After 1,000 days in prison,
Canadian hostages have been released by China.
And the price paid was high.
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
Good news!
The Chinese Communist Party just scored a major victory against the West.
What?
I didn’t say who it was good news for?
For the West, this is crippling.
China’s hostage diplomacy works.
You see, in December 2018, Meng Wanzhou, the CFO of Chinese telecom company Huawei, was
arrested in Canada.
She was accused of actual crimes—fraud related to violating US sanctions on Iran.
Meng has now admitted to misleading a global financial institution, which was the basis
of the fraud charges.
But she’s not going to jail.
No no, she flew back to China over the weekend, where she got a hero's welcome.
Warm Welcome home Wanzhou
“Meng Wanzhou is coming home” “I always believed that Meng Wanzhou could
come back home sooner or later, the day must come.”
“I believe it too, and this is because China has become a powerful country.
It’s the happiest thing for people in the whole country ahead of National Day.
She's finally home.
It has been very difficult for her.”
At her welcome, Meng said, “As an ordinary Chinese citizen who had suffered this plight
and been stranded abroad for three years, there was never a moment where I did not feel
the care and warmth of the Party, the motherland and the people.”
Ordinary?!
She is anything but ordinary.
First of all, the reason she’s the CFO of one of China’s biggest telecom companies,
is because she’s the daughter of its founder, Ren Zhengfei.
Who was high up in the Chinese military.
Also, ordinary Chinese citizens don’t get their names written on Shenzhen’s tallest
skyscraper.
You know how else we know she’s not an ordinary Chinese citizen?
Because the Chinese Communist Party literally kidnapped two Canadians citizens and held
them hostage for 1,000 days, to try to force Canada and the US to drop charges against
Meng.
And it worked.
More after the break.
Welcome back.
Meng Wanzhou was arrested in December 2018.
Nine days later, the Chinese regime arrested two Canadian citizens who were living in China:
Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.
“Beijing has repeatedly denied the two cases were linked, though Canadian Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau accused China of engaging in ‘hostage diplomacy.’”
Basically taking hostages.
Something terrorists do.
But for all the Chinese regime’s claims that the cases weren’t related, they clearly
were.
“[Kovrig and Spavor’s] hearings—held separately behind closed doors in March—were
announced the day before the first high-level meeting between US and Chinese officials since
Joe Biden came to office.”
“And in August, just as Meng’s extradition hearings entered their final stages in Vancouver,
Spavor was sentenced to 11 years in prison for spying and illegally providing state secrets
overseas.”
And guess what happened just hours after Meng was on her hero’s trip home to China?
The two Michaels were released.
Wow, so much for that 11 years for a spying charge.
According to Chinese state-run media they were released for medical reasons.
Sure.
Throughout the roughly 1,000 days the two Michaels were in Chinese detention the Chinese
regime dangled them as bait to force Canada to stop Meng’s extradition, or to get the
US to drop the charges on Meng.
And remember, the two Michaels may not have committed actual crimes.
But while the two Michaels were rotting in Chinese prisons, Meng Wanzhou was allowed
to stay in either of her two beautiful multimillion dollar mansions in Canada.
I wonder if the two Michaels got massages and private shopping trips?
It was clear China was saying: We’ll release the two Michaels if you release Meng Wanzhou.
This was a big reason why the US State Department has been warning Americans not to travel to
China.
Because of “arbitrary and wrongful detentions” and “the use of exit bans on U.S. citizens”.
How could the West give into these kinds of demands?
More after this final break.
Welcome back.
In China, the courts are controlled by the Communist Party.
Rulings are political.
Which is why the Communist Party was so confused about Meng Wanzhou.
In the West, courts are independent.
There’s rule of law.
You can’t just ignore that and governments can’t force courts to make politically motivated
rulings.
But what you can do is get the US Justice Department to stop prosecuting Meng, which
means her case doesn’t have to go to court at all!
Last week, Meng reached “an agreement with the US Department of Justice to defer her
prosecution until late 2022, after which point her charges could be dropped.”
So yes, as part of the deal, Meng admitted she misled major banks into violating US sanctions
on Iran.
But she also won’t be charged with fraud, as long as she doesn’t violate the deferred
prosecution agreement.
Or as the South China Morning Post so eloquently puts it, “No crime and no punishment as
Meng Wanzhou admits wrongdoing without guilt.”
The question is: why is this happening now?
Meng’s extradition case in Canada has been going on for almost three years.
A ruling was set for later this year, but Meng could have still appealed the extradition.
Although we don’t know how the judge would have ruled, the Canadian government was at
least publicly not bowing to the Chinese Communist Party’s hostage diplomacy.
And then the US seemingly let Meng off the hook.
According to reports, Meng’s lawyers had been talking to the US Justice Department
since 2020.
But through both the Trump and Biden administrations, prosecutors insisted that Meng admit wrongdoing,
which she was not willing to do.
Until last month.
It’s not hard to see why Meng would have changed her mind.
Maybe she realized that Canada was actually going to extradite her to the US, and this
gave her a way out.
But why would the US Justice Department cut a deal with Meng?
Justice Department officials defended their actions, saying that many similar cases led
to little jail time, and that prosecutors felt that Meng’s statement gave them 85
percent of what they would have gotten if she had gone to trial.
Of course there are also questions about whether the Biden administration pressured the Justice
Department.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki denied this.
In a press briefing, Psaki said that this was an independent legal decision made by
the Justice Department.
And she said it doesn’t mean there’s a larger change in the US government’s China
policy.
Sure.
But even if what she’s saying is true, that’s not how the Chinese Communist Party sees it.
Remember, they have a hard time with the idea of independent judiciaries.
Communist Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily , wrote this was, “a major victory
of the Chinese people”.
And by victory of the Chinese people, they mean victory for the Chinese Communist Party.
One of the top comments on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, said, “The reason why
(Meng’s return) has drawn so much attention is that this is a diplomatic coup for China,
and a manifestation of China’s strength.”
As CNN says, “Many called her a national hero, and hailed her return as a symbol of
China’s victory over the West.”
Chinese state-run media reports were filled with that message.
They also erroneously said that Meng had pleaded not guilty, and left out the part where she
admitted wrongdoing.
“Also conspicuously absent was any mention of the release of the two Canadians, Kovrig
and Spavor.
Some social media posts about their fate were also censored in China.”
But as I said earlier, this is a major victory for the Chinese Communist Party.
At least in the short term.
What happened with Meng Wanzhou undermines everything the US has been trying to achieve
against the Chinese Communist Party.
Yes, it’s great that the two Canadians were able to return home.
It’s been horrible for them in China.
But it tells the Chinese regime they can just kidnap innocent foreigners to use as leverage
against their governments.
Which means they will keep doing it.
And as the New York Times puts it, their release “will likely do little to resolve deeper
issues including human rights, a sweeping clampdown in Hong Kong, cyberespionage, China’s
threats to use force against Taiwan, and fears in Beijing that the United States will never
accept China’s rise.”
And speaking of using people as leverage against their governments, the Chinese Communist Party
also released two American siblings they had stopped from leaving China for 3 years.
Why weren’t they allowed to leave China?
Because the Chinese regime was using them as leverage to force their dad, who was accused
of fraud, to return to China.
It’s nice to know that no case is too small for the Chinese Communist Party’s hostage
diplomacy.
Just don’t go to China if you’re American.
Or Canadian.
Or Australian.
Or Lithuanian.
Or...you know what, just don’t go to China.
There is one bright side to all this.
The Chinese regime’s hostage diplomacy is out there for the world to see.
There is no more plausible deniability.
And that’s bad for them in the long term.
China kidnapping two Canadian citizens has helped lead to almost three quarters of Canadian
society having a negative view of China.
Which also means there’s growing resistance to Huawei’s presence in Canada.
Canadians are changing.
Instead of apologizing for everything, they might start to get loud, angry, and abonixous.
In other words, they might start becoming like Americans.
Yeah!
And it’s not easy making a show that criticizes the Chinese Communist Party.
Loads of demonetization and censorship from YouTube and Google, not many advertisers are
brave enough to work with us.
So we rely on support from viewers like you who want to join us in exposing the Chinese
Communist Party to the world, by contributing on the crowdfunding websites Patreon or Locals.
As a thank you to them, whom I call the China Uncensored 50 Cent Army , I answer their questions
on the show.
Today’s question comes from:
Doesn’t Matter on Patreon.
“I’d like to ask Chris if GEN Milley’s CCP counterpart has issued any remarks about
his conversation with him.”
Ohh, good question.
So earlier this month, it was reported that General Mark Milleycalled his Chinese counterpart,
General Li Zuocheng at least twice.
And in one conversation, Milley supposedly told Li that he would alert him in the event
of a US attack.
That was according to the book Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
Woodward, by the way, has a history of bending facts to suit his narratives.
And it looks like that’s what happened here.
Woodward was framing the story as General Milley going behind then president Trump’s
back because Milley was concerned Trump was erratic and might launch a war with China
as a “wag the dog” type distraction.
That is, starting a war to help win an election.
However, it turns out, and this is according to Fox News, those calls were not secret.
In fact, according to sources that spoke to Axios, the call happened because the Defense
Department was concerned China was getting bad intelligence from its own sources.
“One of the sources said: ‘I think [the Chinese] were getting bad intelligence...
a combination of ‘wag the dog’ conspiracy thinking and bad intel from bad sources.’”
Hmm.
Milley is standing behind his communications with China.
But his Chinese counterpart, Li Zuocheng has not really said much.
And that’s because this was a huge win for the Chinese Communist Party.
The CCP loves using internal political divisions in the US against us.
Let us devour ourselves over pointless partisan bickering and the Chinese regime wins.
Thanks for your question and your support, Doesn’t Matter.
Because it really matters.
And if you’d like to join us in the fight to expose the Chinese Communist Party to the
world, you help us by liking and sharing this video, or you can join the China Uncensored
50 Cent Army over at patreon.com/chinauncensored
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You get different perks with each, so check them out!
Once again I’m Chris Chappell.
See you next time.