The Trump administration should sanction China over its unjust detention of three Canadian citizens.
The need for such action is informed by two factors. First, the Canadians are detained without any objectively justifiable cause. Second, at least one of those detained, Michael Kovrig, is apparently being held in incommodious conditions. According to the Financial Times, the lights in Kovrig’s room are kept on 24 hours a day. This obviously affects his ability to sleep.
China is doing this to send Washington a clear message: Don’t pressure us. It is not at all coincidental that the Canadians were detained following their government’s detention of a Chinese Huawei executive, Meng Wanzhou, on a U.S. arrest warrant.
Regardless, China cannot be allowed to believe that it can out-escalate the U.S. here. That course would only invite China’s continuing challenge to every element of the U.S.-led international order.
In turn, the U.S. should immediately introduce sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for this injustice. Those targeted should include the head of China’s MSS intelligence service, Chen Wenqing, and the chief of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, Guo Shengkun.
Sanctioning these individuals would measure up as a direct response targeting high-level officials. But in preferencing individual sanctions over sector-based sanctions, it would also give President Xi Jinping an opportunity to release the Canadians without forcing him into escalation. That calibration is crucial as we seek to manage China’s aggression rather than stoke it.
Yet, ultimately, the U.S. must now act. Canada detained Meng on request of the U.S. government. It did so in full knowledge that its action would likely spark powerful reprisals from Beijing. Those reprisals have followed. And if Trump is unwilling to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our ally at this time of need, it would send a truly awful message to our allies everywhere. It would do so at the worst time.
