'HOW MANY MORE days can Lai Changxing hold out?' So screamed the headline in one of China's most popular newspapers last week in a story from Vancouver that reported the failure of the mainland's most wanted fugitive and alleged smuggling king to obtain political asylum in Canada.
His return to China was imminent, the paper warned. 'Justice is without mercy and Lai's extradition to China is just a matter of time,' it said.
Beijing accuses Lai of being the biggest smuggler in China's history. It says that he and the Yuan Hua group he headed in Xiamen, Fujian province, smuggled about 50 billion yuan (HK$47 billion) of luxury goods, cars, oil, petrochemicals, electronics, steel, construction materials and other items into China in the mid-1990s, evading taxes totalling 30 billion yuan. It has put more than 300 suspects it says were involved with Lai on trial and sentenced 14 to death, including provincial officials and a former vice-minister of public security, Li Jizhou.
Yet one of Lai's lawyers, Darryl Larson, says that extradition - if it happens at all - is years away.
'The politicians talk a big talk but cannot control the legal system,' he said by telephone from Vancouver. '[Prime Minister Jean] Chretien is cozying up to China, which is in the World Trade Organisation, but the appeal process is lengthy and could take up to four years, including the Supreme Court of Canada.
'Lai believes that, if he goes back, he will be toast. He does not believe the Chinese assurance that he would not be executed. Nobody believes it, except for the two people on the immigration panel.'