China charges 2 Canadians with spying in Huawei-linked case

Chinese prosecutors charged two detained Canadians with spying Friday in an apparent bid to step up pressure on Canada to drop a U.S. extradition request for a Huawei executive under house arrest in Vancouver.

Michael Kovrig was charged by Beijing on suspicion of spying for state secrets and intelligence. Michael Spavor was charged in Dandong, a city near the North Korean border, on suspicion of spying for a foreign entity and illegally providing state secrets.

The charges were announced by China's highest prosecutor's office in brief social media posts.

Both men have been held for 18 months. They were detained shortly after the December 2018 arrest of Meng Wanzhou, a top executive at Chinese tech giant Huawei. The daughter of Huawei's founder was arrested at the request of U.S. authorities who want her on fraud charges related to trade with Iran.

A Canadian judge ruled this month that the U.S. extradition case against Meng could proceed to the next stage.

China has denied any explicit link between her case and the lengthy detention of the two Canadian men, but outside experts see them as tied and Chinese diplomats have strongly implied a connection.

Meng has been released on bail while her extradition case proceeds in court and is residing in one of her two Vancouver mansions where she is reportedly working on a graduate degree. Kovrig and Spavor are being held at an undisclosed location and up to now, have been denied access to lawyers or family members.

China has also sentenced two other Canadians to death and suspended imports of Canadian canola, while saying those moves were also unrelated to Meng's case.

Relations between Canada and China are at their lowest point since the Chinese military's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989.

The tensions appear to be causing further harm to Huawei's reputation in the Americas, with two of Canada's three major telecommunication companies announcing earlier this month that they've decided not to use the Chinese tech giant for their next-generation 5G wireless network.

Bell Canada announced that Sweden-based Ericsson will be its supplier and Telus Corp. later announced that it had also selected Ericsson and Nokia.

Huawei is the world's biggest supplier of network gear used by phone and internet companies, but has long been seen as a front for spying by China's military and its highly skilled security services.

The U.S. has urged Canada to exclude Huawei equipment from their next-generation wireless networks, saying Huawei is legally beholden to the Chinese regime. The United States and Australia have banned Huawei, citing concerns it is an organ of Chinese military intelligence — a charge the company denies.

Canada's diplomats in China have been meeting regularly with their detained citizens but there was no immediate comments on the new indictments.