Canada-China Relations Committee on Oct. 26th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Welcome, everyone.

I'd like to make a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When you're ready to speak, you can click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. As a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair.

Interpretation for this video conference will work very much like in a regular committee meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of the floor, English or French. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly so that the interpreters are able to do their work. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute, please.

I'd now like to welcome our witnesses. We have with us, Ms. Angela Gui, daughter of Gui Minhai, appearing as an individual, as well as Mr. Nathan Law, a Hong Kong activist and former legislator.

Thank you both very much for appearing today.

Ms. Gui, could we please start with your opening remarks? You have five minutes, and then we'll go to Mr. Law.

[Angela Gui, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

I am grateful for this committee's concern for the situation in Hong Kong, and I feel honoured to be invited to give evidence here today. I'm the daughter of Swedish national Gui Minhai, one of five Hong Kong-based booksellers who were abducted and detained in mainland China in late 2015. In the five years since my father was kidnapped while on holiday in Thailand, I have worked to urge governments to take more decisive action in demanding his release and to prevent similar extraterritorial abductions from happening in the future.

My father has been kidnapped by Chinese government agents three times. He is currently serving a ten-year prison sentence. After being taken into custody on the Chinese mainland, he was held incommunicado with no access to legal assistance. He was forced to refuse contact with Swedish consular officials, effectively bypassing the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, and he was also forced to confess to crimes on Chinese television.

In October 2017, he disappeared again for six days after Chinese authorities claimed that he had been released. He resurfaced in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, under a type of residential surveillance in which he was allowed to communicate with me but was heavily monitored and not allowed to leave China. In our conversations, it also became clear that he had been subjected to torture.

My father was kidnapped again in January 2018, this time while travelling on a train with Swedish diplomats. Since then, he has again been held incommunicado. In February this year, he was sentenced in secret to 10 years in prison for illegally providing intelligence overseas. It has not been explained what specific acts this refers to. Chinese authorities further claim that my father has renounced his Swedish citizenship and applied to have his Chinese citizenship reinstated. As such, the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs has been refused information even on his health status. I have not spoken to him since early 2018 and have no way of knowing if he is still alive.

My father's case is increasingly described as a precursor to China's repression of freedoms in Hong Kong through its recent national security law. Though in violation of Hong Kong's own Basic Law, as well as international law, this legislation is the Chinese government's way of ensuring that what happened to my father can now legally be done to anyone in Hong Kong.

Article 38 of the law indicates that it is intended to extend beyond the territory of Hong Kong to apply to anyone, anywhere. The national security law has institutionalized China's extraterritorial abduction of political dissidents. This suggests to me that while the efforts of countries like Canada and Sweden to respond to Beijing's human rights violations have been important, they sadly have not been enough.

Canada is home to a large Chinese and Hong Kong Chinese community, and I wonder how many of these people feel forced, like I do, to take extra security precautions daily in order to protect themselves from Chinese government harassment.

To honour its commitment to human rights then, Canada should make sure that its citizens and residents can safely express their opinions on China without having to fear harassment, intimidation or abduction. This is especially important, as Hong Kong activists are relocating to Canada for fear of their safety. Canada should also urgently move to protect Canadian citizens in Hong Kong whose health and safety was threatened by the Chinese ambassador last week. As we have seen in my father's case, China now claims the authority to unilaterally change foreign citizens' nationality, completely undermining the protection that foreign citizenship used to provide.

In taking these steps, Canada will set an important standard for other countries to follow and provide a basis for increased trans-national co-operation in holding Beijing accountable. To prevent what happened to my father from becoming the norm, the international community must act more swiftly and with more coordination than it hitherto has.

I therefore also want to call on Canada to work with Sweden and other countries by clearly and publicly demanding Beijing's adherence to international law by stating their refusal to co-operate with extraterritorial application of the national security law, as well as by demanding my father's release. Since condemnations have not been effective in the past, it is of paramount importance that demands also articulate consequences. I understand that reconsidering the relationship to China is not a decision to be taken lightly. However as extraterritorial abductions of political dissidents have become normalized, it ought to be a price that we are willing to pay.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. I would welcome any questions that you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Law.

[Nathan Law, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Chairman Regan.

It is my honour to be able to testify in front of the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations.

As we all are aware, the Hong Kong we used to know is gone now. After a year of protests and a dreadful response from the authority, the polarity of the Hong Kong government has dropped to a historical low, and the confidence of the Hong Kong people in the one country, two systems ruling framework has basically vanished.

While the situation looks grim for Hong Kong, the Beijing authority has made it worse by circumventing all of our consultation and legislative processes to impose the notorious national security law, which was, to us, a de facto final nail in the coffin of the one country, two systems—

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Mr. Law, I'm sorry to interrupt you.

I'm being asked if you could hold your microphone a little closer to your mouth because the interpreters are having difficulty.

Thank you very much.

[Nathan Law]

Okay. Thank you so much.

Is it better now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

I think that's much better. Thank you.

[Nathan Law]

Thank you so much.

With the draconian national security law, Beijing has the arbitrary power to detain, arrest and prosecute any political activists or dissidents they don't like. Carrie Lam says that the law is only intended to target violent protesters. That is a blatant lie. The sole purpose of the law is to quash our freedom of expression, any desires for political change and the right to protest. It has created widespread psychological terror and fear across the city.

Up to now, over 30 people have been arrested under the law. Indeed, the international media has covered the arrest of my dearest friend, fellow activist Agnes Chow, and the democratic veteran Jimmy Lai, who runs a pro-democracy news outlet in Hong Kong. High-profile activists like them were arrested as retaliation for the sanctioning by the U.S. government aimed at 11 Hong Kong and China officials who are responsible for the human rights violations in Hong Kong.

Arrests, however, are not limited to those with high profiles. Ordinary youngsters have also been arrested simply for possessing flags or stickers with protest slogans during arbitrary stop and searches in the city. These cases demonstrate the use of the law to terrorize and deprive the Hong Kong people at all levels of the most fundamental rights, and as a legal weapon for the Beijing government.

Because of these examples and the abusing of such a vaguely defined law, a sense of fear and white terror has permeated our entire society. Some of my friends are actively disengaging from political life and deleting posts on Facebook due to their fear of being prosecuted under the national security law. Academics are self-censoring and eliminating research topics that may be considered as crossing the red line. Reporters are worried that they are no longer able to cover certain sensitive topics.

This does not stop at Hong Kong. Recent reports have also indicated signs of academics and students in western academic institutions engaging in self-censorship, either for fear of danger when they visit Hong Kong or China, or due to strong funding ties to CCP-linked donors. Hong Kong is simply the first domino of the free world that has been knocked over by an impending avalanche of autocratic influence.

As one of the most respected democracies in the world, Canada has always been a place that Hong Kong people interact with and treasure. When Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1997, a wave of Hong Kongers came to Canada in search of a safe home that shared our love for liberty, humanity and democracy. As the government crackdown intensified with the national security law, the Hong Kong people were grateful for the swift responses by the Canadian government to safeguard our freedoms, including halting the export of military-use goods and the extradition treaty with Hong Kong. Your young talent scheme also came as a lifeline for the people who face imminent dangers of political persecution at home, are in desperate need of protection, and are looking for a new place to call home.

We need to stop fantasizing that the Chinese Communist Party will become a strategic partner with liberal democracies. History proves that they only abuse the openness of our system and erode it by whatever means they can imagine. The democracies need to join hands and work together to safeguard liberal values and stop China from spreading its ideology and control over other regions.

Therefore, I would like to recommend the following policy directions to curb the influence of the Chinese authoritarianism. For the short-term tactics, Magnitsky sanctions against human rights abusers, particularly those in Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang, should be in place. Furthermore, banning Huawei from participation in 5G, just like other countries have done, and developing a coherent asylum and refugee policy for Hong Kongers fleeing persecution are much needed.

In the medium to long-term, we should be engaging with like-minded allies throughout the world to develop a strategy to push back against China's human rights abuses, hostage diplomacy and coercive trade practices; develop closer economic, political and security ties with Taiwan; and introduce legislation to combat foreign agents of influence in Canada, particularly targeting the United Front's activities, which is also crucial to do.

We hope that the democratic communities around the world can stand together and protect our shared democratic values.

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you very much, Mr. Law.

We'll go to our round of questions.

First we have, from the Conservative Party, Mr. Garnett Genuis.

Mr. Genuis, you have six minutes.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for your engagement, your courage, and your presence with us here today.

Ms. Gui, I'll start with you. Your family situation highlights two key aspects of China's emerging kidnapping and hostage diplomacy: the the denial of citizenship, and the real risk of abduction from third countries.

For me, this brings back the case of Huseyin Celil that we've talked about in this committee before. He is a Canadian citizen whose Canadian citizenship has been denied by China and others. He has not, therefore, been able to have consular access while in prison. He was also abducted from Uzbekistan, a third country.

Could you speak more to these elements? Specifically, should we be concerned that Canadian citizens detained in China, or currently in Hong Kong, could be forced to renounce their citizenship, and how concerned should we be about Canadian citizens being abducted from third countries? How should we respond to protect our citizens who may be vulnerable in third countries?

[Angela Gui]

Those are all very pertinent questions, and I'm happy to answer them.

Yes, one should definitely be concerned about the risk of Canadian citizens being abducted in third countries, and also having their citizenship denied and potentially changed, as in the case of my father. What happened to my father sets a very worrying precedent which, to my knowledge, we haven't seen repeated yet, but it's imperative that nations, such as Canada and other like-minded nations, speak up in public, and very clearly delineate that this is not something that we accept. These nations must also formulate very clear consequences if this were to happen again.

Mr. Law made some really good points as to what specific measures could be taken. Something that one could do in the short term to protect Canadian citizens, who may be planning to travel to an area where there is significant Chinese influence—something like this might happen in Thailand, as in the case of my father—is to make sure that Chinese technology is not adopted beyond the point that it already has been in Canada.

As we're all aware, it has been known to spy on people, and especially people in vulnerable positions. I am pretty sure, for example, that one of the reasons my father was abducted in the way he was was that Chinese authorities were able to keep track of his habits, movements and plans.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Let me ask you another question.

It's interesting that you're here before us advocating a strong approach, a strong response, to the threat posed by the People's Republic of China in a way that protects us and our citizens. There's been a bit of a debate in Canada in response to our own situation of hostage diplomacy, some advocating a sort of concessional approach, to the point that in response to hostage-taking, we would make concessions in the context of Meng Wanzhou, for example, in order to elicit good behaviour.

Meanwhile, you're taking the approach that we need to respond with strength in a way that's going to protect other people. I'm inclined to agree with you that it's the right approach.

Could you speak directly to those people in Canada who maybe are personally affected by the situation of hostage diplomacy, for whom these things are very raw and very close? Could you tell them why you have taken this type of approach rather than recommending the concessional approach?

[Angela Gui]

Thank you. That's an important question.

I think that there are multiple layers to your question. There's a sense in which my decision to be here and advocate as I am is a personal decision that I think goes to multiple levels, which is why I'm talking about it.

I don't believe that making concessions is ever going to encourage the good behaviour that some people might be expecting. I have family members who have chosen, or perhaps not really chosen.... They certainly felt they didn't have a choice, and when they were contacted after my father was abducted and asked to remain silent, they chose to do so. Though I can't divulge any sort of particular details about what happened, I can say that they are in a much worse situation today than I am. I think this goes to a larger level as well, in the sense that China has historically never shown that it listens to soft encouragements. As Nathan Law mentioned in his speech just now, many large world economies were hoping for a long time that China would be encouraged to open up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Ms. Gui, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but Mr. Genuis' time is up. I'm going to have to go on to the next member, but I hope you'll have more opportunity to expand on your thoughts.

We have next Mr. Peter Fragiskatos for six minutes, please.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses.

I'll put the question to Mr. Law first, but I'd also like Ms. Gui to comment on it. It concerns this idea that countries, Liberal democracies to be specific, ought to work in concert, finding ways to sort out their relations with China. Countries can't—well they can, I suppose—act on their own in that regard, but I think an emerging opinion suggests that it's much better for countries to come together in that.

It's all well and good to suggest that, though. I'd love to hear from both of you, since you have been working on these issues for so long and are quite invested in them. How can countries best do that in terms of the issues? Which issues should they focus on, and how can they best be heard, in your view?

Again, this it to Mr. Law to begin with, and Ms. Gui, for her to follow up too.

[Nathan Law]

Thank you so much for your question.

I think, first of all, that we need to deal with consensus. Consensus-building is the most important way to push for political changes.

I studied at Yale last year, and it was a period of time when Hong Kong was having a massive movement. Headlines were all over Hong Kong, and we saw a process of consensus-building across the political aisles.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Mr. Law, I'm sorry to interrupt. I'll have to remind you to hold that microphone closer, if you don't mind, sir.

[Nathan Law]

I'm sorry about that.

Last year we saw the consensus-building process in the U.S. across political aisles, which made the Hong Kong issue one of the very few topics that both parties could agree on and then process in a traumatic space. I've been doing international advocacy work but mainly focusing on Europe, and I think that kind of consensus-building process has been ongoing in Europe for at least the past couple of months. If we are going to work together as liberal democracies, then we have to really consolidate our China policy, and definitely see China as very aggressively expansionist power, and adopt measures such as building up policies on Huawei and state enterprises from China, and also, for example, on really imminent issues like boycotting the Winter Olympics. We could send a really clear signal that we're not going to follow the old path of engagement and appeasement policy, but are going to be very assertive and proactive as countries, which—

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Mr. Law, I'm sorry. Could you just repeat that point? I wonder if the problem is on my end.

I heard you say “boycotting”, but I didn't hear you complete the phrasing there.

[Nathan Law]

Sorry about that.

I was talking about boycotting the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics in order to create a more consequence-based relationship with them, rather then just letting them do whatever they want. I think that building up alliances with the other liberal democracies and creating a policy side could definitely be helpful to constrain the authoritarian expansion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Ms. Gui.

[Angela Gui]

Thank you.

I very much second what has been said. I think it's very important, too, that strategic alliances be formed between like-minded liberal democracies. For this to be realistic, in that it will have an effect, much more effort needs to be put into organizing high-level officials from each interested country to come together and actively sit down and discuss what other policies we want to enact together to stop Chinese influence in the way it has been developing.

One major problem I've seen is that countries have been very keen to sign joint letters, which is all fine and well. I believe it's a positive thing to see the intention from many countries, but as we've seen in the past, such declarations of intent haven't really achieved anything yet. I wish that liberal democracies could use the momentum to discuss in more realistic and constructive terms what we can agree we will actually do together and in coordination.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

You have 45 seconds, Mr. Fragiskatos.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you very much. I think both of you have put your finger on particular pressure points that would be noticed by the Chinese state and by this leadership in particular.

I asked the question simply because there are so many different possibilities for the alliance of liberal democracies to focus on when it forms around this issue—and I hope it will. We need very specific points to suggest and to think about, certainly in relation to the advice that we provide our own government here in Canada.

I'll leave it there. Thank you very much for all the work that you're doing to advocate for human rights.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you very much, Mr. Fragiskatos.

Mr. Bergeron, you have the floor for six minutes.