations near Japan.
    The allies should include the issue of Japanese reprioritization of assets to the southwestern region in their discussions of U.S. force realignment.
    U.S. officials can share experiences of how scrambling protocols evolved during the Cold War to meet the changing situation.
    The United States should work with Japan to train in how to rely on existing and planned ground-based air defenses as a suitable and appropriate counter to some Chinese air incursions.
    Japan might also want to consider cross-domain and bilateral responses with other nations in its efforts to counter Chinese intransigence.

Table of Contents
...

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2574.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Terry Glavin hammers China and Trump on Meng Wanzhou/Huawei--and warns Canada to wake up:

Glavin: Squeezed by China and Trump, Canada must rewrite foreign policy – fast

The events of the past few days should serve as a bracing warning to our government to overhaul its operating manual with China.

Donald Trump is not what you would call a paragon of circumspection or tact at the best of times, so it should perhaps come as no surprise, but the American president has now poured buckets of gasoline on what was already a geopolitical bonfire in the case of Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei chief financial officer detained in Vancouver earlier this month at the request of the U.S. Justice Department.

It’s bad enough that Beijing’s macabre propaganda machinery has been churning out the most bloodcurdling threats of punishment and consequence-suffering that Canadians should be expected to endure for our impertinence in merely acting in accordance with the law and abiding by a U.S. extradition request to detain Meng on charges of fraud and evading sanctions in laundering money out of Iran by deception, via Skycomm, a Huawei proxy corporation.

Quite apart from the casual contempt for due process, judicial independence and the rule of law implicit in his remarks on Tuesday, Trump gave every impression that Canada merely acted as an American lickspittle when the Mounties apprehended Meng during a Dec. 1 flight stopover at Vancouver International Airport.

“If I think it’s good for the country, if I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made – which is a very important thing – what’s good for national security – I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary,” Trump said.

With those words, Trump transformed the U.S. Justice Department’s evidence-rich case against Meng and a highly sensitive but otherwise fairly textbook extradition request into something more like a stack of high-stakes poker chips for him to play in his petty trade talks with Beijing...

Sleaziness of this type is America’s business and none of our concern, but Canada did not act on the Justice Department’s extradition request just so that American negotiators could up the ante in quarrels about tariffs, intellectual property and all those other Chinese trade irritants that Trump insists must be removed in order to make America great again.

That’s not what the Canada-U.S. extradition treaty is for.

Never mind that Trump had no idea about the Dec. 1 move to snag Meng. Never mind the State Department’s insistence that there was no connection between the U.S. Justice Department’s extradition request and Trump’s trade feud with Xi. The U.S. Justice Department’s case, which will have to be argued by Canadian government lawyers in extradition proceedings that will play out for months on end, is now tainted.

It was clear from the start that the optics were going to be awkward. Meng was arrested the same day that Trump and Xi were meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Argentina to settle the terms of a 90-day tariff-war truce to allow for trade negotiations.

It was clear, too, that the case in Canada would be burdened by weird legal intricacies. Canada can’t extradite anyone to face charges for a crime that doesn’t have an extremely close parallel in Canadian law. Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould was already going to have to stickhandle the asymmetry between Canada’s relatively parochial and largely useless sanctions laws and the extraterritorial aspects of American far-reaching sanctions laws.

Now, Wilson-Raybould has been put in the position of having to argue that the grubby ulterior motives Trump has slathered all over Meng’s case are wholly immaterial to the matter.

In the meantime, Beijing is turning the screws on Canada. Michael Kovrig, a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group (ICG) and a Canadian diplomat on leave, was nabbed by China’s Ministry of State Security in Beijing on Monday. According to a report in a Beijing newspaper, Kovrig is being investigated by state security officials on charges that he was involved in activities that “harm China’s national security.” China’s Foreign Ministry said earlier that if Kovrig was working for the ICG, he was committing a crime, because the ICG is not registered with the Chinese government.

Kovrig was known to have strong views opposing Huawei’s involvement in the development of fifth-generation internet technologies in western countries. Nobody knew his whereabouts Wednesday. Said Brock University’s Charles Burton, himself a former diplomat in China: “My heart goes out to Mr. Kovrig … I believe that he will be tortured in interrogation.” 

As for Meng, who Chinese authorities say Canada “kidnapped,” she was released on a $10-million bail agreement Tuesday after hearings conducted in open court, where she was ably represented by competent counsel. Her family owns two mansions in Vancouver. Her father, Huawei’s president and founder, is a former People’s Liberation Army member. While she awaits her formal extradition hearings, she will be confined to metro Vancouver. She will wear an electronic ankle bracelet, and will be monitored and escorted around by a blue-chip security company whose services she will pay for herself. All that was missing from her bail arrangement was a wine steward and an aromatherapist. She says she looks forward to spending quality time with relatives and reading novels [emphasis added].

Meng’s case hasn’t just revealed Huawei to be the tool of the Chinese oligarchy and the menace to national security that Justin Trudeau’s government has been warned about, time and time again, by a succession of Canadian and American security and intelligence agencies – warnings the government has ignored.

The whole thing has exposed the charade of Canada’s rotten China policy, with its cavalier inattention to the increasingly savage police-state conduct China exhibits at home and abroad, and its absurd pretensions about strengthening and deepening “win-win” relationships in Canada-China trade and diplomacy.

The events of the past few days cannot be undone. They should serve as a bracing lesson, an opportunity to wholly rewrite Canada’s operating manual with China, a good thing, in the long run.

But for now, Canadians are standing alone at the edge of an abyss, with a Chinese noose around our necks and American shivs sticking out of our backs [emphasis added.]
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/glavin-squeezed-by-china-and-trump-canada-needs-to-rewrite-foreign-policy-fast

No minced words from Terrible Terry (disclosure, a good friend)

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Cloud Cover]

I have every confidence that Justin Trudeau will handle this correctly, and that the situation will balance itself. Wouldn’t it be funny if Kim Jong got involved and had our guy released in return for some below market value oil.

 

[chanman]

Well, they’ve taken into custody one of Trudeau’s former advisors.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/former-canadian-diplomat-arrested-in-china-reports-1.4213122

They do not understand that at this point our courts and prosecutors are running with this, not the government.

I'm pretty sure the goal here is not to influence this trial but to intimidate countries that might receive extradition requests from the US in the future into potentially reconsidering their cooperation with Washington.

 

[Cloud Cover]

Ya.. But then they grabbed a second Canadian person and the state run media said that Canada will pay a heavy price.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canada-will-pay-chinese-state-media-threaten-repercussions-over-huawei-arrest-1.4216293

They either do not understand that the gov cannot interfere in the court process, or they don't care.

 

[dimsum]

They either do not understand that the gov cannot interfere in the court process, or they don't care.

I'll wager option B.

 

[CBH99]

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-us-not-china-is-the-real-threat-to-international-rule-of-law/



Food for thought is all.

 

[Cloud Cover]

In  global economy 3.0, where the decisions of a corporation to act like untouchable sovereign states occurs, there is inevitably going to be some blow back on the executives of those multi nationals. This not the first time corporate executives have been arrested, detained and extradited to foreign nations for trial (it happened to 2 US C levels in regards to some violations of South Korean law) however this is by far the most high profile.

Extraditions for criminal activity take place all the time, narcotics and drug smuggling has turned into a supply chain narconomics industry complete with accountants, lawyers, purchase orders, contracts etc. When you think about it, El Chapo was a leader of a corporation (and a ruthless one. He may have ordered the murder of many people, but the actions of some "cleaner" corporations certainly exploit or result in injury and deprivation to innocent people as well). As I  said, welcome to Globalization 3.0, where it now gets nasty as empires rise and fall and nation states either assert or wither. The promise of the "rising tide to lift all boats" has become a swirling toilet, and Canada is the bathroom attendant right now.

 

[chanman]

Ya.. But then they grabbed a second Canadian person and the state run media said that Canada will pay a heavy price.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canada-will-pay-chinese-state-media-threaten-repercussions-over-huawei-arrest-1.4216293

They either do not understand that the gov cannot interfere in the court process, or they don't care.

They don't care, because this isn't about Canada - this is part playing to their domestic audience that they have weight to throw around and are willing to do so, and it's part warning to other countries.

Maybe next time Belgium will be more reluctant to cooperate compared to just a couple months ago. Or maybe the next country China leans on won't have the same separation between the executive and the judiciary.

It's the same rationale as Saudi Arabia's spat over the LAVs - that was an implied threat to other countries that they buy a lot of arms from to stay in their own lane. In this case, it's that complying with US extradition requests (at least for VIPs) may bring a load of messy diplomatic and/or economic headaches and repercussions.

 

[ModlrMike]

I have every confidence that Justin Trudeau will handle this correctly, and that the situation will balance itself. Wouldn’t it be funny if Kim Jong got involved and had our guy released in return for some below market value oil.

Yes, in the same way that the budget has balanced itself.

 

[Cloud Cover]

We need a sarcasm meter.

 

[CBH99]

It's the same rationale as Saudi Arabia's spat over the LAVs - that was an implied threat to other countries that they buy a lot of arms from to stay in their own lane. In this case, it's that complying with US extradition requests (at least for VIPs) may bring a load of messy diplomatic and/or economic headaches and repercussions.
[/quote]


In this case I think your giving Saudi Arabia too much credit. 

The government in Beijing is incredibly intelligent, with foresight being a primary thought process. 

In the case of Saudi Arabia, I think it was just a crazy @$$ Saudi prince, who has manipulated his way into power, having a hissy fit over some Twitter remarks - Saudi style, ofcourse - and that the rest was an ill-conceived consequence.

 

[YZT580]

If I were in CSIS I would be running the names of every person who showed up carrying a picket sign saying free her.  It just shows China's reach that they can draft and organise such a gathering in any country they chose at very short notice.

 

[dimsum]

Report: China is driving use of armed drones in Middle East

BEIRUT — The use of armed drones in the Middle East, driven largely by sales from China, has grown significantly in the past few years with an increasing number of countries and other parties using them in regional conflicts to lethal effects, a new report said Monday.

The report by the Royal United Services Institute, or RUSI, found that more and more Mideast countries have acquired armed drones, either by importing them, such as Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, or by building them domestically like Israel, Iran and Turkey.

https://www.stripes.com/report-china-is-driving-use-of-armed-drones-in-middle-east-1.561043

 

[MarkOttawa]

Just a taste of Terry Glavin eviscerating our dashing PM:

On Huawei, Trudeau fails to assert the Canadian values he touts
Terry Glavin: Canada has been repeatedly warned that the telecom giant poses a security threat. Yet when he talks about China, the PM is all wishy-washy platitudes

He still doesn’t get it.

Either that, or Prime Minister Justin Trudeau does get it, and he’s desperately afraid that the rest of us are going to figure it out. Either way, his evasions, elisions, dodges and deflections in response to the detention of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wangzhou on a U.S. extradition warrant earlier this month betray his preference to cringe and cower rather than stand up to Xi Jinping’s increasingly bellicose police state in Beijing.

Decide for yourself which is worse, but in either case you would be a fool to believe a word Trudeau has been saying. And in all his public statements since President Xi blew a gasket about Meng’s arrest, setting off the nastiest upheaval in nearly half a century of Canada-China diplomacy, the most strenuous effort Trudeau has been making is to the purpose of not saying anything of substance at all.

During a rambling year-end interview with CTV’s Evan Solomon, broadcast on Sunday, Trudeau refused to provide a straight answer to any of these questions.

...Beijing is warning that worse may be yet to come.

This is what Canada has been reduced to. We grovel and whinge. We twist ourselves into contortions rather than say anything that might offend Beijing. We pretend we’re just innocents caught in the middle of a superpower pissing match, and we boast about “Canadian values” we’re too afraid to assert.

https://www.macleans.ca/news/world/on-huawei-trudeau-fails-to-assert-the-canadian-values-he-touts/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[YZT580]

Too bad you can't send Terry MilPoints

 

[MarkOttawa]

Chinese cyberespionage--statement by Canada (just from CSE, fairly technical) hardly compares with US, UK and Australia:

1) AP news story:

US charges 2 hackers with alleged Chinese intelligence ties
https://www.apnews.com/e6c557c09c0d4a09bc92e177162eacc9

2) UK gov statement:

UK and allies reveal global scale of Chinese cyber campaign
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-and-allies-reveal-global-scale-of-chinese-cyber-campaign

3) Australian news:

...
The indictments were immediately welcomed by the Australian government, which called on China to stop seeking a competitive advantage by stealing trade secrets and confidential business information from other nations.

National Cyber Security Adviser Alastair MacGibbon said: "This is audacious, it is huge, and it impacts potentially thousands of businesses globally. We know there are victims in Australia."

Mr MacGibbon said the theft had disadvantaged Australian businesses and their staff.

"And that essentially takes food from the people of Australia," Mr MacGibbon told the ABC. "It helps them compete in a way that we can't."

The decision by the federal government to effectively name and shame Beijing over the industrial espionage marks a major departure from the usual practice of not attributing hacking behaviour and reflects the intense frustration of Canberra at China's persistent efforts to steal commercial secrets...

Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton joined the international outcry [emphasis added].

"Today, the Australian government joins other international partners in expressing serious concern about a global campaign of cyber-enabled commercial intellectual property theft by a group known as APT10, acting on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security," they said in a statement.

"Australia calls on all countries – including China – to uphold commitments to refrain from cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, trade secrets and confidential business information with the intent of obtaining a competitive advantage."..
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/shocking-outrageous-us-charges-chinese-hackers-for-industrial-scale-theft-20181221-p50nl0.html

4) CP story:

Canada among targets of alleged Chinese hacking campaign
https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/canada-among-targets-of-alleged-chinese-hacking-campaign-1.4225913

5) CSE statement:

Canada and Allies Identify China as Responsible for Cyber-Compromise [mealy-mouthed wording, that]
https://cse-cst.gc.ca/en/media/media-2018-12-20#cyberespionage

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

And from Globe and Mail on China's cyberespionage, bang on:

Canada joins U.S., U.K. in calling out China for state-sponsored hacking campaign

...
Canada’s statement from the Communications Security Establishment was not as strong as the disapproval registered by some allies. The Americans called it “outright cheating and theft,” the British said China must stop what it called “the most significant and widespread cyber intrusions against the U.K. and allies uncovered to date” and the Australians expressed “serious concern” about Beijing’s “intellectual property theft.”

The Communications Security Establishment, for its part, merely named China as responsible, saying that it is “almost certain that actors likely associated with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ministry of State Security (MSS) are responsible for the compromise … beginning as early as 2016."

The international censure of China comes amid increasing diplomatic tension with Canada over potential Chinese state influence in this country’s networks. Ottawa has been weighing whether to allow China’s flagship tech company, Huawei Technologies, to supply gear for next-generation 5G mobile networks. Chinese law requires companies in China to “support, co-operate with and collaborate in national intelligence work” as requested by Beijing. Three of Canada’s closest military and intelligence allies – the United States, Australia and New Zealand – have already barred Huawei from these future networks for national security reasons...
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-joins-us-uk-in-calling-out-china-for-state-sponsored/

When will Justin Trudeau, Gerald Butts, LPC and our compradors wake up?

Mark
Ottawa