Engaging China with Canadian Values While Making a Stronger Stand

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland speaks to the media in Toronto on June 7, 2019. Freeland’s refusal last week to quash the extradition of Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou to the United States because it would set a dangerous precedent is a good start to Canada making a stronger stand and exerting Canadian values with Beijing on bilateral issues. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nick Kozak

Since seizing power in 1949, the party-state in Beijing has caused the deaths of tens of millions of innocent Chinese nationals. Three deadly campaigns were the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962), the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

The violence unleashed in mid-1999 by then-regime leader Jiang Zemin against adherents of the Falun Gong spiritual discipline continues, with the regime currently applying similar treatment to the Uighur people in East Turkestan.