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In May, TMAC announced its deal with Shandong at a time when fear and anxiety in Canada about the coronavirus pandemic were reaching an initial peak, and much of the country remained shutdown.
In June, 97 per cent of TMAC’s shareholders, including its two largest, both based in Colorado and which together control 53 per cent of the company, Resource Capital Fund and Newmont Corp., the largest gold mining company in the world, voted in support of the sale.
But news of the merger came amid a backdrop of heightened tensions with China.
In December, 2018, the RCMP arrested Meng Wanzhou, a permanent resident of Canada who is also chief financial officer of Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Ltd., so she could be extradited to the U.S. Prosecutors there have accused her of violating Iran sanctions, as well as theft of trade secrets.
Not long after her arrest, in what many Canadians interpreted as an act of retaliation, China arrested two Canadians on espionage charges: Michael Kovrig, an analyst with the International Crisis Group in Washington and former diplomat, and Michael Spavor, an entrepreneur who had been living near the North Korean border.
Gordon Houlden, director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta, said he sees the government’s rejection of Shandong’s purchase of TMAC as part of a trend toward less investment from China in Canada.
He downplayed the national security concerns about a Chinese state-owned company owning a gold mine in the Arctic, and said he believes a public backlash against China for the arrest of the ‘two Michaels’ likely played a factor in the government decision to block the deal.
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