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He was already a convicted drug trafficker. I don’t see any indication that his original 15-year sentence was improper. It is possible that he was falsely convi

He was already a convicted drug trafficker. I don’t see any indication that his original 15-year sentence was improper. It is possible that he was falsely convicted, of course, but I don’t know that this is more likely in China than elsewhere. Suddenly changing his sentence to death is rather suspicious, but at least for me it doesn’t make a huge difference compared to a 15-year sentence. Random anecdote: I just got back to the US from several weeks in China. By far the most uncomfortable and worrying law-enforcement interaction of the trip was going through US immigration control on the way back.

fermienrico 8y ago
I’ve always had a pleasant experience returning home. I travel 200 days in a year and never have I had a bad experience during US Immigration. In fact, I look forward to “Welcome home” from an officer although now it’s more expedited with the automated passport control and they hardly take more than 20 seconds to let you go. I am curious of your bad experience, can you tell us more? Edit: I do not look like a typical US Citizen. Edit: Tangentially, I have also had great experience with American police. I’ve been pulled over a few times and the officers always have a calm demeanor with utmost level of professionalism. The narrative of US authorities mishaving happens in headline cases, not to vast number of people.
- Insanity 8y ago
  Maybe it is different when you don't _look_ like you're a US citizen.
  - fermienrico 8y ago
    I look very close to an Arab person than I look like a typical US Citizen. My friends joke if I should get rid of my facial hair for the expediency of immigration. I’ve always been treated well and this goes for vast number of Americans and Foreigners that enter US.
    - magduf 8y ago
      Arab people look very close to "white" people, and even more so these days since almost all American men have decided to wear giant, fuzzy beards.
  - maccio92 8y ago
    How does a US citizen _look_? Last I checked we were an incredibly diverse nation.
    - Insanity 8y ago
      Well, I meant what they think a US citizen would look like. For example, if you look Asian, you might still be a US citizen but more likely they'd treat you differently. I'm saying this as someone who is married to a Mexican and crosses the US border by car. In general the experiences have been good by the way - just not all the time. I'm just saying that it could be influenced by the way you look.
      - askmike 8y ago
        (not big in American ethnicity but) I think his point is that "looking like a US citizen" is basically either being European, native American or African American. Which I guess is kind of like everyone except for people who look like Asian, South American or from the Middle East.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Weird. I have never had a pleasant experience with US customs. They are usually not unpleasant either, but they’re never friendly or even more than vaguely polite. (I say “usually” because my wife was once told off quite rudely when she went through the visitors line as a permanent resident, because she wanted to help and translate for visiting family members she was with.) The worst part of the experience is knowing they will not hesitate to fuck me over if they decide they want to, and I have little recourse. They can’t keep me out of the country, but they can screw me up for hours or days if they want. They can keep my wife out of the country arbitrarily, and the only fix there would be a lengthy and expensive legal process with no guarantee of success. It’s minor compared to the hypothetical example of being imprisoned or executed on false drug charges, but my point isn’t that US immigration isn’t equivalently bad, but that I felt and experienced no menace whatsoever from Chinese law enforcement.
  - foldr 8y ago
    I've been through many times as white British person (both as a visitor and on various visas) and have never had a bad experience. I'm not denying that people do have bad experiences. But I find it kind of hard to believe that as a US citizen, you've never once had an experience of re-entering the country that didn't involve the customs agent asking you a couple of simple questions and then sending you on your way.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      That is exactly what the experience is most of the time. It’s unpleasant because they’re not nice and they have way too much power, but it’s not a big deal. Again, my point is not that it’s completely awful, but rather that this minor unpleasantness still manages to be the worst thing on these trips.
      - foldr 8y ago
        I guess I don't understand what level of "niceness" you're expecting. Most of the time they've been friendly and polite (to me). Given that they're humans doing a basically crappy job, I don't expect any more than that.
- desireco42 8y ago
  You are uniquely lucky person and probably by other responses you can see how rare is experience like yours. While I never had huge problems on the border, it is always unpleasant experience and what they can do to you is so overproportional to things you can be seen at fault. My mother in law sneaked an orange in our suitcase, for the kids. I was charged $150 or $300(not sure anymore) for it and put on some list. The best. experience is when you can pass without any interaction. Rarely I see it as welcome home, even though I am eager go and happy to be, home. God help you if you are from Syria, Iran or any other country like that. Even Israelis because they 'look arab' often have issues.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    Right, they’re usually not outright bad, but they’re certainly not welcoming. To put it in perspective, I’d much rather go to the DMV than go through American immigration controls, and the DMV workers are way nicer.
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      I would rather go through American immigration controls than to wait for anything at ICBC (a state owned bank in China). There goes an entire afternoon of pure misery.
abbe_k 8y ago
You don't think there is a big difference between 15 years in prison and the death penalty? You still have a lot of time left in life after 15 years so it is major difference.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Not really. In terms of “this has completely ruined my life,” 15 years in a Chinese prison would rate about 9.8 out of 10 for me, while death is 10 out of 10. In terms of balancing the benefits of travel versus the risk of law enforcement misconduct, that additional 0.2 out of 10 makes no noticeable difference.
  - Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
    That is a very uncommon opinion.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      Is it really? It seems pretty widely accepted that the death penalty doesn’t deter crime, for example, which indicates that people (well, potential criminals, anyway) don’t see it as substantially worse than a lengthy prison term.
      - adventured 8y ago
        It's a fascinating point that the pro death penalty crowd universally ignores. US violent crime has plunged over the last 40 years, and the murder rate has been chopped in half since 1980, all the while death sentences have declined to ~45-50 year lows (there has been roughly a 90% reduction in new death sentences since 1999). The dramatic plunge in new death sentences over two decades hasn't coincided with any uptick in the murder rate or violent crime.
        magduf 8y ago
        The people who commit heinous crimes usually have psychological problems that cause them to have very low impulse control. They don't think their actions through very well, which is why they're in their position instead of some better and more legal lifestyle/career. So harsher punishments really don't deter them; they don't expect to get caught and aren't thinking about that when they commit the crime. There's a theory that violent crime has plunged over the last 40 years because of leaded gasoline being phased out: the lead was in the air and environment and giving everyone low-level lead poisoning.
gpm 8y ago
He was a convicted drug dealer, that's little comfort when other people like the random teacher [0] and entrepreneur [1] they arrested were not. [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/china-sarah-mciver-detained-1.4953711 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/china-sarah-mciver-detained... [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-officials-meet-with-detainee-michael-spavor-in-china-1.4969817 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-officials-meet-wit...
- mikeash 8y ago
  That random teacher had some visa problem and was quickly deported. That’s totally normal in most countries. The entrepreneur is a high profile person playing a very political game with business in North Korea. It does sound like his arrest was unjust, but it doesn’t indicate anything for regular folks like me. His story just reinforces my policy of “stay the fuck away from North Korea.”
- yorwba 8y ago
  According to your link, the teacher was employed illegally. It's common for students and other people without work permits to be offered positions as English teachers where the only requirement is being born in North America. The employers usually gloss over the illegality or claim that the laws are not enforced. That's been true in the past, but as that teacher had to learn, it can change anytime. So my generalized advice is to comply with the law instead of relying on lack of enforcement. They can still get you for "national security" reasons, but it's much less likely if you aren't a big fish.
  - learc83 8y ago
    >So my generalized advice is to comply with the law In a country where millions of people are held in reeducation camps for practicing the wrong religion, the "law" as written is a joke. From friends living their, it's impossible to actually strictly follow what's on the books, particularly for foreigners. You have to know the current expectations, what's being enforced by the local government etc... What matters isn't what's written, it's what is currently being practiced.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
3pt14159 8y ago
Either China is doing this so they can have something to retreat on that seems gracious and careful (i.e., it's a complete ploy) or they're completely misreading Canadian sentiment. Canadians tend to give and give and bend and bend, but it really comes to it they snap in a way that I don't think the Chinese understand. We have way more leverage over China than they have over us. We sell them commodities. They sell us electronics. You know what's the one good thing about commodity sales? Fungibility. If we start banning Chinese phones we'll buy American ones come in instead. If they ban Canadian grain it will be less efficient, but the world will shift around and that grain will be sold to someone. If they ban our wood, it will be less efficient, but we can make our own furniture or sell wood to Europe to replace the wood China is buying from elsewhere. And if push every really came to shove there is a lot of Chinese owned property in Canada. Foreign ownership taxes can go way, way up. It's a complete misread of the situation by them. We have extradition treaties with the USA. Our society runs via a rule of law. They're going to turn the entire Canadian business and political community against them if they keep this up. Take it up with the Americans for fucks sake. Even Maxime Bernier has walked back his pledge for a Chinese-Canadian trade agreement.
- simonh 8y ago
  This almost certainly has nothing to do with changing Canadian behavior, it's about domestic politics. Canada/USA kicked one of ours, so we're going to kick 20 of theirs. They need to be seen to be doing it. The fact that it won't work and is counterproductive doesn't matter.
  - ardy42 8y ago
    > This almost certainly has nothing to do with changing Canadian behavior, it's about domestic politics. Canada/USA kicked one of ours, so we're going to kick 20 of theirs. They need to be seen to be doing it. The fact that it won't work and is counterproductive doesn't matter. Is CCTV or other state-run outlets making a big deal about this death sentence and the other Canadian arrests? Is it portraying them as retaliation?
    - 8y ago
jopsen 8y ago
> Random anecdote: I just got back to the US from several weeks in China. I'm sure most people will be fine visiting China, but personally I like rule-of-law :) No justice system is perfect. Coming from Denmark, I'm not impressed by the US justice system. But if you hire a lawyer your odds of a fair trial is decent. But in China there is no assumption of regularity, or assumption of good faith. If someone powerful doesn't like you or wants to send a message -- then I guess you can take solace in the fact that your organs might not go to waste.
- mikeash 8y ago
  I totally see where you’re coming from and I have no problem with such a decision. It’s not the decision I make, but I wouldn’t try to argue that you’re wrong. My main point isn’t that everyone should go to China worry-free, but rather that a years-old drug conviction being bumped up from a long prison sentence to a death sentence isn’t going to make much difference to the decision. People like you probably wouldn’t go either way, and people like me aren’t going to change their minds because of it.
j1vms 8y ago
> ... at least for me it doesn’t make a huge difference compared to a 15-year sentence. There isn't a huge difference between a death sentence versus 15 years in prison? You're kidding right? Whether the person is in fact guilty or innocent, there is a significant difference between the two sentences, literally the difference between life or death. One irrevocably extinguishes the person's life - there is no going back. The other is a very long incarceration, cutting them off from society for that time, and offering at best a chance for correction.
- mikeash 8y ago
  The context of this statement is in deciding whether or not to travel to China. I am having a very hard time coming up with a scenario where the possibility of a 15-year prison sentence has me deciding to go, but the possibility of execution makes me decide to stay home.
echevil 8y ago
There are precedents that drug trafficker got death sentences, so there’s nothing surprising at all. I guess he got 15 years sentence originally probably because the government didn’t want to hurt their relationship with Canada at their time. Many Chinese find that sentence improper. Chinese laws and the laws in many Asian country regarding drugs are much stricter than those in US
aiisjustanif 8y ago
>Suddenly changing his sentence to death is rather suspicious, but at least for me it doesn’t make a huge difference compared to a 15-year sentence. There's a huge difference, from a human rights stand point for non-violent crimes there is a very noticeable difference.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Of course. But we’re talking about the potential impact on tourism here.
advertising 8y ago
This is something that has really irked me the past couple years. I feel safer entering other countries than I do coming back to the U.S. It feels like you’re entering a prison camp going through immigration. Everyone is screened by security before getting on a plane yet passport control officers are wearing swat team bullet proof vests and open-carry guns while checking your passport.
pupppet 8y ago
>Suddenly changing his sentence to death is rather suspicious, but at least for me it doesn’t make a huge difference compared to a 15-year sentence. I'm guessing going from 15 years to death sentence is probably a big difference to him.

fermienrico 8y ago

I’ve always had a pleasant experience returning home. I travel 200 days in a year and never have I had a bad experience during US Immigration. In fact, I look forward to “Welcome home” from an officer although now it’s more expedited with the automated passport control and they hardly take more than 20 seconds to let you go. I am curious of your bad experience, can you tell us more? Edit: I do not look like a typical US Citizen. Edit: Tangentially, I have also had great experience with American police. I’ve been pulled over a few times and the officers always have a calm demeanor with utmost level of professionalism. The narrative of US authorities mishaving happens in headline cases, not to vast number of people.

Insanity 8y ago
Maybe it is different when you don't _look_ like you're a US citizen.
- fermienrico 8y ago
  I look very close to an Arab person than I look like a typical US Citizen. My friends joke if I should get rid of my facial hair for the expediency of immigration. I’ve always been treated well and this goes for vast number of Americans and Foreigners that enter US.
  - magduf 8y ago
    Arab people look very close to "white" people, and even more so these days since almost all American men have decided to wear giant, fuzzy beards.
- maccio92 8y ago
  How does a US citizen _look_? Last I checked we were an incredibly diverse nation.
  - Insanity 8y ago
    Well, I meant what they think a US citizen would look like. For example, if you look Asian, you might still be a US citizen but more likely they'd treat you differently. I'm saying this as someone who is married to a Mexican and crosses the US border by car. In general the experiences have been good by the way - just not all the time. I'm just saying that it could be influenced by the way you look.
    - askmike 8y ago
      (not big in American ethnicity but) I think his point is that "looking like a US citizen" is basically either being European, native American or African American. Which I guess is kind of like everyone except for people who look like Asian, South American or from the Middle East.
mikeash 8y ago
Weird. I have never had a pleasant experience with US customs. They are usually not unpleasant either, but they’re never friendly or even more than vaguely polite. (I say “usually” because my wife was once told off quite rudely when she went through the visitors line as a permanent resident, because she wanted to help and translate for visiting family members she was with.) The worst part of the experience is knowing they will not hesitate to fuck me over if they decide they want to, and I have little recourse. They can’t keep me out of the country, but they can screw me up for hours or days if they want. They can keep my wife out of the country arbitrarily, and the only fix there would be a lengthy and expensive legal process with no guarantee of success. It’s minor compared to the hypothetical example of being imprisoned or executed on false drug charges, but my point isn’t that US immigration isn’t equivalently bad, but that I felt and experienced no menace whatsoever from Chinese law enforcement.
- foldr 8y ago
  I've been through many times as white British person (both as a visitor and on various visas) and have never had a bad experience. I'm not denying that people do have bad experiences. But I find it kind of hard to believe that as a US citizen, you've never once had an experience of re-entering the country that didn't involve the customs agent asking you a couple of simple questions and then sending you on your way.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    That is exactly what the experience is most of the time. It’s unpleasant because they’re not nice and they have way too much power, but it’s not a big deal. Again, my point is not that it’s completely awful, but rather that this minor unpleasantness still manages to be the worst thing on these trips.
    - foldr 8y ago
      I guess I don't understand what level of "niceness" you're expecting. Most of the time they've been friendly and polite (to me). Given that they're humans doing a basically crappy job, I don't expect any more than that.
desireco42 8y ago
You are uniquely lucky person and probably by other responses you can see how rare is experience like yours. While I never had huge problems on the border, it is always unpleasant experience and what they can do to you is so overproportional to things you can be seen at fault. My mother in law sneaked an orange in our suitcase, for the kids. I was charged $150 or $300(not sure anymore) for it and put on some list. The best. experience is when you can pass without any interaction. Rarely I see it as welcome home, even though I am eager go and happy to be, home. God help you if you are from Syria, Iran or any other country like that. Even Israelis because they 'look arab' often have issues.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Right, they’re usually not outright bad, but they’re certainly not welcoming. To put it in perspective, I’d much rather go to the DMV than go through American immigration controls, and the DMV workers are way nicer.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    I would rather go through American immigration controls than to wait for anything at ICBC (a state owned bank in China). There goes an entire afternoon of pure misery.

abbe_k 8y ago

You don't think there is a big difference between 15 years in prison and the death penalty? You still have a lot of time left in life after 15 years so it is major difference.

mikeash 8y ago
Not really. In terms of “this has completely ruined my life,” 15 years in a Chinese prison would rate about 9.8 out of 10 for me, while death is 10 out of 10. In terms of balancing the benefits of travel versus the risk of law enforcement misconduct, that additional 0.2 out of 10 makes no noticeable difference.
- Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
  That is a very uncommon opinion.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    Is it really? It seems pretty widely accepted that the death penalty doesn’t deter crime, for example, which indicates that people (well, potential criminals, anyway) don’t see it as substantially worse than a lengthy prison term.
    - adventured 8y ago
      It's a fascinating point that the pro death penalty crowd universally ignores. US violent crime has plunged over the last 40 years, and the murder rate has been chopped in half since 1980, all the while death sentences have declined to ~45-50 year lows (there has been roughly a 90% reduction in new death sentences since 1999). The dramatic plunge in new death sentences over two decades hasn't coincided with any uptick in the murder rate or violent crime.
      - magduf 8y ago
        The people who commit heinous crimes usually have psychological problems that cause them to have very low impulse control. They don't think their actions through very well, which is why they're in their position instead of some better and more legal lifestyle/career. So harsher punishments really don't deter them; they don't expect to get caught and aren't thinking about that when they commit the crime. There's a theory that violent crime has plunged over the last 40 years because of leaded gasoline being phased out: the lead was in the air and environment and giving everyone low-level lead poisoning.

gpm 8y ago

He was a convicted drug dealer, that's little comfort when other people like the random teacher [0] and entrepreneur [1] they arrested were not. [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/china-sarah-mciver-detained-1.4953711 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/china-sarah-mciver-detained... [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-officials-meet-with-detainee-michael-spavor-in-china-1.4969817 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-officials-meet-wit...

mikeash 8y ago
That random teacher had some visa problem and was quickly deported. That’s totally normal in most countries. The entrepreneur is a high profile person playing a very political game with business in North Korea. It does sound like his arrest was unjust, but it doesn’t indicate anything for regular folks like me. His story just reinforces my policy of “stay the fuck away from North Korea.”
yorwba 8y ago
According to your link, the teacher was employed illegally. It's common for students and other people without work permits to be offered positions as English teachers where the only requirement is being born in North America. The employers usually gloss over the illegality or claim that the laws are not enforced. That's been true in the past, but as that teacher had to learn, it can change anytime. So my generalized advice is to comply with the law instead of relying on lack of enforcement. They can still get you for "national security" reasons, but it's much less likely if you aren't a big fish.
- learc83 8y ago
  >So my generalized advice is to comply with the law In a country where millions of people are held in reeducation camps for practicing the wrong religion, the "law" as written is a joke. From friends living their, it's impossible to actually strictly follow what's on the books, particularly for foreigners. You have to know the current expectations, what's being enforced by the local government etc... What matters isn't what's written, it's what is currently being practiced.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

3pt14159 8y ago

Either China is doing this so they can have something to retreat on that seems gracious and careful (i.e., it's a complete ploy) or they're completely misreading Canadian sentiment. Canadians tend to give and give and bend and bend, but it really comes to it they snap in a way that I don't think the Chinese understand. We have way more leverage over China than they have over us. We sell them commodities. They sell us electronics. You know what's the one good thing about commodity sales? Fungibility. If we start banning Chinese phones we'll buy American ones come in instead. If they ban Canadian grain it will be less efficient, but the world will shift around and that grain will be sold to someone. If they ban our wood, it will be less efficient, but we can make our own furniture or sell wood to Europe to replace the wood China is buying from elsewhere. And if push every really came to shove there is a lot of Chinese owned property in Canada. Foreign ownership taxes can go way, way up. It's a complete misread of the situation by them. We have extradition treaties with the USA. Our society runs via a rule of law. They're going to turn the entire Canadian business and political community against them if they keep this up. Take it up with the Americans for fucks sake. Even Maxime Bernier has walked back his pledge for a Chinese-Canadian trade agreement.

simonh 8y ago
This almost certainly has nothing to do with changing Canadian behavior, it's about domestic politics. Canada/USA kicked one of ours, so we're going to kick 20 of theirs. They need to be seen to be doing it. The fact that it won't work and is counterproductive doesn't matter.
- ardy42 8y ago
  > This almost certainly has nothing to do with changing Canadian behavior, it's about domestic politics. Canada/USA kicked one of ours, so we're going to kick 20 of theirs. They need to be seen to be doing it. The fact that it won't work and is counterproductive doesn't matter. Is CCTV or other state-run outlets making a big deal about this death sentence and the other Canadian arrests? Is it portraying them as retaliation?
  - 8y ago

jopsen 8y ago

> Random anecdote: I just got back to the US from several weeks in China. I'm sure most people will be fine visiting China, but personally I like rule-of-law :) No justice system is perfect. Coming from Denmark, I'm not impressed by the US justice system. But if you hire a lawyer your odds of a fair trial is decent. But in China there is no assumption of regularity, or assumption of good faith. If someone powerful doesn't like you or wants to send a message -- then I guess you can take solace in the fact that your organs might not go to waste.

mikeash 8y ago
I totally see where you’re coming from and I have no problem with such a decision. It’s not the decision I make, but I wouldn’t try to argue that you’re wrong. My main point isn’t that everyone should go to China worry-free, but rather that a years-old drug conviction being bumped up from a long prison sentence to a death sentence isn’t going to make much difference to the decision. People like you probably wouldn’t go either way, and people like me aren’t going to change their minds because of it.

j1vms 8y ago

> ... at least for me it doesn’t make a huge difference compared to a 15-year sentence. There isn't a huge difference between a death sentence versus 15 years in prison? You're kidding right? Whether the person is in fact guilty or innocent, there is a significant difference between the two sentences, literally the difference between life or death. One irrevocably extinguishes the person's life - there is no going back. The other is a very long incarceration, cutting them off from society for that time, and offering at best a chance for correction.

mikeash 8y ago
The context of this statement is in deciding whether or not to travel to China. I am having a very hard time coming up with a scenario where the possibility of a 15-year prison sentence has me deciding to go, but the possibility of execution makes me decide to stay home.

echevil 8y ago

There are precedents that drug trafficker got death sentences, so there’s nothing surprising at all. I guess he got 15 years sentence originally probably because the government didn’t want to hurt their relationship with Canada at their time. Many Chinese find that sentence improper. Chinese laws and the laws in many Asian country regarding drugs are much stricter than those in US

aiisjustanif 8y ago

>Suddenly changing his sentence to death is rather suspicious, but at least for me it doesn’t make a huge difference compared to a 15-year sentence. There's a huge difference, from a human rights stand point for non-violent crimes there is a very noticeable difference.

mikeash 8y ago
Of course. But we’re talking about the potential impact on tourism here.

advertising 8y ago

This is something that has really irked me the past couple years. I feel safer entering other countries than I do coming back to the U.S. It feels like you’re entering a prison camp going through immigration. Everyone is screened by security before getting on a plane yet passport control officers are wearing swat team bullet proof vests and open-carry guns while checking your passport.

pupppet 8y ago

>Suddenly changing his sentence to death is rather suspicious, but at least for me it doesn’t make a huge difference compared to a 15-year sentence. I'm guessing going from 15 years to death sentence is probably a big difference to him.