Miscellaneous News

Petrolicious88 said:

Meng's guilty plea is the only logical way this saga will end.

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Although mutiple sources have already quoted DOJ reaching a DPA, I still want to answer this.

A guilty plea is the worst outcome for China. It basically confirms USA's jurisdiction over an action of a Chinese citizen conducted on Chinese soil relating to a company (HSBC) operating on China's territory under Chinese jurisdiction. That is extraterrestrial jurisdiction of the time between 1850 and 1949. There is no way that Chinese state is going to accept that or allow Meng to personally accept that kind of deal.

The US is not going to release her without some kind of confession - it's a face saving move for the US.

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Apparently under DPA, Meng did not confess anything. A DPA instead of "guilty plea" is the only face saving move by the US. Otherwise, US may loose more face when Canada just releases Meng dismissing USA's extradition request.

I suspect that Canada put a lot of pressure on Biden to accept whatever Meng (China) is willing to offer. Canada has obligation to the extradition agreement with US, but US is also obliged to proceed the process long time ago, but it did not. On this ground Canada can just release Meng long ago. Actually, someone argued that Canada can do that by an administrative decree from the PM or Justice minister without breaking the agreement with US early on.

the two Michaels from Canada gets to go home.

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They will go home eventually. I think their sentences would be reduced by their plea for clemency. This would be motivation for Canada to press US. China's standing point is not to have two Canadians rotting in Chinese prison, but to convict them for their crime.

supersnoop said:

Typically China will usually deport guilty people right away rather than hold them in jail and then deport them (often happens in the US and Canada), so it's not different from what they do normally.

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Although I agree that the two Canadians would be released before they finished serving their terms, BUT China does not usually deport right away. There were couple of times that news and TV reported foreign inmates in Chinese prison.

daifo said:

They never revealed the sentence of the 2nd "diplomat" Michael, so at the very least, they can work to get him deported sooner.

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No, One of the Michaels got 15 years just few weeks ago.

Overbom said:

Honestly I dont like the talk about subverting or out of the blue, changing sentence for a person because of diplomacy.

China and Xi especially, has worked very hard to dramatically improve the judicial system in China and try to reduce political interference on their work. This has achieved results and the rule of law principle is now startingt to take shape.

I would rather have a proper judicial process play out and then just expell them (which is also acceptable in a rule of law country).

Ofc with such a huge internationally important case, some measures might be taken, and there might be temptation to interfere but this could damage the rule of law principle.

Mr. Xi has worked very hard for building a law based society to suddenly give up on it because of some slight diplomatic gains.

Let the Michaels stay in China until their trials and appeals process is completed, and then expell depending on if a deal was made

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It is not changing sentence. It is plea for clemency for health reason or good behavior, "减刑". Legally the serving time is reduced but not the sentence.

The two Canadians were in a gray zone, they are spies. In this world, countries do NOT catch and punish them strictly according to laws because of retribution, everybody spies on everybody, it is a untold custom. They may be caught and punished when the time is harsh between the two parties, or they would be pardoned like what happened between US and Israel some times.

So nobody would really treat the releasing of the two as some kind of China bending the rule under the pressure of the west.

taxiya said:

No, One of the Michaels got 15 years just few weeks ago.

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That is correct, but they did not reveal the sentence for the 2nd Michael who was a ex-diplomat, which imo was done for the purpose of this situation with meng being released.

taxiya said:

I suspect that Canada put a lot of pressure on Biden to accept whatever Meng (China) is willing to offer.

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I don't think Canada has any ability to put pressure on the US.

Temstar said:

Biden is going to get an earful from conservative media for this I imagine.
That said, for a change I say good on him for doing the right thing.

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When does Biden not get an earful from the conservative media?

solarz said:

I don't think Canada has any ability to put pressure on the US.

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In this rare situation, they can. They can tell the US that as the case is unravelling, there is a clear legal path for her to be released and the extradition denied. So the US can either do this now to save face or look real real bad later. And the Canadians would want to be as convincing as possible to get the US to bite because if they don't and it comes to an extradition denial, Canada would be in a spot where China's still angry at it for arresting Meng and taking 3+ years in the first place and the US is howling mad at it for the outcome.

So whats is the next thing that the US will do from this list? Or maybe they expect some small nod from China in order to get the "relationship" to stabilise

In the List of U.S. Wrongdoings that Must Stop, China urged the United States to unconditionally revoke the visa restrictions over Communist Party of China (CPC) members and their families, revoke sanctions on Chinese leaders, officials and government agencies, and remove visa restrictions on Chinese students.

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China also urged the United States to stop suppressing Chinese enterprises, stop harassing Chinese students, stop suppressing the Confucius Institutes, revoke the registration of Chinese media outlets as “foreign agents” or “foreign missions”, and revoke the extradition request for Meng Wanzhou [the CFO of Huawei, who was detained in Vancouver, Canada in December 2018].

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It doesn't look like she plead guilty at all and I'm sure Beijing let the US know that trying to get her to plead guilty with no jail time would not be acceptable either. As for Canada look out for the typical method of operation of Westerners of saving face. China lets the two Canadians go and Canada will go through a series of anti-China legislation for their egos. The US spun this deal to essentially say they arrested her based on the lack of evidence so that means Canada arrested her and violated her freedom of movement based on the lack of evidence. They were hiding behind US charges and not that they were a civilized country that believed in their sovereign due process. China should not let Canada get away with it. They will have to "improve" relations first since they're in the wrong by their own spin. What the US and Canada should've have done from the beginning was let her flee back to China and this charge would still hanging around today without this save face action now. But exposing Huawei and therefore China "wrongdoings" wasn't the point. It has always been the same charge from the beginning. Trump wanted her arrested so they can use her as a bargaining chip and leverage in Trump's trade war. So she was indeed a political prisoner of the US and Canada.