China Detains Former U.S. Air Force Pilot Flying for FedEx

Chinese retaliatory arrests are typically calculated, i.e. the two Canadians detained in response to Huawei were arrested by the Ministry of State Security and fit all the profile of being spies (ex government employee working for NGOs & North Korean connection). The Canadian drug smuggler expedited for death sentence after he repealed was convicted in Canada prior for smuggling as well and basically trolling Canadians who thought China was lax on drugs and rule of law. There's also a Canadian coup detained under espionage years prior. During Senkaku incident, a few Japanese employees at Fujita was serendipitously arrested for taking pictures of a military base which the company confessed to as an accident. Then you the drama behind exit VISAs which basically sums up to corruption, espionage, dissidents. The common thread behind these arrests is that the motivations are typically non trivial or ridiculous.

Shortly after the Huawei arrests, the hysterical Canadian media was blowing up routine / administrative arrests: a political dissident who got held up at the airport for a few hours during a flight transit and a Canadian teacher whose VISA expired. After it was noted that detainment levels has not elevated and in the teacher's case, govern officials had to go out of their way to clarify that the arrest had nothing to do with Huawei.

This pilot arrest is interesting though, the excuse is... extremely weak, yet there's political motivations because China is pissed at Fedex for diverting the Huawei package a while ago. Still it's very strange they went out of the way to arrest him in Hong Kong, if they have to nab a Fedex employee on flimsy grounds, why not just do it on the mainland. Also why do it so close to 70th anniversary - it's just very... not smart timing.

You are a new hire at the US-Mexico border control. One day a suspicious looking guy passes through, and you find a ton of white powder in his suitcase. You look him up in a database and find he has previously been charged with drug possession. You have been warned by your higher-ups that many people have recently trying to get through precisely your station smuggling drugs. So you detain him out of caution, but it turns out, for some weird reason, he just wanted to ship a suitcase full of baking soda to the US!

So since baking soda is totally harmless, this obviously means that your action must have been part of a plot on the US's part to put pressure on Mexico to fund the wall, right? What other explanation could there possibly be?

I have, of course, just gone through the article paragraph by paragraph and changed the subject to America. (Also, I am a US citizen.) No doubt, events like this happen constantly, and nobody cares, because mistakes happen. Only when the subject is China is everything a grand conspiracy.

> That's just how power works: the Chinese govt will leverage that capture to gain something from Trump

It doesn't actually work like this. Detentions happen constantly on all sides. One detention does not do anything to affect policy. I would bet that after a week this guy will be back home, to absolutely no consequence in the trade war, and you'll never hear about it in the news because it doesn't cause enough fear.

Ascribing the most sinister possible motives to everything a foreigner does is something that feels sophisticated and intellectual. But it's not. It's the oldest cognitive bias that exists. It is from the stone age and it will take us back.

If you really aren't, you're extraordinarily lucky. If you are, you know where I'm coming from.

Moreover, I'm not defending any governments. I'm just pointing out in this thread that an act that is stupid in retrospect might have just been that -- one person's stupid mistake. There's no need to talk about it in such conspiratorial tones.

Remember there are at least 4 Chinese people per 1 person in the USA. That changes the math a lot.

I already said the process was initiated for political reasons.

> Yes it's "rule of law" - "laws" passed specifically to facilitate this chess game. By the USA.

Incorrect, it's Canadian law passed by Canada. It's a bilateral extradition treaty, of which they have 30 with countries including Cuba, but of course it's an open conversation [1]. The rules are simple. Countries can request extradition on the grounds that a crime was committed, so long as it is a crime in both countries. Canada won't extradite you to America for marijuana possession, for instance, because it's not a crime in Canada. Meng could have been high off her face and the Americans wouldn't have been able to extradite her on those grounds, even if the US had evidence of marijuana possession within the US. They couldn't extradite her for sanctions violations either. Fraud is a crime in both countries, so they can -- but only if they convince a Canadian judge that there's reasonable evidence to suggest it happened and that they're doing so honestly, and within a short period of time.

> Your point about the high conviction rate in China is naive. This is an asian thing. Police in China (and elsewhere in Asia) talk out cases before making an arrest, trying to solve problems extrajudicially.

They may do that but China is not a rule of law country (as indicated by your comment on extrajudicial punishments). People are detained and charged with crimes for political reasons not matters of fact. Even the NPC admitted the system isn't particularly fair or functional [2]. If you think all 99.93% of people convicted by Chinese courts were guilty I've got a bridge to sell you. Naturally the US State Department concurs, but of course, they would.

"Such problems were on full display in 2011 when a Henan Province farmer named Zhao Zuohai was released from prison after serving 11 years because the woman he was convicted of murdering was actually very much alive and living at home."

Sounds like the conversation went well! But of course anecdotes don't mean much, I just thought it was funny and relevant.

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/extradition-act-review-diab...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/03/1...

Are you SURE China has the ability to save america from under-regulation, expensive healthcare, for profit doctors etc ?

The cynic will think China is using this as a bargaining chip, but fentanyl is simply too easy to smuggle. US is failing to detect imports, think how much harder it is for China, the worlds biggest exporter to manage on the export end. Import and manufacturing control is a dead end when it comes to opiates, the chemistry is too basic and the logistics too easy.

Look at all the places where fentanyl isn't a problem for solutions. IMO, export control is the "‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens" (apart from Vancouver) tier thinking.

It’s more common to go with the novacaine local approach, and general anesthesia is very rare — normally when you have severely impacted or abcessed teeth and they need to cut into your jawbone and the like.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_sedation_and_analge...

postoperative pain management consisted of tylenol and codiene, and I didn’t bother taking it anyway.

anyway, my point is merely that fentanyl has legitimate medical uses and that you can indeed have it administered in a medical setting without descending into opioid madness or overdose.