BEIJING — A second Canadian has gone missing in China and is thought to have been detained by the authorities, increasing fears that Beijing is taking hostages in retaliation for the arrest in Vancouver of a top Chinese business executive.
The Canadian foreign ministry confirmed late Wednesday that the second man is Michael Spavor, a Calgary native who had been living in the northern Chinese city of Dandong and running cultural exchanges with North Korea, across the river.
This comes a day after Beijing authorities confirmed that they had detained Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat who works as an analyst for the International Crisis Group and was being investigated for “suspected involvement in activities harming China’s state security.”
A foreign ministry spokesman said Wednesday that the Crisis Group was not legally registered with the Chinese authorities, suggesting that this meant Kovrig was violating Chinese laws.
Both men disappeared on Monday, as a court in Vancouver was considering whether to grant bail to Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer at Huawei Technologies, a national economic champion.
Meng is wanted by the United States to face fraud charges after allegedly breaching American sanctions against Iran. After a three-day bail hearing, Meng was released Tuesday on $7.4 million bail in Vancouver. She is required to wear an electronic ankle monitor and will be under surveillance 24 hours a day.
But China remains incensed that Meng could still face extradition to the United States and is threatening “severe consequences” for Canada if Meng is not released.
In a video published Thursday, Hu Xijin, editor of the nationalist Global Times newspaper, warned in English that China’s revenge against Canada “will be far worse than detaining a Canadian.”
[Trump says he would intervene if needed in case against Chinese telecom executive ]
The case has opened a new front in the trade war between China and the United States, but Beijing, apparently eager to reach an agreement with the Trump administration, has directed its anger at Ottawa rather than Washington.
The two arrests of people who have been working in China for years make it apparent that they are becoming pawns in the diplomatic standoff, analysts said.
Under the extradition treaty between Canada and the United States, U.S. officials have 60 days from the date of Meng’s arrest to make a full extradition request. Canada will then have 30 days to determine whether to commence the extradition process.
Canadian officials said that more than 90 percent of extradition requests from the United States are granted.
Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s foreign minister, said Wednesday that “Canada is deeply concerned” about Kovrig’s detention and that the Canadian government has raised the case directly with Chinese officials.
A senior Canadian government official said Canada has not been provided consular access to Kovrig and does not yet know his whereabouts or the reasons for his detention. Since Kovrig is a diplomat on leave, he does not enjoy diplomatic privileges.
The International Crisis Group Wednesday said it had not been able to get in touch with Kovrig and called for his immediate release.
Freeland told reporters that her department also is trying to learn the whereabouts of a second Canadian citizen in China, who made contact with Canadian officials to say that he was concerned about questions that Chinese authorities were asking him. His case, too, has been raised with Chinese officials, she said.
Canadian Foreign Ministry spokesman Guillaume Bérubé late Wednesday identified the second person as Spavor.
[Huawei executive fights for release in Canada bail hearing that will continue into third day ]
Spavor runs Paektu Cultural Exchange, an organization promoting sporting, business and cultural exchanges with North Korea. He was involved in arranging Dennis Rodman’s first trip to North Korea, and met the leader Kim Jong Un at that time.
More recently, he has been trying to promote business investment in North Korea as the diplomatic environment has become more favorable.
He was due to arrive in Seoul on Monday to speak at a conference about North Korea on Tuesday night. “I’ll be in Seoul from Monday the 10th for a few days for new consulting work,” he wrote on Twitter on Monday.
But he never arrived at his destination, the website NKNews reported, citing multiple people familiar with his itinerary.
Kovrig, a Canadian diplomat on leave in China, started working for the think tank in February 2017, concentrating on China, Japan and the Korean Peninsula. He was detained on Monday.
The Chinese government, while declining to offer any information about Kovrig’s arrest, suggested that his activities in China were illegal because the International Crisis Group is not registered with the authorities.
“The relevant organization has violated Chinese laws because the relevant organization is not registered in China,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a news briefing Wednesday.
Paektu Cultural Exchange, Spavor’s group, also identified itself as an international nongovernmental organization. But it is not clear it if it is registered with the Chinese government or if this is the reason Spavor appears to have been detained.
China has sharply tightened its rules on nongovernmental organizations operating in the country, part of a broader crackdown on civil society and free speech.
Under a law that came into effect at the beginning of 2017, foreign NGOs were brought under the supervision of the Public Security Bureau, rather than the Ministry of Civil Affairs, which had traditionally managed them. This was ostensibly to stop them from undermining state security — which could be anything deemed a threat to the ruling Communist Party.
NGOs are now subject to spot checks by police and strict supervision of their activities and budgets, and they face the constant threat of being closed.
Civic groups, Western governments and business lobbies decried the new rules, saying they would stifle freedom of expression.
There is a precedent for Canadians being held in retribution for the treatment of a Chinese national.
In 2014, Chinese authorities detained a Canadian couple who had lived in China for 28 years. They were Christian aid workers and operated a cafe in Dandong, on the border with North Korea.
They were arrested after Canada detained a Chinese man wanted for extradition to the United States in a case of industrial espionage. The woman, Julia Garrett, was detained for six months, but her husband, Kevin Garrett, was held for two years.
Coletta reported from Toronto. Yang Liu in Beijing contributed to this report.
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