The Decibel - Canada’s extraordinary expulsion of a Chinese diplomat

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

On May 8, Canada expelled Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei in response to China’s interference in Canadian politics. The extraordinary move is the first expulsion of a Chinese diplomat in decades and could  carry substantial consequences given the size of Canada’s economic and social ties with China.This is the latest development in an ongoing saga around Chinese interference in Canada which broke after The Globe and Mail reported on secret and top-secret CSIS documents alleging a sophisticated strategy by China to disrupt the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. Today, Campbell Clark, The Globe’s chief political writer, explains what has happened to bring us to this moment and how this action will impact Canada’s relationship with China. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Hi, it's Mainika. Your support means a lot to us here at The Decibel, and your feedback matters too. And we want to know what you think of the podcast. So we've set up a quick survey where you can tell us your thoughts. And as a thank you, there's a chance to win some prizes. We'll tell you how at the end of today's episode. On Monday, Canada declared Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei persona non grata. The rare move is the first expulsion of a Chinese diplomat in decades.

Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Jolie said the decision was made after careful consideration and that Canada won't tolerate any form of foreign interference in our internal affairs. In response, China expelled a Canadian diplomat and threatened further retaliation. Today, The Globe's chief political writer, Campbell Clark, explains how we got here and what it could mean for Canada's relationship with China. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Campbell, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me.

So the expulsion of Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei has to do with Chinese interference in Canada, which The Globe has reported on extensively since we broke the story in February. But Campbell, to understand this latest chapter, we really have to go back to 2021. What happened in 2021 that led to Xiaowei's expulsion? So in a way, it began with Michael Chong putting forward a motion before the Canadian House of Commons that would declare the treatment of Uyghurs in China and Xinjiang as a genocide. And we should just say Michael Chong is a Conservative MP in the House of Commons. He's a Conservative MP. He is the Conservative Foreign Affairs Shadow Cabinet Minister. He is a member of parliament whose father came to Canada from Hong Kong. His father lived for a short time in China and actually fled China to Hong Kong.

And he has been a critic of the human rights record. And he put forward this motion. The Chinese government was very upset about it. They viewed him as a troublesome Canadian parliamentarian that was a vocal critic of China. Okay, so that's 2021. Chong is kind of on China's radar, essentially, then, because of that motion. Not just on their radar. They sanctioned Mr. Chong afterwards, right? So they essentially picked him out as somebody who was unwelcome in China and subject to punishment.

And so then let's fast forward to this month, May 2023. What do we learn last week that relates back to Michael Chong's bill from 2021? Yeah, so there's a whole series of things that happened in sequence last week. The Globe and Mail reported that China's intelligence had targeted Michael Chong through diplomats in Canada who were seeking information about his relatives in China, in Hong Kong, and looking for ways to sanction them or punish them, possibly to make an example about Mr. Chong for his criticism of China. And then we found out that Justin Trudeau went to meet Mr. Chong with the National Security Advisor, with the head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to tell him, yes, this happened. You have been targeted. And essentially to apologize for not having, well, at least the CSIS had apologized for not having warned him at the time. And that was a meeting that happened last week then, in early March?

That was a meeting that happened the day after the Globe and Mail reported on these things last week. Mr. Trudeau told the House of Commons that he didn't know at the time that Mr. Chong was being targeted. He said that CSIS hadn't escalated that information, those briefings outside of the security agency. And then the next day, he had a meeting with Mr. Trudeau's national security and intelligence advisor who told him that in fact, CSIS had shared that information with her predecessor, the national security and intelligence officer and the advisor in the Privy Council office. Now later on Friday, Mr. Trudeau told reporters that that information hadn't been escalated to the prime minister's office or the public safety minister's office, so the politicians didn't know about it.

But boy, that was a sequence of events where there was a scramble to figure out why Mr. Chong never heard that his relatives in China could be targeted. Yeah. Yeah. OK, so there was a lot that happened in early May then around this. How does the Chinese diplomat, though, Zhao Wei, how does he fit into all of this? So in the Global Mail's report, they not only identified that intelligence actors or diplomats were seeking information about Mr. Chong to target his relatives, they identified Xiaowei as being a diplomat who worked on that, who worked on that file here in Canada and was still in Canada two years later. And so it sounds like then that's the reason why the Canadian government decided to expel him? That's clearly the reason. In fact, it was inevitable once that came out. Every opposition party was calling for it. Mr. Chong told the public that if they could target

him, they could target others. And every MP would essentially be subject to some form of intimidation from the Chinese government. So this was boiling all through last week. And finally, on Monday, the foreign affairs minister declared a persona non grata. Obviously, he had been engaging in what diplomats refer to as activities that are incompatible with diplomacy. Do we know exactly how Zhao Wei fits into all of this? Like, do we know what role he played here? All we know is that, according to security sources, he was working on this file. The gathering of information, trying to make a file on Mr. Chang, trying to see what could be gathered so that something could be done.

The specifics of how he did that, how that connects to what could have happened in China, we don't really know. And so what happens to Zhao Wei now? He's been expelled from Canada. How long does he have to leave? Five days. Five days to get out. And that's pretty brusque by diplomatic standards. I think it's the fastest, at least in modern memory, the fastest sort of deadline they've ever given to a diplomat to

get out of Dodge. Normally, you know, it's weeks or a month. Okay. And the fact that it was so quick that it's this five-day turnaround, what does that signal to you, Campbell? Well, the whole thing, you got to remember when you expel a diplomat, it's primarily symbolic. The goal is to say this person has done a bad thing and he must go, usually. And so the quicker time is to express displeasure. Michael Chong himself has been pretty vocal about how long it's taken the government to react. It shouldn't have taken two years for the government to make this decision

when they became aware that members and their families of the House of Commons were being targeted. It shouldn't have taken the targeting of a member of Parliament to make this decision. We have known for years that the PRC is using its accredited diplomats here in Canada to target Canadians and their families. If this goes all the way back to 2021, why did it take the government so long to react? So, again, they say, the politicians in government say that they didn't know. It didn't go to the prime minister's office. It didn't go to the minister's office.

The prime minister said at one point, CSIS didn't think that this warranted raising it up higher above the bar. But I think, you know, generally, there's been a lot of reporting about Chinese foreign interference in elections and in Canadian democracy. And there is a feeling amongst some, including officials, clearly in the security apparatus, that there hasn't been enough attention paid. There hasn't been enough action on the part of the government. They haven't been alive to the threat. And if you recall, the Globe has done a lot of reporting, some of which came from a government whistleblower, and he wrote an open letter in the Globe and Mail where he said essentially that, that he wanted the government to see this threat and take more action against it. What has the government said about all this,

about why it took them so long to actually act? Well, you know, Justin Trudeau, he said CSIS didn't escalate it outside of CSIS. So we didn't know. What he also said was, we've told intelligence officials that if this ever happens again, if a parliamentarian is under threat, whether they think that it's credible or perilous or a serious threat, they have to bring it to the political level. We'll be back in a moment. So looking at the big picture here, Campbell, how extreme of a move is expelling a diplomat? So it is a big deal. It is considered sort of a major move in diplomacy. You're saying basically that your diplomats are bad guys. There can be cases where it's just the behavior of the individual diplomat and the sending country, you know, like says, okay, we will take this person back. But usually when you declare somebody

persona non grata, you're insulting the diplomat and you're insulting the country that sent him. And this is a message that's sent directly that your country is engaging in unacceptable behavior. And usually it's done in public, although there have been times when it was done quietly. But this is a message, you know, a public message that China has been engaging in unacceptable behavior in Canada. The Chinese government will take it as an insult. They have taken it as an insult, and it has an impact. As you saw on Tuesday, the Chinese government immediately announced that they were expelling a Canadian diplomat from the consulate general in Shanghai. And there's probably going to be more steps to follow. It is a symbol of a deterioration in relations between the two

countries. The Chinese government, for example, usually doesn't accept when a country insults it in public. And so when was the last time we did this, expelling a diplomat? So we expelled some Russian diplomats in 2018. And we have had a number of cases over the years where people have been, as they say, in diplomatic circles, PNG'd for persona non grata. But usually they're kind of one-off cases or, you know, messages against government. The biggest case of its kind probably was back in 2012 when we shut down the diplomatic relations with Iran. And what happened then was the Canadian government essentially told its diplomats to pack up the embassy in Iran, shred documents, smash the sensitive machinery, close down the embassy, get out of the country. And then once they were gone, they told the Iranians, we've broken off diplomatic relations and your diplomats all have to get out of Canada. The last time Canada expelled diplomats in 2018, those Russian

diplomats, we weren't alone in this. The U.S. was also expelling diplomats. Other countries are doing the same. In this case, though, Canada is alone in expelling this diplomat. So what does that say? Well, first of all, it's a peculiarly Canadian case, right? The Xiaowei Michael Chong case was a specific instance where we're basically saying this guy committed the diplomatic version of a crime and has to go. So for that reason, it had to be a Canadian case. And in fact, there were other diplomats,

including one at the, sorry, Chinese diplomats at one of the consulate in Vancouver that had been in the reporting by the Globe and Mail sort of fingered for doing other things that interfered in Canadian democracy, but they've gone. So they couldn't be expelled. But there has been a wave of expulsions of Chinese diplomats. The United States has periodically expelled too quietly a couple of years ago for driving onto a military base and not turning around when they were told to. There have been countries that have temporarily had no diplomatic officers in China because of expulsion. So there's been a number of expulsions from Western countries in the last three, four or five years. It is definitely part of the Canadian expulsion of a wave of hardening of diplomatic relations between Western countries in China and Canada in China. The Canadian embassy in China is, according to people I talked to,

finding it very difficult to even meet with anybody in China. Diplomatic relations are very cold. They're kind of at a standstill in many ways, and this won't warm them up. The Globe, of course, has been reporting on Chinese interference in Canada, including election interference and also those secretive Chinese police stations, which we did an episode about a few months ago. And so this is just really one part of the story. in Canada, including election interference, and also those secretive Chinese police stations, which we did an episode about a few months ago. And so this is just really one part of the story. So I wonder, Campbell, like, why is Zhao Wei the only person being expelled?

Yeah, so well, diplomatic expulsions, as I said, they are symbolic. You have to, you usually want to have identified an individual as being responsible, unless you're retaliating, as the Chinese did, in which case anyone will do. And a couple of the people who had been identified by name in previous Globe and Mail stories are already gone. They've left Canada. So that is why the government has only expelled one. That's what they say. Whether it'll be the last, there may be more reporting on interference, Chinese interference in elections and democracies.

I would suspect that anyone whose name comes up in an inquiry, a diplomat would probably leave quietly rather than be expelled. But generally speaking, you know, there could have been more expulsions if the time lag hadn't been so significant. Because think about this case of Michael Chong. This happened two years ago. And, you know, a diplomat usually stays in a country for three or four years. So, you know, some of the reporting from the 2019 and 2021 elections would involve diplomats, Chinese diplomats who are gone. Wow. Interesting.

So it sounds like there's the potential that we could see more people expelled as well then. We could see more people expelled. I wouldn't expect that that's the first thing that is going to happen in terms of sort of next steps. Now, that depends, I guess, on whether the Chinese government decides that they want to, you know, expel a number of diplomats in retaliation rather than just one. But probably the next step would be other kinds of relations being affected, you know,

meetings, visits. And the Chinese government is known for applying trade sanctions, business sanctions on other countries in retaliation for diplomatic episodes or perceived insults on the world stage. Yeah, let's talk a little bit more about this before we wrap up, because we do have important social and economic ties to China. Sure. It's our second largest trading partner. It's also our second highest source of immigration. So we're very closely tied to China in a number of ways.

So what could this actually mean with our overall relationship with the country? Yeah. So it is worth pointing out that there are real relations that affect real people in Canada. There's a lot of Chinese Canadians. They have relatives. They want to travel. You might require visas and travel papers and so on. There are a lot of Chinese students in Canadian high schools, colleges, and universities, which actually is quite a money spinner for Canadian universities. There are obviously trade relations.

You know, there is large agricultural exports. Our beef exports, for example, to China are still frozen the past year after there was a mad cow case, but that might have restarted a lot quicker if our relationships with the Chinese government were not so cold. And when there are disputes like this and a trade sanction is imposed, it can be imposed sort of officially through a tariff or just sort of officiously through somebody in China

getting an order to hold up those shipments from Canada. And those things do have an economic impact. There will be people screaming about them if they occur. They are billions of dollars in business, Canadian exports to China, and real people will be affected by them. Campbell, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Thank you. So about that survey on the decibel, we want to know about you and what you want to hear on the

show. Just go to thedecibelsurvey.ca, fill it out, and as a thank you, you'll be automatically entered to win one of three grocery gift cards worth $100. Again, that's thedecibelsurvey.ca. We can't wait to hear from you. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. Our interns are Wafa El-Rayis, Andrew Hines, and Tracy Thomas. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.