Former Canadian deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland says China's new ethnic-unity law reminds her of the argument Russian President Vladimir Putin used to justify invading Ukraine in 2022. She is calling on democratic countries to push back against it.

Freeland gave the keynote speech on Tuesday at the Ketagalan Forum, a yearly Indo-Pacific security conference held in Taipei and hosted by Taiwan's foreign ministry and a local think tank (The Globe and Mail; Taiwan Today).

The law she focused on took effect July 1. One section, Article 63, says people and groups outside China can be held legally responsible for acts that "undermine ethnic unity and progress or create ethnic division" (The Globe and Mail. In plain terms, Beijing is claiming the power to go after people abroad for things it says threaten ethnic unity. A think tank at the George W. Bush Institute says the law lets Beijing prosecute Chinese freedom advocates anywhere in the world (Bush Center).

Freeland called Article 63 "particularly sinister" for what she described as its "dark kinship" with Russia's use of cultural and ethnic ties to justify attacking its neighbours. She pointed to an essay Putin published in the summer of 2021 arguing that Russians and Ukrainians were "one people." Seven months later, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine (The Globe and Mail.

The comparison Freeland is making is about a specific pattern: a government using shared ethnicity or culture across borders as an excuse to claim authority over people and land beyond its own country. She said governments should say clearly that a foreign law based on ethnic loyalty has no legal power on their soil and does not apply to their citizens.

Taiwanese officials have said the law gives Beijing another legal excuse to target people in Taiwan it considers separatists (The Globe and Mail. Taiwan's President Lai, who also attended the 2026 Ketagalan Forum, said the law infringes on Taiwan's sovereignty (Office of the President, Taiwan).

Canada's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Peter MacDougall, briefly mentioned the law at the UN Human Rights Council in mid-June, before it took effect (The Globe and Mail.

Freeland also used the speech to call for Taiwan to join a major trade agreement called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP (Toronto Sun). The CPTPP is a trade deal among Pacific Rim countries that replaced an earlier version after the United States pulled out. Both Taiwan and China have asked to join, but members have not yet decided how to handle either request.

The broader context here is that Beijing has been making legal and political claims that reach well beyond its own borders. Because Article 63 applies to people outside China, the law is not just about governing affairs inside the country. On paper, it could affect diaspora communities, human-rights groups, and foreign citizens whose speech or activity Beijing decides goes against "ethnic unity and progress." Freeland's comparison to Putin's "one people" essay points directly at that: using ethnic-unity language not as domestic policy, but as a claimed basis for authority over people and places in other countries.

For Canadians, a natural comparison is the two Michaels case. Beijing detained Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor for nearly three years in what was widely seen as retaliation for Canada's arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition request. A law that claims the power to prosecute people outside China adds a legal tool to the same coercive approach Beijing used in that episode.

Freeland's choice to give this speech in Taipei, at a forum run by Taiwan's foreign ministry, sends its own message. She paired a pointed critique of Chinese legislation with a call for Taiwan to join a multilateral trade pact, tying the security question and the trade question together in one address.