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Comment by wendyshu | Hacker News Reader

Not just arrested but tortured, as we've seen with the two Canadian Michaels and the British Simon Cheng.

Edit: British-employed not actually British

Chinese government is constantly challenging the validity of foreign passport if the person is ethnically Han Chinese. Governments must apply diplomatic pressure go get their citizens free.

The Michaels are not ethnically Chinese.

This is also something Iran does - in theory someone can renounce Iranian citizenship, but it never really happens.

Essentially, if your father is Iranian, you are Iranian, even if you were born outside Iran, and you must go to Iran to request renunciation - which can be denied, and is hardly inviting for someone criticising the regime.

> if the person is ethnically Han Chinese

How do they ascertain that? DNA testing?

Probably just by looking at them.

Simon Cheng apparently were on British mission to gather intel and were called a spy by BBC, also, he is not British.

Check out the BBC interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_2TzuNsZDM

Oops, thank you.

Aren't the Michaels just retaliation for Meng Wanzhou?

Indeed -- and who knows what China will retaliate for next.

“just”?

"just" retaliation... this makes their detention arbitrary. After Meng Wanzhou was arrested (and placed under house arrest in her multi-million dollar Vancouver mansion), the Chinese government arbitrarily picked two high-value Canadians (an entrepeneur and a Candian diplomat) and threw them into solitary confinement, interrogating them 24/7 in shifts, and giving ostensibly no access to lawyers/representation.

Oh, and by the way, you don't need to be a diplomat or entrepeneur to be picked up. They do it all the time [0].

You can read more about Spavor and Kovrig, the Canadians detained in solitary confinement in China for over a year, here: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-michael-kov...

[0] https://torontosun.com/news/national/123-canadians-detained-...

It's difficult to determine whether it is arbitrary (in the legal sense) because the Chinese government does not communicate on these issues and the Canadian government will obviously not want to spill any beans.

What is plain to me is that a Canadian guy who can live in China at the border with North Korea, can run a business there, and personally knows Kim Jung Un is not just any "entrepreneur"...

Likewise we cannot know exactly what "diplomat" means for someone stationed abroad (including Afghanistan, and Beijing).

I'm not defending the Chinese government but these 2 guys were clearly not arbitrarily picked, it's a little disingenuous to claim that they were.

> I'm not defending the Chinese government

Strange, because this comment, as well as the vast majority of your comment history, expressly come to the defence of the CCP.

Being an entrepreneur nor a diplomat is not probable cause for an arrest, and the opaqueness of the CCP on all their criminal cases is by design for this very reason; it's a smoking gun, not a smoke screen.

You're right that these two weren't entirely arbitrarily picked, they chose two people high-profile targets as you normally would in a hostage situation.

Most people want to avoid being retaliation.

Well Canada really defied China by arresting Huawei CFO and (could then extradite to US). China is really in a weird coldish war with the West, especially when you throw in England defying them with sanctuary for HKers.

They must be getting pissed, curious how things could escalate.

“Defying” implies that they are in some kind of authority over whether another country offers an immigration path to willing immigrants. No one is defying them here. They are acting outside the bounds of whatever legitimate authority they have, and have been doing so for some time. They are being checked.

Oh sure, I used the word with some attempt at seeing things from their perspective. China has been mostly seen as a rational amoral actor in the global stage, but it’s entirely possible over time their perspective is taking on a, you know, authoritarian shape.

‘You don’t just arrest our business leaders’, there’s a lot of face to save there.

Western citizens have to recognize the hypocrisy of these stands eventually, don't they?

I don't think there's a time in living memory for most people on HN when China wasn't authoritarian. If anything, they've become more relaxed in the last 3 decades, but we're seeing them more recently re-exert authority.

I would say only 1 Michael, The other one sold drugs in a country that specifically banned drugs

Good point, committing a crime there is an especially bad idea.

Why there's a country where doing a crime is a good idea? I can recall that also US still have capital punishment for example

I’d imagine it’s far easier to be sentenced to death there as opposed to the US.

To be honest, as European I think China and US are pretty similar in many ways (propaganda, law enforcement etc).

So said each country has their own problem but if anybody focus more on resolving their internal problem before teaching everybody how to live would be better.

In this forum is very hard to discuss anything serious that doesn't follow the prevalent opinion that you get down votes without reason.

> To be honest, as European I think China and US are pretty similar in many ways (propaganda, law enforcement etc).

As a non-European, non-American and non-Chinese I find this utterly confused line of thinking depressing. It is clear Europeans are subject to their own propaganda in this regard.

You're probably attracting downvotes because comparing China (show trials, double jeopardy, arbitrary and whim-based penalties) to the US when it comes to capital punishment is not even remotely accurate.

The US has a police brutality problem, not a fair trial issue like China. And yes, long prison terms, a private for profit prison system and the death penalty in some states.

You do understand that much of the news you read about the US is wildly exaggerated?

Having traveled and met various young Europeans they were often suffering from amazingly ignorant ideas about life in the US(particularly the Germans).

One couple was scared they might get shot while traveling along coastal California. Surprise, gun violence is not evenly distributed, most Americans don't encounter any gun violence.

Police violence? Never seen any except on TV. Weird hu?

Seems to be plenty of propaganda in your own news media, why do you think you are equating China & USA?

The same problem you're referring to is also true for news regarding China. Have you ever thought about it?

I've traveled for an extended time in both US and China and as you say you hardly get shot on a trip in California you also will not get arrested just for holding a foreign passport in Shanghai

As far I'm concerned I felt much safer in China for many reason that I'm not here to explain.

Isn't the point of arbitrary arrest that the crime is figured out afterwards, if at all?

Sort of. In many Asian countries, the rule of law is very weak or nonexistent. This means you will eventually come into contact with the police - usually for the purpose of extorting a bribe from you.

Don't bring drugs into Asia and expect to have a good time. This is one area that being ignorant of history can get one executed.

This is incorrect. The two Michaels have been accused of spying. You're thinking of a third Canadian Robert Schellenberg. His punished was suddenly changed from 15 years in prison to a death sentence after a recent retrial.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53104303

https://globalnews.ca/news/5257482/robert-schellenberg-death...

Ah my bad

IIRC, Schellenberg requested re-trial to try to take advantage of the politics despite that a re-trial had the possibility of increasing the penalty to death penalty even without political motivation. That is, he gambled and lost.

It appears the two Michaels were suspected of espionage? [0] The Canadians sentenced to death for drug smuggling were different people. [1]

[0]: https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/04/asia/china-canada-kovrig-spav... [1]: https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/30/asia/canada-china-death-sente...

Leaving the discussion on right or wrong aside, the 2 Canadians were not targeted at random and were clearly on a Chinese government list of foreigners with close links to foreign governments' agencies that the Chinese let operate "at their pleasure". A bit like when e.g. Russia arrests and expels/imprisons Western spies the US/UK immediately know which Russians on their soil to target in the same way in a tit-for-tat response.

There are plenty of Canadians and Americans in China, including students, language teachers, expats, etc. and I don't think that they face any particular danger as long as they don't make waves. "Without explanation" (as per the article) is not the same thing as "at random".

But this is the same faulty reasoning that led the press to underestimate the danger of covid19. The probability of arbitrary and unbounded detention and torture is very small, but the change in personal utility would be so terrible that you have to consider the risk profile of travelling to China to be similar to wingsuit-skydiving or exposure to radiation.

I think the faulty reasoning is to assume that the arrest of these 2 Canadians means that Canadians are not safe in China. This is FUD. As said, this overlooks who these 2 Canadians are: There are apparently hundreds of thousands of Canadians in China and the 2 arrested clearly have links to the Canadian government and/or intelligence agencies.

The probability of being mugged and shot in the US is probably higher but I don't see articles telling people to stay well clear.

There's a big difference between:

- Expelling people back to their home country where they are still free as a form of diplomacy

versus

- Imprisoning, torturing and passing the death sentence as a form of diplomcy.

That's besides the point. The point is that this is tit-for-tat retaliation that targets specific people whom we don't know the whole story about (You can try to set up a business at the border with North Korea and to get to know Kim Jung Un like one of the Canadians arrested... I doubt you'll get far). This does not tell you anything about life in China as a Canadian.

Edit in response to jlokier below: I think everyone with a bit of common sense understands what "making waves" means when travelling abroad, and especially when travelling to China (or any country with an authoritarian regime). Be respectful, don't challenge officials, don't get involved in politics, don't make strong political statements on sensitive topics. When you're a guest somewhere, behave like one.

The point is that the retaliation is life-destroying levels of severe, and "making waves" is extremely vague. Something nobody knows if they themselves are thought to be doing.

I visited china about 10 years ago, on a working trip. Nothing to do with government, just a very mundane bit of electronics we were collaborating on. While there I asked what I thought were innocent questions about ordinary life and politics, and it became clear that people there did not feel safe answering some of those questions.

To this day I don't know if that counts as "making waves".

These days, I would not feel safe returning to China for work. I recently turned down an excellent job opportunity that would require very occasional trips to China, because it seems just that bit too much of a risk at the moment.

At least Russia, the US and the EU expel each others' spies as opposed to imprisionment and torture. Tourture is even illegal and punished bt law in the EU, which adhers to the human rights charter.

They expel spies who are under diplomatic cover. Otherwise they get arrested and jailed. Well after that there is a hope that imprisoned spies could get exchanged.

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