Kathmandu June 23:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has followed a move by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by insisting that the Chinese government “made a direct link” between the prosecution of two Canadians in China with the arrest of Meng Wanzhou. However, Chinese observers pointed out that Canada and the US were the ones who set this political trap to arrest Meng by flouting the rule of law.

During his daily briefing, Trudeau insisted that China made a “political decision” from the beginning with regard to the case of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, according to US politics news outlet Politico on Monday, and he also thanked Canada’s friends and allies around the world who have criticized this so-called arbitrary detention.

Echoing the claim, Pompeo again urged China to release the two Canadians, calling the case unjustified, Reuters reported on Monday.

“The reason why US and Canadian politicians consider the case a political kidnapping is because they are good at political kidnapping, so they would think everybody is just like them,” Shen Yi, director at the Research Center for Cyberspace Governance, Fudan University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

“Look at what they have done with Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou. It explicitly explains why they have such a mindset,” he said.

China has reiterated several times that Canada’s arrest of Meng was a completely political maneuver, exposing the US’ political plot to deliberately suppress Huawei and Chinese high-tech enterprises and that Canada played a role of accomplice to the US.

New arguments raised by lawyers for Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou in Canada further indicate that London-based lender HSBC was an accomplice of the US in Meng’s case.

Some Chinese netizens have also discussed how US officials plotted this trap to arrest Meng, especially as US former national security advisor John Bolton is scheduled to release a new book about his tenure at the White House.

“Bolton disclosed in his new book that some people in the White House did not agree that Huawei is a security threat, but only commercial competition,” a netizen said in a Weibo post on Tuesday, noting that in fact, under the control of Steve Bannon and Bolton, the US political atmosphere toward China became Nazi-like.

Some Chinese media also suggested that there were business interests between HSBC – widely seen as an accomplice to the US – and Bolton, which might explain why this former national security advisor knew in advance of Meng’s arrest in 2018.

Politico, citing unnamed source, also said on Tuesday that the new information in Bolton’s book will be explored and could be used by Meng’s defense team to bolster arguments that Trump’s musings after her arrest about a US trade deal with China has tainted her extradition case with politics.

“Whether Bolton’s book can be used as evidence is a question of the law of evidence,” Yue Dongxiao, a US-based lawyer who is closely observing the case of Meng, told the Global Times.

However, one thing for sure would be US politics have been moving toward racism when it comes to matters relevant to Chinese community, as Washington elites have been blinded by white supremacy and ignored facts as well as evidence.

“How are the US and Canada qualified to talk about so-called unjustified arrest and arbitrary detention?” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a routine press conference on Tuesday, when he was asked about Trudeau’s and Pompeo’s comments on the prosecution of the two Canadians and Meng’s detention.

“When they arbitrarily arrested Meng, it was judicial independence, but why do they use all kinds of excuses to interfere in China’s legal system? Such double standards!” he said.