Canada should distance itself from U.S. “hegemonism” and grant unconditional freedom to Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese executive detained in Vancouver on Washington’s request, the state-owned tabloid Global Times said in a Thursday editorial.

Meng, the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies, has been accused by U.S. prosecutors of misleading banks about transactions linked to Iran, putting the banks at risk of violating sanctions.

She was arrested on Dec. 1 and released on bail on Tuesday. She will be set free if the United States fails to submit a formal demand for her extradition within 60 days of her arrest.

READ MORE: Freeland says countries that want to extradite from Canada ‘should not seek to politicize’ the process

Meng has no criminal record anywhere in the world and her arrest violates a U.S.-Canada extradition agreement, the Global Times said, adding that Canada could end the crisis immediately by freeing Meng unconditionally, rather than acting as the “51st state” of the United States.

“Canada should distance itself from U.S. hegemonism and fulfill its obligations to help maintain international order and protect human rights,” it said.

WATCH: Chrystia Freeland comments on Meng Wanzhou case, possible detentions of Canadians in China

Authorities in China are holding former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig on suspicion of engaging in activities that harm China’s national security. He was detained on Monday.

The Global Times said there was no evidence that the arrest of Kovrig was in any way connected to the case, but said “the assumption is because Canada has gone too far and people naturally believe China will retaliate.”

READ MORE: Freeland says a second Canadian may be facing difficulties in China after questioning by authorities

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland warned the United States on Wednesday not to politicize extradition cases, a day after President Trump said he would intervene in the case if it served national security interests.

READ MORE: Trudeau’s justice minister will make final call on Meng Wanzhou extradition — if court approves it

In another editorial on Thursday, the official China Daily newspaper accused the United States of manufacturing the diplomatic incident in order to serve political ends.

“Washington is mistaken if it thinks it can take Meng hostage and ransom her for concessions in the upcoming trade talks,” it said.</s>SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Canada should distance itself from U.S. “hegemonism” and grant unconditional freedom to Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese executive detained in Vancouver on Washington’s request, the state-owned tabloid Global Times said in a Thursday editorial.

Meng, the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies HWT.UL, has been accused by U.S. prosecutors of misleading banks about transactions linked to Iran, putting the banks at risk of violating sanctions.

She was arrested on Dec. 1 and released on bail on Tuesday. She will be set free if the United States fails to submit a formal demand for her extradition within 60 days of her arrest.

Meng has no criminal record anywhere in the world and her arrest violates a U.S.-Canada extradition agreement, the Global Times said, adding that Canada could end the crisis immediately by freeing Meng unconditionally, rather than acting as the “51st state” of the United States.

“Canada should distance itself from U.S. hegemonism and fulfill its obligations to help maintain international order and protect human rights,” it said.

Authorities in China are holding former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig on suspicion of engaging in activities that harm China’s national security. He was detained on Monday.

The Global Times said there was no evidence that the arrest of Kovrig was in any way connected to the case, but said “the assumption is because Canada has gone too far and people naturally believe China will retaliate”.

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland warned the United States on Wednesday not to politicize extradition cases, a day after President Trump said he would intervene in the case if it served national security interests.

In another editorial on Thursday, the official China Daily newspaper accused the United States of manufacturing the diplomatic incident in order to serve political ends.

“Washington is mistaken if it thinks it can take Meng hostage and ransom her for concessions in the upcoming trade talks,” it said.</s>Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat who currently works for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, has reportedly been detained in China while working on a research project pertaining to North Korea.

Fears promptly arose that Kovrig was arrested in retaliation for Canada’s detention of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou and her possible extradition to the United States.

The Canadian government expressed “concerns” about Kovrig’s detention but said on Tuesday it has “no explicit information” linking his plight to the arrest of Meng, wanted in the United States on charges of violating American sanctions against the government of Iran.

Meng, the daughter of Huawei’s founder and a member of the Chinese inner circle, was arrested at the Vancouver airport on December 1. A week later, the Chinese Foreign Ministry summoned Canada’s ambassador and warned of “grave consequences that the Canadian side should be held accountable for” if Meng was not immediately released.

The Wall Street Journal noted China has engaged in retaliatory arrests before:

“I am feeling very concerned today,” David Mulroney, a former Canadian ambassador in China from 2009 to 2012, said Tuesday. “I know the position he occupied” at Canada’s embassy in Beijing, “and I know he has a great reputation.” While Mr. Mulroney said he has no first-hand knowledge of Mr. Kovrig’s case, “it is not beyond the Chinese” to retaliate after Ms. Meng’s arrest. Mr. Mulroney cited China’s decision in 2014 to detain two Canadians involved in humanitarian work near the North Korea border, shortly after a Chinese national, Su Bin, was arrested in Canada and later extradited to the U.S. Mr. Su would eventually plead guilty to conspiring to hack and steal sensitive data from Boeing Co. and other U.S. defense contractors; the Canadians, Kevin and Julia Garratt, were released and returned to Canada.

“International Crisis Group is aware of reports that its North East Asia Senior Adviser, Michael Kovrig, has been detained in China. We are doing everything possible to secure additional information on Michael’s whereabouts as well as his prompt and safe release,” Korvig’s employer said in a statement quoted by Reuters, which noted the Chinese government has not responded to requests for comment on the case.

The Washington Post quoted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stating on Tuesday that he is “aware of the Canadian detained in China” and promising his government is taking the case “very seriously.”

Soon after news of Korvig’s detention broke, the U.S. State Department reportedly began considering an advisory against travel to China by U.S. citizens.</s>Chinese authorities are questioning former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig on suspicion of engaging in activities that harmed China’s national security.

He was detained days after the arrest in Canada of a Chinese businesswoman.

The state-run Beijing News said on Wednesday that Mr Kovrig, who works for the International Crisis Group (ICG), had become the subject of an investigation by the Beijing State Security Bureau.

He was detained after police in Canada arrested the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd on December 1 at the request of U.S. authorities, infuriating Beijing.

The Canadian government has said it saw no explicit link to the Huawei case.

“Canadian citizen Michael John Kovrig was on December 10 investigated in accordance with the law by the Beijing State Security Bureau on suspicion of engaging in activities that harm China’s state security,” the newspaper said in a brief report.

The case is continuing to be investigated, it added without elaborating.

Accusations of harming state security could cover a wide range of suspected crimes, and in China are often very vague when first levelled.

The ICG, a think-tank focused on conflict resolution, said in an earlier statement Mr Kovrig was detained by state security officials in Beijing on Monday night.

Diplomats in China said the apparent involvement of the secretive state security ministry, which engages in domestic counter-espionage work, among other things, suggests the government could be looking at levelling spying accusations.

However, ICG President and Chief Executive Robert Malley said the group did not engage in such activity.

“I don’t want to speculate as to what’s behind it but I am prepared to be categorical about what’s not behind it, and what’s not behind it is any illegal activity or endangering of Chinese national security,” Malley told Reuters, before the state media report came out.

“Everything we do is transparent, it’s on our website. We don’t engage in secretive work, in confidential work.”

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang, also speaking earlier in the day, said he had nothing he could say on the details of the case.

He said the ICG was not registered in China as a non-government organisation (NGO) and Mr Kovrig could have broken Chinese law.

“If they are not registered and their workers are in China undertaking activities, then that’s already outside of, and breaking, the law, revised just last year, on the management of overseas non-governmental organisations operating in China,” Lu said.

The Ministry of Public Security, which has oversight over foreign NGOs, did not respond to a request for comment.

China’s Ministry of State Security has no publicly available contact details.

The foreign NGO law, which took effect in January, is part of a raft of new national security measures introduced under President Xi Jinping.

“All foreigners that come to China, so long as they respect the law, have nothing to worry about,” Lu said.

William Nee, China Researcher for Amnesty International’s East Asia Regional Office in Hong Kong, said Mr Kovrig’s detention was alarming, especially as it appeared to be the first time the law has been used to detain a foreign NGO worker.

“We need to wait for the official explanation from the Chinese side, but this detention could have a chilling effect on the foreign NGO and business communities in terms of their feeling safe while travelling in China,” he told Reuters.

Guy Saint-Jacques, Canada’s former Ambassador to China, was asked by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp on Tuesday whether the Kovrig detention was a coincidence after the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.

“In China there are no coincidences … If they want to send you a message, they will send you a message,” he said.

A Western diplomat in China, who asked not to be identified, was even blunter: “This is a political kidnapping.”

China had threatened severe consequences unless Canada released Ms Meng immediately and analysts have said retaliation for the arrest was likely.

Ms Meng was granted bail by a Canadian court on Tuesday, 10 days after her arrest in Vancouver on U.S. claims that she misled multinational banks about Iran-linked transactions caused a diplomatic dispute.

Mr Malley said Ms Kovrig, who was based in Hong Kong, had been working on issues related to Chinese foreign policy in Asia and Africa.

“I’m just going to hope that whatever process is underway is going to be a fair one and one that will quickly show that there’s nothing against him,” he said. (Reuters/NAN)</s>Morneau: We have to separate Huawei case from our trade relationship with China

Finance Minister Bill Morneau said he’s remaining focused on enhancing the trade relationship between Canada and China – and keeping that separate from the legal issues at hand – in the wake of escalating tensions over the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou.

“Our goal has to be to keep these things separate,” Morneau told BNN Bloomberg’s Amanda Lang in an interview from the Toronto Global Forum on Wednesday. “So we have to look at trade as something that’s in the important long-term interest of Canada and China, and look at the legal issue separately.”

Morneau’s comments come one day after Meng was granted bail from a British Columbia judge and after U.S. President Donald Trump said in an interview with Reuters he would intervene in the Huawei situation if it meant securing a lasting trade deal with China.

The finance minister said he can’t predict what might happen if Trump does step in, but re-emphasized Canada’s position of keeping the political and legal issues separate.

Adding to concerns that the dispute between China, the U.S. and its allies could escalate further, it was revealed Tuesday former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig had been detained during a visit to Beijing.

Canadian Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale told reporters he saw “no explicit indication” the detention was linked to Meng’s case.

“Obviously it’s a challenging situation that we’re in right now and we are making sure that we make appropriate representations to the Chinese government about the Canadian that’s been held in China – that’s important,” Morneau said.

“And we will go forward and make representations as necessary and continue on a role of having enhanced trade relationships – that just has to be the right thing for us to do for Canada,” he added.

“My job will really be very much to focus on how we can continue to have a strong relationship.”</s>TORONTO — A former Canadian diplomat has been detained while visiting Beijing amid a dispute between the two counties over Canada’s arrest of a Chinese executive at the request of the United States.

Canadian Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale on Tuesday confirmed the detention and said Canada is very concerned.

Michael Kovrig, who previously was a diplomat in China and elsewhere, was taken into custody by the Beijing Bureau of Chinese State Security on Monday night during one of his regular visits to Beijing, said the International Crisis Group, for which Kovrig works as North East Asia adviser based in Hong Kong.

Rob Malley, president of the non-government organization, said Canadian consular officers had not been given access yet to Kovrig.

Malley said he thinks Kovrig was in Beijing on personal matters at the time of his arrest and was definitely not there for any illegal purpose or for any reason that would undermine Chinese national security.

“I don’t think he had any reason to feel endangered,” Malley said. “He loved China, which was why he decided to take a leave of absence from the foreign affairs ministry in order to remain in China.”

The Brussels-based group said it had not received any information about him since his arrest.

The detention came after China warned Canada of consequences for its recent arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at Vancouver’s airport. A Canadian judge granted Meng bail Tuesday while she awaits possible extradition to the U.S.

“We’re deeply concerned,” Goodale said in response to a question about Kovrig. “A Canadian is obviously in difficulty in China ... We are sparing no effort to do everything we possibly can to look after his safety.”

Goodale said there was no explicit indication at this point that it was related to the Meng arrest.

However, Guy Saint-Jacques, a former Canadian ambassador to China, said he had no doubt Kovrig was detained in relation to the arrest of the Huawei executive.

“In China there is no coincidence,” he said. “Unfortunately Canada is caught in the middle of this dispute between the U.S and China. Because China cannot kick the U.S. they turn to the next target.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada’s government has contacted Chinese officials about the detention. “We are engaged with the file (case), which we take very seriously,” he said.

The International Crisis Group said Kovrig has been one of its full-time experts since February 2017. Its website says Kovrig previously worked as a Canadian diplomat in Beijing and Hong Kong and at the United Nations.

Saint-Jacques, the former ambassador, said Kovrig was on leave from the embassy. He said Kovrig did deep political work when he was working for the embassy. That work would include travel and interviews with dissidents, he said.

“In China there’s a very line between espionage and political reporting,” he said.

Saint-Jacques said the department created a program 15 years ago so it would get more in-depth analysis. He noted that Kovrig was a former journalist whose embassy reports were well read in Ottawa.

Kovrig wrote on his LinkedIn profile that he had served as the political lead on a visit Trudeau made to Hong Kong in September 2016. He worked in Canada’s consulate-general in Hong Kong at the time.

Former Canadian Liberal Party leader Bob Rae said it was clear why Kovrig had been detained.

Roland Paris, a former foreign policy adviser to Trudeau, said Chinese “retaliation against Canadian interests or Canadians would be unacceptable and pointless.”

“It would have zero impact on judicial proceedings in Canada,” Paris tweeted. “Beijing should already know this from previous experience. Let cooler heads prevail.”

Jorge Guajardo, Mexico’s former ambassador to China, said Canada needs to take dramatic action.

“I’d be summoning the entire Canadian consular Corp in China home for training. If that means they can’t issue visas in the meantime, certainly the Chinese would understand. These are special times,” he tweeted.

Hu Xijin, editor in chief of China’s state-run newspaper Global Times, wrote on Chinese microblogging platform Weibo that there isn’t any evidence Kovrig’s detention was retaliation for Meng’s arrest. But he added that the current situation was “highly sensitive” because of a “American-Canadian conspiracy” to arrest Meng.

“If people in the rest of the world make this association, it’s because Meng Wanzhou’s arrest was really way over the line. Naturally, people would think that China would take revenge,” Hu said.

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</s>China's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday denied knowledge of the detention of a former Canadian diplomat, as Chinese citizens rejoiced over a Canadian court's decision to release a top Huawei Technologies executive on bail.

The release of Huawei Technologies' chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, prompted an outpouring of support on social media for her and her company, which is based in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

Zeng Yuan, a university student in Beijing, was among many who believe the detention of former diplomat Michael Kovrig was related to Meng's case.

"It is a kind of declaration to the Canadian government," the finance student told The Associated Press. "This makes sense. China cannot sit and await its fate, and let them make ambiguous accusations against Chinese citizens."

Meng was detained Dec. 1 at the request of the U.S., which accuses Huawei of using a Hong Kong shell company to sell equipment to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions.

After three days of hearings, a British Columbia justice granted bail Tuesday of 10 million Canadian dollars ($7.5 million) to Meng, but required her to wear an ankle bracelet, surrender her passports, stay in Vancouver and its suburbs and confine herself to one of her two Vancouver homes from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.

While declining to confirm Kovrig's detention, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the International Crisis Group, where Kovrig is a Hong-Kong-based analyst, was not registered in China and its activities in the country were illegal.

"I do not have information to provide you here," he said. "If there is such a thing, please do not worry, it is assured that China's relevant departments will definitely handle it according to law."

Because Kovrig's organization is not registered as a non-governmental organization in China, "once its staff become engaged in activities in China, it has already violated the law," Lu said.

He repeated China's demand for the immediate release of Meng, whose father founded Huawei, a leading telecommunications equipment maker that has strong connections to the Chinese government and military.

Meng's case has set off a diplomatic furor among the three countries and complicated high-stakes U.S.-China trade talks.

Canadian Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale confirmed Kovrig's detention The International Crisis Group said he was taken into custody Monday night by the Beijing Bureau of Chinese State Security, which handles intelligence and counterintelligence matters in the Chinese capital,

Rob Malley, president of the Brussels-based group, said he thinks Kovrig was in Beijing on personal matters at the time of his arrest and was definitely not there for any illegal purpose or for any reason that would undermine Chinese national security.

Associated Press writer Rob Gillies in Toronto and video producer Olivia Zhang in Beijing contributed to this story.</s>Donald Trump is not what you would call a paragon of circumspection or tact at the best of times, so it should perhaps come as no surprise, but the American president has now poured buckets of gasoline on what was already a geopolitical bonfire in the case of Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei chief financial officer detained in Vancouver earlier this month at the request of the U.S. Justice Department.

It’s bad enough that Beijing’s macabre propaganda machinery has been churning out the most bloodcurdling threats of punishment and consequence-suffering that Canadians should be expected to endure for our impertinence in merely acting in accordance with the law and abiding by a U.S. extradition request to detain Meng on charges of fraud and evading sanctions in laundering money out of Iran by deception, via Skycomm, a Huawei proxy corporation.
• 10/3 podcast: Canada gets on China’s bad side with arrest of Huawei executive
• Huawei executive granted $10M bail while Trump says he may intervene in case if it helps China trade deal
• ‘No coincidence’: Detention of Canadian in China looks like tit-for-tat response to Huawei executive’s arrest, say former ambassadors

Quite apart from the casual contempt for due process, judicial independence and the rule of law implicit in his remarks on Tuesday, Trump gave every impression that Canada merely acted as an American lickspittle when the Mounties apprehended Meng during a Dec. 1 flight stopover at Vancouver International Airport.

“If I think it’s good for the country, if I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made – which is a very important thing – what’s good for national security – I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary,” Trump said.

With those words, Trump transformed the U.S. Justice Department’s evidence-rich case against Meng and a highly sensitive but otherwise fairly textbook extradition request into something more like a stack of high-stakes poker chips for him to play in his petty trade talks with Beijing.

Trump has played this game before. In the case against another Chinese telecom giant, ZTE Corp, Trump lifted a seven-year ban on the company after it had pleaded guilty to violating U.S. sanctions law by re-selling American-made parts and software to Iran and North Korea. After paying an $892-million penalty, ZTE was given a reprieve by the White House after President Xi appealed directly to Trump. In exchange for a further $1 billion, and after sloshing around millions of dollars to Washington lobbyists close to Trump, ZTE was rewarded by having its ban lifted.

Sleaziness of this type is America’s business and none of our concern, but Canada did not act on the Justice Department’s extradition request just so that American negotiators could up the ante in quarrels about tariffs, intellectual property and all those other Chinese trade irritants that Trump insists must be removed in order to make America great again.

That’s not what the Canada-U.S. extradition treaty is for.

Never mind that Trump had no idea about the Dec. 1 move to snag Meng. Never mind the State Department’s insistence that there was no connection between the U.S. Justice Department’s extradition request and Trump’s trade feud with Xi. The U.S. Justice Department’s case, which will have to be argued by Canadian government lawyers in extradition proceedings that will play out for months on end, is now tainted.

It was clear from the start that the optics were going to be awkward. Meng was arrested the same day that Trump and Xi were meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Argentina to settle the terms of a 90-day tariff-war truce to allow for trade negotiations.

It was clear, too, that the case in Canada would be burdened by weird legal intricacies. Canada can’t extradite anyone to face charges for a crime that doesn’t have an extremely close parallel in Canadian law. Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould was already going to have to stickhandle the asymmetry between Canada’s relatively parochial and largely useless sanctions laws and the extraterritorial aspects of American far-reaching sanctions laws.

Now, Wilson-Raybould has been put in the position of having to argue that the grubby ulterior motives Trump has slathered all over Meng’s case are wholly immaterial to the matter.

In the meantime, Beijing is turning the screws on Canada. Michael Kovrig, a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group (ICG) and a Canadian diplomat on leave, was nabbed by China’s Ministry of State Security in Beijing on Monday. According to a report in a Beijing newspaper, Kovrig is being investigated by state security officials on charges that he was involved in activities that “harm China’s national security.” China’s Foreign Ministry said earlier that if Kovrig was working for the ICG, he was committing a crime, because the ICG is not registered with the Chinese government.

Kovrig was known to have strong views opposing Huawei’s involvement in the development of fifth-generation internet technologies in western countries. Nobody knew his whereabouts Wednesday. Said Brock University’s Charles Burton, himself a former diplomat in China: “My heart goes out to Mr. Kovrig … I believe that he will be tortured in interrogation.”

As for Meng, who Chinese authorities say Canada “kidnapped,” she was released on a $10-million bail agreement Tuesday after hearings conducted in open court, where she was ably represented by competent counsel. Her family owns two mansions in Vancouver. Her father, Huawei’s president and founder, is a former People’s Liberal Army officer. While she awaits her formal extradition hearings, she will be confined to metro Vancouver. She will wear an electronic ankle bracelet, and will be monitored and escorted around by a blue-chip security company whose services she will pay for herself. All that was missing from her bail arrangement was a wine steward and an aromatherapist. She says she looks forward to spending quality time with relatives and reading novels.

Meng’s case hasn’t just revealed Huawei to be the tool of the Chinese oligarchy and the menace to national security that Justin Trudeau’s government has been warned about, time and time again, by a succession of Canadian and American security and intelligence agencies – warnings the government has ignored.

The whole thing has exposed the charade of Canada’s rotten China policy, with its cavalier inattention to the increasingly savage police-state conduct China exhibits at home and abroad, and its absurd pretensions about strengthening and deepening “win-win” relationships in Canada-China trade and diplomacy.

The events of the past few days cannot be undone. They should serve as a bracing lesson, an opportunity to wholly rewrite Canada’s operating manual with China, a good thing, in the long run.

But for now, Canadians are standing alone at the edge of an abyss, with a Chinese noose around our necks and American shivs sticking out of our backs.

Terry Glavin is an author and journalist.</s>BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese authorities are questioning former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig, who was detained days after the arrest in Canada of a Chinese businesswoman, on suspicion of engaging in activities that harmed China’s national security.

The state-run Beijing News said on Wednesday that Kovrig, who works for the International Crisis Group (ICG), had become the subject of an investigation by the Beijing State Security Bureau.

He was detained after police in Canada arrested the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd on Dec. 1 at the request of U.S. authorities, infuriating Beijing.

The Canadian government has said it saw no explicit link to the Huawei case.

“Canadian citizen Michael John Kovrig was on Dec. 10 investigated in accordance with the law by the Beijing State Security Bureau on suspicion of engaging in activities that harm China’s state security,” the newspaper said in a brief report.

The case is continuing to be investigated, it added without elaborating.

Accusations of harming state security could cover a wide range of suspected crimes, and in China are often very vague when first levelled.

The ICG, a think-tank focused on conflict resolution, said in an earlier statement Kovrig was detained by state security officials in Beijing on Monday night.

Diplomats in China said the apparent involvement of the secretive state security ministry, which engages in domestic counter-espionage work, among other things, suggests the government could be looking at levelling spying accusations.

However, ICG President and Chief Executive Robert Malley said the group did not engage in such activity.

“I don’t want to speculate as to what’s behind it but I am prepared to be categorical about what’s not behind it, and what’s not behind it is any illegal activity or endangering of Chinese national security,” Malley told Reuters, before the state media report came out.

“Everything we do is transparent, it’s on our website. We don’t engage in secretive work, in confidential work.”

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang, also speaking earlier in the day, said he had nothing he could say on the details of the case. He said the ICG was not registered in China as a non-government organisation (NGO) and Kovrig could have broken Chinese law.

“If they are not registered and their workers are in China undertaking activities, then that’s already outside of, and breaking, the law, revised just last year, on the management of overseas non-governmental organisations operating in China,” Lu said.

The Ministry of Public Security, which has oversight over foreign NGOs, did not respond to a request for comment. China’s Ministry of State Security has no publicly available contact details.

The foreign NGO law, which took effect in January, is part of a raft of new national security measures introduced under President Xi Jinping.

“All foreigners that come to China, so long as they respect the law, have nothing to worry about,” Lu said.

William Nee, China Researcher for Amnesty International’s East Asia Regional Office in Hong Kong, said Kovrig’s detention was alarming, especially as it appeared to be the first time the law has been used to detain a foreign NGO worker.

“We need to wait for the official explanation from the Chinese side, but this detention could have a chilling effect on the foreign NGO and business communities in terms of their feeling safe while travelling in China,” he told Reuters.

Guy Saint-Jacques, Canada’s former ambassador to China, was asked by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp on Tuesday whether the Kovrig detention was a coincidence after the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.

“In China there are no coincidences ... If they want to send you a message, they will send you a message,” he said.

A Western diplomat in China, who asked not to be identified, was even more blunt: “This is a political kidnapping.”

China had threatened severe consequences unless Canada released Meng immediately and analysts have said retaliation for the arrest was likely.

Meng was granted bail by a Canadian court on Tuesday, 10 days after her arrest in Vancouver on U.S. claims that she misled multinational banks about Iran-linked transactions caused a diplomatic dispute.

Malley said Kovrig, who was based in Hong Kong, had been working on issues related to Chinese foreign policy in Asia and Africa.

“I’m just going to hope that whatever process is under way is going to be a fair one and one that will quickly show that there’s nothing against him,” he said.</s>President Donald Trump said he would intervene in U.S. efforts to extradite Huawei Technologies Co. executive Meng Wanzhou if it helped him win a trade deal with China.

“If I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made, which is a very important thing — what’s good for national security — I would certainly intervene, if I thought it was necessary,” Trump said Tuesday in an interview with Reuters.

Meng was arrested earlier this month at the request of U.S. authorities, who allege she conspired to defraud banks to unwittingly violate U.S. sanctions by clearing transactions linked to Iran. On Tuesday, she was granted a $7.5 million bail by a Canadian court, allowing the Huawei chief financial officer to return to her Vancouver home as extradition proceedings continue.

Trump told Reuters the White House was in communication with the Justice Department about the case, along with Chinese officials. Asked if he had spoken with President Xi Jinping about the matter, Trump responded: “They have not called me yet. They are talking to my people. But they have not called me yet.”

The arrest has threatened to disrupt U.S.-Chinese relations even as the two nations’ leaders seek to negotiate a trade deal that would scale back a series of tariffs that have been implemented this year. China’s Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng summoned U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad to protest the arrest on Sunday, accusing the U.S. of violating the “legitimate rights and interests of Chinese citizens.”

Revelations Tuesday that a former Canadian diplomat had been detained during a visit to Beijing added to concerns that the dispute could escalate into a broader tit-for-tat between China and the U.S. and its allies. Canadian Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale told reporters he saw “no explicit indication” Meng’s case was linked to the detention of Michael Kovrig, who now works as a senior adviser to the International Crisis Group in Hong Kong.

Trump’s remarks appeared to undercut other officials in his administration who contended that Meng’s arrest — which came the same day he and Xi announced plans to break the trade impasse — was unconnected to the broader negotiations. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said Sunday during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the case was a “criminal justice matter” and unrelated to trade talks.

That message was echoed by Larry Kudlow, the head of Trump’s National Economic Council, who told “Fox News Sunday” that the Huawei case and the trade discussions were different “and I think President Trump and President Xi will continue to keep that difference.”
Chinese state media reports a second Canadian national, Michael Spavor, has been detained on suspicion of endangering state security, while the China foreign ministry say two Canadian nationals are detained in the country. The Spavor investigation follows the detention of former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig on December 10 and Canada's December 1 arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.