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On Balance | With Meng Wanzhou’s release, China proves as good as the US at playing hardball
- Meng’s arrival in China has been recast as a moment of great power parity with the US
- In the face of military encirclement, it makes sense for Beijing to show its people it has the fortitude to face down Washington in the diplomatic realm
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Immediately after news broke that Meng Wanzhou would fly free last week, many analysts assumed, as did I, that tension would escalate between Ottawa and Beijing as Chinese officials figured out when the tribunals adjudicating on the cases of Michael Spavor and Micheal Kovrig would end, before the Canadians would be bundled off to the airport for their flight home.
Would this situation drag on for days, weeks, or perhaps until December 2022, when under a deferred prosecution agreement, the charges against Meng will finally be dropped?
As it turned out, the releases could have come within seconds of each other. Word came that the two Michaels’ flight back to Canada took off around the same time that Meng’s chartered flight took to the skies over Vancouver.
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Hours later, China’s National Day celebrations started a week early as Meng’s arrival in Shenzhen was recast as a moment of Beijing’s great power parity with Washington and the Chinese Foreign Ministry expressed outrage at Meng’s “arbitrary” detention.
In a comment that would surely have caught the attention of Philippine Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and his counterparts around the South China Sea, the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily punctuated the event by declaring that “no power can stop China’s advancing steps”.
03:41
Meng Wanzhou returns to China and Canadians freed after US court reaches deal with Huawei CFO
Meng Wanzhou returns to China and Canadians freed after US court reaches deal with Huawei CFO
This was a somewhat discordant message coming just days after President Xi Jinping sought to assuage concerns about China’s rise by saying in a United Nations address: “Differences in problems among countries need to be handled through dialogue and cooperation on the basis of equality and mutual respect.”
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