Canadians detained in China for two years to face trial ‘soon’

Buinessman Michael Spavor and former diplomat Michael Kovrig have been called diplomatic hostages by Canada.

Xi Jinping pressing a button to join the National People’s Congress’s 2895-0 vote (with one abstention) to overhaul Hong Kong’s voting system on Thursday. Picture: Getty Images

Two detained Canadians caught up in a high-stakes standoff ­between the US, Canada and China will soon go on trial, China’s state-controlled media has reported, raising hopes a diplomatic settlement could follow.

Businessman Michael Spavor and former diplomat Michael ­Kovrig — called diplomatic hostages by Canada — have been held in China in often brutal conditions for more than two years.

They were detained in December 2018, less than a fortnight after Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou — daughter of the tech giant’s founder Ren Zhengfei — was arrested in Vancouver on a US warrant.

China’s state-controlled Global Times reported the two Canadians would face trial “soon”, citing an anonymous source “close to the matter”. “The hearings for both cases have yet to commence, and the court will push forward the trial soon,” the tabloid reported.

The arrest of the two Canadians has ruptured the two countries’ relationship more than any event since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s father Pierre established relations with the People’s Republic of China in 1970.

Public opinion in Canada ­towards China has plummeted during their more than 800 days in detention. Many businesspeople, academics and former diplomats around the world have stopped travelling to China as their arrests have intensified concerns about arbitrary detention, which is practised by a small band of countries including Iran, Russia and North Korea.

The Trudeau government was not briefed about the situation ­before the report by the Global Times, an affiliate of the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily. “We are not aware of any set timeline for the trials,” a spokeswoman at Global Affairs Canada told The Weekend Australian. “The Canadian government remains deeply concerned by the arbitrary detention by Chinese authorities of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig since December 2018 and continues to call for their immediate release,” the spokeswoman said.

The state media report on the imminent trial came less than a week before the first in-person meeting in Alaska between senior Biden administration officials and their Chinese counterparts.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will next Thursday meet in Alaska with Chinese President’s Xi Jinping’s most senior diplomats, Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, for the first face-to-face meeting of the world’s two most powerful countries in more than eight months.

Wu Qiang, a former politics lecturer at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University, said the state media report on Mr Kovrig and Mr Spavor’s trial was clearly “closely related” to the upcoming meeting. “China may use the ‘two Michaels’ in exchange for something,” Mr Wu said.

The Canadians were charged in June 2020 for suspected crimes that undermined China’s national security. “Kovrig was accused of having used an ordinary passport and business visa to enter China to steal sensitive information and ­intelligence through contacts in China since 2017, while Spavor was accused of being a key source of intelligence for Kovrig,” the Global Times reported late on Thursday.

Chinese officials have said their case has been held up by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr Trudeau has repeatedly said the espionage charges made against the two Canadians were taken in retaliation for the arrest of the Huawei executive. “It is obvious that the two Michaels were ­arrested on trumped-up national security charges days after we fulfilled our extradition treaty ­responsibilities towards our ally, the United States,” Mr Trudeau said this month.

US President Joe Biden has made clear ending their detention was a priority for his administration. “We’re going to work together until we get their safe return,” Mr Biden said after meeting Mr Trudeau in February. “Human ­beings are not bartering chips.”

Their prolonged detention has taken place during separate talks to resolve criminal charges against Ms Meng. The executive of Huawei — one of China’s most strategically important companies — faces charges of misleading the British multinational bank HSBC about the Chinese tech giant’s business dealings with Iran, which is under US sanctions.

Colin Hawes, an expert in the Chinese legal system, said the ­national security case run against the Canadians was “clearly politically motivated”. “It will be ­decided based more on political factors than legal factors,” the ­associate professor at University of Technology Sydney said.

In February, 58 countries signed a Canadian-led declaration denouncing state-sponsored arbitrary detention of foreign citizens, a further attempt to pressure China. Australian journalist Cheng Lei was detained in Beijing last August, as Canada was gathering support for the declaration it hopes will shame states against using the coercive tactic.

Ms Cheng, a single mother of two, was in February formally ­arrested after almost six months of interrogation in a security facility without access to a lawyer.