Run For Your Life

Countries evacuating nationals from Chinese coronavirus areas
Reuters

A growing number of countries around the world are evacuating or planning to evacuate diplomatic staff and citizens from parts of China hit by the new coronavirus.

Following are some countries’ evacuation plans, and how they aim to manage the health risk from those who are returning.
- Kazakhstan, which has previously evacuated 83 from Wuhan, will send two planes to China on Feb. 10 and Feb. 12 to evacuate its citizens. Out of 719 Kazakhs remaining in China, 391 have asked to be repatriated.
- A second evacuation flight is bringing back another 174 Singaporeans and their family members from Wuhan to the city-state on Feb. 9, Singapore’s foreign ministry said.
- Thirty Filipinos returned to the Philippines on Feb. 9 from Wuhan, the Department of Foreign Affairs said. The returning passengers and a 10-member government team will be quarantined for 14 days.
- Britain’s final evacuation flight from Wuhan, carrying more than 200 people, landed at a Royal Air Force base in central England on Feb. 9. A plane carrying 83 British and 27 European Union nationals from Wuhan landed in Britain last week.
- The 34 Brazilians evacuated from Wuhan landed in Brazil on Feb. 9, where they will begin 18 days of quarantine.
- Two planes with about 300 passengers, mostly U.S. citizens, took off from Wuhan on Feb. 6 bound for the United States -- the third group of evacuees from the heart of the coronavirus outbreak, the U.S. State Department said.
- Uzbekistan has evacuated 251 people from China and quarantined them on arrival in Tashkent, the Central Asian nation’s state airline said on Feb. 6.
- A plane load of New Zealanders, Australians and Pacific Islanders evacuated from Wuhan arrived in Auckland, New Zealand on Feb. 5, officials said.
- Taiwan has evacuated the first batch of an estimated 500 Taiwanese stranded in Wuhan.
- Italy flew back 56 nationals from Wuhan to Rome on Feb. 3. The group will spend two weeks in quarantine in a military hospital, the government said.
- Saudi Arabia has evacuated 10 students from Wuhan, Saudi state television reported on Feb. 2.
- Indonesia’s government flew 243 Indonesians from Hubei on Feb. 2 and placed them under quarantine at a military base on an island northwest of Borneo.
- South Korea flew 368 people home on a charter flight that arrived on Jan. 31. A second chartered flight departed Seoul for Wuhan on Jan. 31, with plans to evacuate around 350 more South Korean citizens.
- Japan chartered a third flight to repatriate Japanese people, which arrived from Wuhan on Jan. 31, bringing the number of repatriated nationals to 565.
- Spain’s government is working with China and the European Union to repatriate its nationals.
- Canada evacuated its first group of 176 citizens from Wuhan to an Ontario air force base early on Feb. 5, according to the Globe and Mail newspaper. The country’s foreign minister said a second group should arrive later on Feb. 5 after changing planes in Vancouver. All evacuees will be quarantined on the base for two weeks.
- Russia said it would begin moving its citizens out of China via its Far Eastern region on Feb. 1, regional authorities said. It plans to evacuate more than 600 Russian citizens currently in Hubei, Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova said. A first Russian military plane took off on Feb. 4 to evacuate Russian citizens from Wuhan, the RIA news agency reported.
- The Netherlands is preparing the voluntary evacuation of 20 Dutch nationals and their families from Hubei, Foreign Minister Stef Blok said. The Netherlands is finalising arrangements with EU partners and Chinese authorities.
- France has evacuated some nationals from Wuhan and said it would place the passengers in quarantine. It said it would first evacuate nationals without symptoms and then those showing symptoms at a later, unspecified date.
- Swiss authorities said they hope to have about 10 citizens join the French evacuation of nationals from China.
- A plane brought 138 Thai nationals home from Wuhan last week. They will spend two weeks in quarantine.

Beijing’s harshness is forcing Canada to rethink its China delusions

The Globe and Mail

The one silver lining in the extradition case against Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, now entering its second year, is that Beijing’s behaviour has awakened Canadians – including senior members of the Trudeau government – to the nature of China’s Communist Party regime.

Many in Ottawa and the business community had talked themselves into believing fantasies about the hard men who run Beijing. 

Some imagined that, although China might play rough with other countries, Canada would somehow be entitled to special treatment.
Instead, Beijing has spent the last year giving Canada a special education in how it sees our not-at-all special relationship.
We should be thankful for the lessons. 

The Trudeau government, and the entire political and business establishment, must study them carefully. 

It may allow this country to finally get over its China delusions.
China, and the Communist regime that runs it, are not going anywhere. 

We will have to deal with them, hopefully on peaceful and respectful terms, for a long time to come. But the starting point for the relationship has to be Canada being honest with itself about who we are dealing with.
When Canada followed the rules of its extradition treaty with its closest ally, Beijing had no hesitation in taking two of our citizens hostage – there is no other way to describe what happened to Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig – with the price of ransom being Meng’s release.
All the decades’ worth of treacly odes to Dr. Norman Bethune, Mao’s pet Canadian; all the gratitude Canada supposed it was owed for early recognition of the Communist regime; all the alleged reverence for Trudeau père that allegedly would carry over to Trudeau fils – all turned out to be worth exactly nothing.
Totalitarian dictatorships are not sentimental. 

That’s not something Canada should have had to learn.
The two Michaels are of course still locked up, and there is no sign of their release. 

Yet despite the importance of their condition, the long-term goal of Canada’s China foreign policy is bigger than securing the safe return of two innocents.
Canada of course has to continue to demand their release. 

But it is essential that Ottawa understand that our prisoners in Beijing are also levers that can be used to pressure Canada into going silent on other matters – human rights, the rule of law, Chinese spying, Hong Kong, and a long list of worries that Washington and other Western governments have – in favour of focusing on what China wants, and how it wants Canada to behave so as to avoid being subjected to future hostage-takings.
Canada has never had a relationship like this. 

The Soviet Union was a superpower, but it was also a clear adversary. 

We joined the world’s most important military alliance to oppose it, and it was part of a separate economic system, with which we had almost no trade. 

The lines between the two worlds were thick and bright.
China, in contrast, is part of all of the formerly “Western” or “developed” world’s main institutions. 

It is our second-most important economic relationship, after the United States. 

While there was a time when its party dictatorship appeared to be moving closer to democratic norms, with the Communist Party dispensing with cults of personality and loosening party control, under Xi Jinping that trend is aggressively reversing. 

It is now clear that Beijing joined the international community’s institutions without sharing the international community’s practices and values.
To survive in this new world, Canada needs allies and alliances. Beijing has become expert at playing divide-and-conquer, punishing those who don’t do as they’re told and rewarding those that go along to get along. 

And too many, including Canada, have too often been too ready to go along.
From Sussex Drive to Bay Street, a lot of people would like nothing better than for the past year’s nastiness to be forgotten. But that would mean forgetting all the valuable lessons learned.

Demonstrators in London stand in solidarity with Hong Kong protest movement

HKFP Lens

Thousands rallied in over 40 cities around the world over the weekend in opposition to totalitarianism, and in solidarity with protesters in Hong Kong who also took to the streets en masse. Events were held in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea, Taiwan, and other places. 

Photographer Darcy Miller captured the rally in London.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Photo: Darcy Miller.

Canada vs. thuggish China

Trudeau accuses China of using arbitrary detentions for political ends: ‘This is not acceptable in the international community’

The Guardian

Canada’s relations with China soured after its arrest of Chinese Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a US warrant last December. 

Justin Trudeau has accused Beijing of using arbitrary detentions as a tool in pursuit of political goals in the latest broadside in a diplomatic and trade row with China.

“Using arbitrary detention as a tool to achieve political goals, international or domestic, is something that is of concern not just to Canada but to all our allies,” Trudeau told the Toronto Star editorial board.
He said nations including Britain, France, Germany and the United States “have been highlighting that this is not acceptable behaviour in the international community because they are all worried about China engaging in the same kinds of pressure tactics with them”.
Canada’s relations with China soured after its arrest of Chinese Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a US warrant last December.
Nine days later, Beijing detained two Canadians – former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor – and accused them of espionage as retaliation.
Trudeau added that “we need to figure out how to engage with them, but we also have to be clear-eyed about it, that China plays by a very different set of rules and principles than we do in the west”.
His comments may further inflame tensions between the two countries, which had appeared to be trying to move on from the row. 

This week both Beijing and Ottawa nominated new ambassadors.

The previous Canadian ambassador John McCallum was fired in January after he said it would be “great” if the US dropped its extradition request for the Huawei executive. 

She is wanted by the US on fraud charges and is currently out on bail in Vancouver and living in her multi-million dollar home awaiting extradition proceedings.

FONOPs

Canadian warship sails through Taiwan Strait

By NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE


Canada has sailed a frigate through the Taiwan Strait in what officials in Taipei called a freedom of navigation operation, the first since the arrest of a Huawei executive set off a deepening dispute between Ottawa and Beijing.
The HMCS Regina, one Canada’s 12 frigates, sailed through the waters between Taiwan and China on Tuesday. 

It was accompanied by Naval Replenishment Unit Asterix.
The two ships sailed from Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, where they made their first-ever call on a naval base there.
“The most practical route between Cam Ranh Bay and Northeast Asia involves sailing through the Taiwan Strait,” Jessica Lamirande, spokesperson for Canada’s Department of National Defence, said in a statement. 

“Transit through the Taiwan Strait is not related to making any statement.”
Another frigate, the HMCS Calgary, passed through the Taiwan Strait last October, the department said.
But the Canadian naval transit, which is unlikely to please Beijing, forms “part of the new Canadian position towards China,” said Guy Saint-Jacques, the former Canadian ambassador to China, after the arrest of Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou and subsequent Chinese arrest of two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence released a statement Wednesday that called the passage of the two Canadian ships a “freedom of navigation” operation. 

Taiwan’s state-owned Central News Agency also said that the HMCS Regina activated its automatic identification system during the transit, which allows the general public a view into its movements. Military ships often keep that system turned off to avoid advertising their position.
“In terms of movement of ships, you don’t have to announce ahead of time what they are called. You just have to go through the strait, and it’s obvious what we are trying to demonstrate,” Mr. Saint-Jacques said.
”The Trudeau government is starting to assert itself more, and questions like freedom of navigation are important ones,” Mr. Saint-Jacques said.
“It sends the signal that Canada is aligning with the U.S. and with other countries like Australia and France that have sent ships to the Taiwan Strait – that freedom of navigation is important and that we don’t recognize Chinese claims to sovereignty in that part of the world.”
Taiwan is a self-ruling region with its own military and foreign policy that Beijing claims as part of its territory. 

China has repeatedly conducted military drills simulating the invasion of Taiwan, and in recent years has sent bombers on “encirclement” flights. 

Beijing has never ruled out the use of force to bring Taipei under its command.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency called Taiwan a “primary driver for China’s military modernization.” 

In its 2019 China Military Power Report, the U.S. said “Beijing’s anticipation that foreign forces would intervene in a Taiwan scenario led the PLA to develop a range of systems to deter and deny foreign regional force projection,” the report states. 

The PLA is China’s People’s Liberation Army.
The U.S. regularly sends its own naval vessels through the Taiwan Strait, including most recently on May 22. 

A French frigate also passed through the waters in April, an unusual voyage for a European military ship.
Beijing typically responds with anger at those movements, calling them illegal and lodging diplomatic complaints.
Canada’s military has taken a more active role in Asia in recent years, including sending a submarine and two frigates to the region last year to “build relationships, work with trusted international partners, and contribute to multinational efforts to counter North Korea’s maritime smuggling activity while in the region,” Ms. Lamirande said.

Chinese Dissidents Feel Heat of Beijing’s Wrath. Even in Canada.

Sheng Xue thought she would be safe in Toronto. Then she began speaking out against the Chinese government and became the victim of a lurid smear campaign.
By Catherine Porter

Sheng Xue has been the victim of a relentless smear campaign that has all the markings of a coordinated attack by the Chinese Communist Party.

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario — Search for Sheng Xue on Google in English and you will find the story of an award-winning writer who left China for Canada after the Tiananmen Square uprising and became one of the world’s leading advocates for Chinese democracy.
But that same search in Chinese comes up with a very different portrait: Sheng Xue is a fraud, a thief, a traitor and a serial philanderer.
Want proof?
It offers up salacious photos, like one seeming to show her kissing a man who is not her husband.
As China extends its influence around the globe, it has mastered the art of soft power, establishing Confucius Institutes on Western college campuses and funding ports and power plants in developing countries.
But building up is only one prong of the Chinese strategy.
The other is knocking down.
And few know this better than Sheng Xue.
For more than six years, the Chinese-Canadian activist has been the victim of a relentless campaign to discredit her by blog, Listserv, e-book and social media, which bears the markings of a coordinated attack by the Chinese Communist Party.
“This is a textbook destabilization of the exile movement,” said Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International’s regional director for East Asia.
“Since the early 1990s,” Mr. Bequelin said, “China has understood the best way to neutralize this group and prevent them from essentially getting organized is to ensure they have no undisputed figurehead.”
Sheng Xue is the pen name for 57-year-old Zang Xihong.
The attacks have left her name — and health — in tatters.
“I escaped Tiananmen Square in China,” she said one winter day sitting in the living room of her suburban bungalow outside Toronto.
“I thought I’d have a safe, happy life in Canada.”
But the Communist Party, she said, “was already here.”
The smears cannot be definitively linked to the Chinese government, experts say.
However in Canada, security experts have warned for years about the growing influence of Beijing not only on Chinese expatriates but on the Canadian government itself. 
In 2010, the head of Canada’s intelligence service shocked the country by declaring that the Chinese Communist Party had agents of influence in local governments.
And in 2017, a confidential report prepared by the Canadian branch of Amnesty International alerted the authorities to the harassment of Chinese-Canadian activists, the scale of which appeared “consistent with a coordinated, Chinese state-sponsored campaign.”
The dissident who seemed to be getting the worst of it: Sheng Xue.
“I think she’s a victim,” said Andy Ellis, the former assistant director of operations for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
“I strongly do. The Chinese government is trying to sully her reputation to advance their own interests.”
The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa declined to comment.

Rise to prominence. Flood of hate.
Sheng Xue, whose pen name is Mandarin for “abundant snow,” arrived in Canada in August 1989 on a visa to study journalism.
But while she had left China, she could not leave China behind.
Haunted by the sight of soldiers shooting into a crowd close to her family’s apartment during the Tiananmen Square massacre in June of that year, Sheng Xue abandoned her study plans and threw herself into the burgeoning Chinese democracy movement in Toronto.
She helped form a local branch of the Federation for a Democratic China, which at its height had 3,000 members in 25 countries.
Despite having forgone a degree, Sheng Xue broke into journalism and fashioned a successful career as a writer.
But she was best known for her activism — leading protests, lobbying governments and helping fellow activists with their asylum cases.
In 2012, Canada’s immigration minister gave her a medal for “extraordinary contributions to the country.”
A month later, she was elected president of the federation.
The first conference she hosted as the group’s president should have been a moment of glory. Hundreds came from across the globe.

Sheng Xue at a rally last year for political prisoners in front of the Chinese Consulate in Toronto.

The Chinese Consulate in Toronto.

Sheng Xue and her husband, Xin Dong, visiting the graveyard where her parents are buried in Mississauga, Ontario.

The moment she remembers best, however, is stepping off the stage and finding herself surrounded by colleagues holding cellphones.
They were showing her emails they had just received, with various photos of her half-naked.
Except they were obvious fakes.
In one photo, Sheng Xue’s face was pasted onto another woman’s body.
Another email included a supposed love letter from her to an activist in Australia, so crass, it seemed a parody.
The sender appeared to be yet another activist, Chin Jin, but he said the email was a fake.
There were sex-wanted ads posted in Sheng Xue’s name.
Lurid stories about her sex life.
Nude photos were published on a new Twitter account, of higher quality than the first ones, and harder to dismiss out of hand.
Some seemed to capture her kissing the Australian activist, Xiaogang Zhang, although both say they are fakes.
The timing seemed beyond coincidence.
“There has been a pattern,” said Jie Chen, an associate professor of international relations at the University of Western Australia who studies the Chinese democracy movement.
Pointing a finger at the Chinese Communist Party, he said, “Whoever is doing well, whoever seems to be effective in damaging the reputation of the C.C.P., all of a sudden they will get attacked very systematically.”

‘I am the real Liu Shaofu’
The attacks appear to exploit tensions within the dissident movement, where Sheng Xue is a polarizing figure.
“People who love her, really love her,” said Michael Stainton, the retired president of the Taiwanese Human Rights Association of Canada.
“People who despise her, really despise her.”
Many of her attackers are former friends and colleagues. But they say their identities were stolen.
Zhu Rui, a Chinese-Canadian author, began questioning Sheng Xue back in 2010, after the two traveled together to Dharamsala, India.
Since then, Ms. Zhu has penned many critical blog posts and assembled two e-books about Sheng Xue, accusing her of lying, personally profiting off refugee applicants and events, and being a fake witness to the Tiananmen Square massacre, among other things.
But in 2011, Ms. Zhu said, someone hacked into her computer, stole an unpublished essay about Sheng Xue and sent it to a dissident group posing as her.
Similarly, Liu Shaofu, an elder of the democracy movement, said an impostor opened a Twitter account with his name and photo to post criticism of Sheng Xue, including one fake nude photo.
Mr. Liu had collaborated with Sheng Xue for years, even living in her basement, but they had a public falling out in 2013.
“I am the real Liu Shaofu,” he wrote in his first tweet after setting up a different account in June 2014.
“Don’t you feel ashamed you sent out so many tweets in my name?”

Sheng Xue at a hospital for a CT scan. She says that stress related to ongoing online attacks has compromised her health.

A portrait of Xi Jinping was defaced at a rally for political prisoners at the Chinese Consulate in Toronto.

Toronto’s Chinatown district.

Perhaps Sheng Xue’s most vocal critic is Fei Liangyong, a former federation president living in Germany who has accused her of a raft of moral failings, including “sexual impropriety and general wickedness.”
“To not criticize her would run counter to my democratic ideas and bring shame on my lifelong struggle for democracy and constitutional government in China,” he said in an email.
Mr. Fei’s essays have been widely republished on anonymous anti-Sheng Xue blogs.
But he said he did not know who was behind them.
A Twitter account with his name and photo, which Mr. Fei said he did not create, posted links to one of the blogs.
Many fellow activists, even those who have themselves been targeted by the Chinese government, believe some of the accusations against Sheng Xue.
“The Chinese government tries all means to marginalize, to silence and detain Chinese activists, in China and outside,” said Teng Biao, a civil rights lawyer who escaped China in 2012 and now lives in New Jersey.
But, he added, “what happened to Sheng Xue might be a little complicated, because as far as I know, some claims are true.”
Taken together, a pattern emerges: Doubt is turned into distrust, and dislike into loathing.
“It’s called blowing on the hot coals,” said Mr. Bequelin of Amnesty International.

A movement splintered
Sheng Xue learned the Chinese government had her on its black list in 1996, when she tried to return to Beijing.
She was stopped at the airport, interrogated and sent back to Canada the next day.
Since then, it has become clear she remains a target, and at least three comrades in Canada report pressure from Chinese security services over their ties to her.
One, Yi Jun, said every time he returned to China, he was taken to tea by members of the Communist security bureau.
“They say Sheng Xue is very counterrevolutionary and a very bad person,” said Mr. Yi, the president of the federation’s Toronto branch.
Another dissident, Leon Liang, said his wife back in Shenzhen was visited regularly by the authorities and given a warning: “If I didn’t inform on Sheng Xue, they would take her job.”
The attacks on Sheng Xue have taken a toll not just on her but on the dissident movement itself.
The federation, which had already dwindled to about 100 members, split in two in 2017, with Mr. Fei forming a second group.
Sheng Xue has stepped down as president.
The fight was so public and ugly, it tarnished everyone.
One member in Germany distributed an “investigation” a year after the death of Sheng Xue’s mother, claiming that she had pimped out her young daughters, and that it was the source of Sheng Xue’s moral bankruptcy.
“I really lament the fact the organization founded by Tiananmen Square leaders and intellectuals has degenerated to such a miserable state,” said Mr. Chen, the University of Western Australia professor.
Few dissidents will fail to get the message, said Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former Canadian intelligence officer specializing in China: “If you participate and support these people, look what I can do to you. Your local government won’t be able to protect you.”

Sheng Xue lives in a bungalow in a suburb of Toronto. Many fellow dissidents stay there, renting rooms in the basement.

The walls of Sheng Xue’s living room are decorated with photos of her with influential people, including the Dalai Lama and Richard Gere.

Sheng Xue with friends and supporters during her birthday party.

Sheng Xue continues her activism, but her health has been declining.
She has met with doctors about heart palpitations and headaches.
She never found an effective defense against the campaign, which she dismisses in totality as lies.
Some of her supporters formed a “Friends of Sheng Xue” organization, declaring the attacks a “threat to Canada’s sovereignty and security.”
They got nowhere.
In its report, Amnesty International urged the Canadian government to fashion a “comprehensive approach to addressing this problem,” and suggested a complaint hotline.
That has not happened.
In 2016, a Chinese-Canadian human rights lawyer, Guo Guoting, volunteered himself as an arbiter between Sheng Xue and Mr. Fei.
He considers both friends.
Mr. Guo moved into Sheng Xue’s home for a month and began researching the attacks.
But his computer was hacked, he said, and “all the documents disappeared.”
He never published his report.

China is a trade bully. Trudeau needs to stop dithering and fight back

No nation-state, or individuals, should be held to ransom by China
By Diane Francis
Police officers stand guard outside the Canadian embassy in Beijing on January 27, 2019.

It’s time to stop pretending that China is an honourable trading partner.

It is a trade bully and Canada should join the Americans in waging a trade war against Beijing following years of abuse.
The U.S. has imposed tariffs, or laid charges, on China in retaliation for various unfair trade practices and theft of intellectual property, among other practices.
Canada has also been a victim. 

Beijing threw two Canadians in a Chinese jail on suspicion of espionage, and, more recently, suddenly blocked canola imports worth $2.7 billion a year. 

That’s about 40 per cent of Canada’s canola exports.
Such draconian moves were unleashed following the December detainment of Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver on charges of fraud in the U.S. 

She has been free on bail and awaits an extradition hearing this May.
This arrest was not churlish — like China’s arrest of the two Canadians — but constituted a legally binding requirement under extradition treaties. 

Canada was obliged to arrest her upon a formal request by the U.S. and hold a hearing into the merits of U.S. charges. 

The hearing may result in her being freed, or being transported to the States.
China’s measures are excessive and unjust and should be met with commensurate actions. 

Instead of dithering, the Prime Minister must announce a series of counter measures: 

• the imposition of tariffs on Chinese goods, equivalent to the damage inflicted on Canada’s exports and jailed citizens; 
• a ban preventing Huawei from doing sensitive telecom work; 
• and a revamp of trade policies and financial packages to exporters in order to incentivize businesses to pursue other markets.

Obviously, China is a huge market but it’s not the only game in town. 

Most countries don’t incarcerate innocent people or unilaterally abrogate contractual obligations.
Besides, Canada has leverage: In 2018, China bought $29 billion worth of exports from Canada, but shipped as much to Canada as it bought, or $46.4 billion, according to Statistics Canada. 

China, in other words, is more dependent on Canada than the other way around and everything not imported from China can, and should, be imported from countries that respect agreements and the rule of law.
The world is going to divide itself into trading blocs comprised of countries that share values. 

That’s why Canada’s trade with the U.S. and Europe must be its priority export targets. 

Some may argue the U.S. is not reliable, given NAFTA irritants, but these are relatively minor family squabbles. 

China, on the other hand, doesn’t hesitate to mug its trading partners.
There’s also the issue of intellectual property theft. 

The U.S. estimates this costs its economy up to US$600 billion a year. 

Its businesses claim China forces them into joint ventures with Chinese firms that then copy or steal their technologies, ignoring patents and copyrights.
This has happened here. 

For example, Imax Corp., with its giant screen technologies, fell victim to intellectual property theft and may eventually be grievously damaged globally. 

In 2014, Imax won $7 million in a Canadian court against a former employee and software engineer, Gary Tsui, who stole its technology in 2009 and then sold it to a state-owned enterprise in China. 

Tsui has remained outside Canada, ignoring a detention order and injunction by a Canadian court.
China is pushing around many countries, as I wrote recently. 

With the canola assault, it’s time to forge a “fair trading league” with others that will make it clear that an attack against one is considered an attack against all. 

And taking tough action, along with the U.S., is essential.
No nation-state, or individuals, should be held to ransom by China.

China’s long surveillance arm thrusts into Canada

State intimidation and electronic surveillance can be highly effective. It's affecting China's 180,000 students in Canada, as well as journalists.
By DOUGLAS TODD 

Tibetan Chemi Lhamo, student-union president at the University of Toronto, was barraged with a 11,000-name petition from people with Chinese names, demanding she be removed. Police are also investigating possible criminal threats against her.

What does a superpower do when pandas, private persuasion at the highest echelons and trumpeting the value of “harmony” are no longer winning global friends?
If you’re the leaders of increasingly autocratic China, you clamp down, especially on your own people. 

You spread an evermore elaborate system of surveillance, monitoring and pressure on citizens in your home country and in foreign lands.
You press your overseas contingent, including Chinese students you have in Canada, to attack disapproving speakers. 

You suddenly toss two Canadians in secret isolation cells in China and, this week, accuse them of spying. 

And then you dismiss Canadians as “white supremacists” if they get riled or defend the lawful arrest and bail of a Huawai executive in Vancouver.
Back home, you develop an invasive mobile phone app and make sure its downloaded by most of the 90 million members of your ruling Communist party. 

You take DNA samples from millions of the Uyghur Muslims in China, because genetics can be used to track their moves. 

You bully Chinese journalists at home and abroad.
And it works.
State intimidation and electronic surveillance can be highly effective, no matter which regime brings it into oppressive play.
It’s not just China. 

Often times in Canada it is global agents of Iran’s regime, who spy on the anxious Persian diaspora in this country. 

And this year Saudi Arabia expanded its watching game with a high-tech app by which male guardians could track the movement of Saudi women abroad.
When people know, or fear, they are being watched through technology or by clandestine agents of the state, they understandably grow nervous — and compliant.
The only hope is this culture of watchfulness doesn’t always work. 

A University of B.C. professor who specializes in Asia tells me how an apparent culture of subjugation is playing out on campus.
The majority of the many students from China that the professor comes across are self-censoring.
They don’t go to possibly contentious events about China. 

They don’t speak out in classes. 

A few patriotic ones feel it’s their duty to criticize the professor for exposing them to material that does not hold the world’s most populous country in a positive light. 

A few very privately offer the faculty member their thanks for the chance to hear the truth.
“Mostly, however, I find my undergrads in particular to be profoundly uninterested in politics and proud of their country’s rise,” said the professor, who, like many academic specialists on China these days, spoke on condition of anonymity. 

Metro Vancouver campuses host almost 50,000 of the more than 180,000 students from China in Canada.
Mandarin-language students in Canada are “the major beneficiaries of the rise” of China, said the professor. 

“They don’t want to rock the boat and the more aware ones are discreet about their critiques. They have decided to tread carefully, which suggests a consciousness that they could be under surveillance.”
If that is the look-over-your-shoulder reality for students from China in B.C., imagine how it is for those on some American and Ontario campuses, which have had high-profile outbreaks of angry pro-China activism.
National Post reporter Tom Blackwell has covered China’s recent interference in Canadian affairs. He’s dug into how University of Toronto student president Chemi Lhamo was barraged with a 11,000-name petition from people with Chinese names, demanding she be removed. 

A Canadian citizen with origins in Tibet, which China dominates, Lhamo was also targeted by hundreds of nasty texts, which Toronto police are investigating as possibly criminal threats.
A similar confrontation occurred in February at McMaster University in Hamilton, where five Chinese student groups protested the university’s decision to give a platform to a Canadian citizen of Muslim Uyghur background. 

Rukiye Turdush had described China’s well-documented human-rights abuses against more than a million Uyghurs in the vast colony of East Turkestan.
The harassment is escalating. 

Even longtime champions of trade and investment in Canada from China and its well-off migrants are taken aback. 

Ng Weng Hoong, a commentator on the Asian-Pacific energy industry, is normally a vociferous critic of B.C.’s foreign house buyer tax and other manifestations of Canadian sovereignty.
But Ng admitted in a recent piece in SupChina, a digital media outlet, that Chinese protesters’ in Ontario “could shift Canadians’ attitude toward China to one of outright disdain and anger at what they see is the growing threat of Chinese influence in their country.”
It certainly didn’t help, Ng notes, that the Chinese embassy in Ottawa supported the aggressive protesters. 

“The story of Chinese students’ silencing free speech and undermining democracy in Canada,” Ng said, “will only fuel this explosive mix of accusations.”
Some of the growing mistrust among Canadians and others has emerged from multiplying reports of propaganda and surveillance in China.
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping is attempting to control followers through a dazzling new app, with which China’s Communist Party members are expected to actively engage. 

The New York Times is reporting China has been swabbing millions of Uyghur Muslims for their DNA, the genetic samples being used to track down those not already sent to “re-education” camps.
China’s pressure tactics are also coming down on journalists. 

The Economist reports students from China trying to enroll in Hong Kong’s journalism school are being warned against it by their fearful parents. 

They’re begging their offspring to shun a truth-seeking career that would lead to exposing wrongdoing in China, which could result in grim reprisals against the entire family.
Within the Canadian media realm there are also growing private reports that Mandarin-language Chinese journalists at various news outlets across this country are being called into meetings with China’s officials, leading some Chinese reporters to ask editors to remove their bylines from stories about the People’s Republic of China and its many overseas investors.
It’s always wise to be wary of superpowers. 

But China’s actions are cranking suspicion up to new levels. 

China’s surveillance tactics are making it almost impossible for that country to develop soft power with any appeal at all.
While some observers say many of the people of China are primed for more reform, openness and media freedom, it’s clear the leaders of China have in the past year been going only backwards, intent on more scrutiny and repression.

Rogue Company

Meng Wanzhou’s lawsuit against Canadian authorities is a setback to the Chinese company’s PR campaign.

By Tim Culpan
Who sues Canada? Meng Wanzhou, for one.

Canada! Seriously, who sues Canada?
Meng Wanzhou, that’s who. 

The CFO of Huawei Technologies Co., and the daughter of its founder, feels wronged by Canadian authorities over her arrest and detention. 

“False imprisonment” is among the accusations made in a civil case filed March 1.
Huawei has gone on the offensive in recent months to try to prove it’s a good international citizen and can be trusted to supply networking equipment that won’t become a conduit for Chinese espionage. Founder Ren Zhengfei himself started fronting the media because, by the company’s own admission, it’s in the middle of a public-relations crisis.
In addition to attempting to recruit current and former journalists to its PR team, Huawei has started inviting journalists to its Shenzhen campus, as if a guided tour would prove anything. 

The result was a slew of articles in which the company made its case against charges of spying.
At trade show MWC Barcelona last week, rotating Chairman Guo Ping even invoked Edward Snowden’s name to take jabs at U.S. espionage programs:
“Prism, prism on the wall, who is the most trustworthy of them all? ... It is a very important question and if you don’t answer that, you can go and ask Edward Snowden.”
This new campaign appears to be having some success. 

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern last month left the door open for Huawei to sell its equipment for next-generation mobile networks, while the U.K. cybersecurity watchdog thinks it can manage any risks associated with deploying the company’s products in 5G systems.
But it’s also come off as ham-fisted. 

Huawei was reported as offering to pay for flights, hotel and food for overseas journalists such as Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin, spurring a backlash on social media. 

To clarify, such all-expenses-paid offers are quite common in the tech industry, but most outlets refuse to accept on ethical grounds, which makes that now-famous letter to Rogin (which he shared on Twitter) somewhat confounding.


Josh Rogin
✔@joshrogin
INBOX: #Huawei is inviting me on an all-expenses-paid junket to China? That's gonna be a hard pass. Any American journalist who takes Huawei money should be ashamed and shamed.

In 2017, a jury found the company liable in a civil case for stealing designs for T-Mobile US Inc.’s “Tappy” robot, but that’s not the kind of espionage U.S. authorities have in mind. 

The January arrest of a company executive alongside a former Polish security agent on charges of spying for China doesn’t look good for Huawei, but it’s no smoking gun.
Then there’s Ren himself. 

The 74-year old’s credibility evaporated when he told foreign media, including CBS and a separate gathering that included Bloomberg News, that his company would refuse to obey Chinese law if it was required to participate in espionage. 

That’s the founder of a Chinese company with 180,000 employees stating he would break Chinese law rather than infringe the law of any foreign nation.
Which is why the decision to sue Canada is a backward step in its PR campaign. 

It also reveals Huawei as a cornered tiger that lashes out when its purr fails to sedate the skeptics.
Whether Meng’s case has legal merit isn’t the point. 

Huawei needs to ask what it gains, even if victorious. 

The quest for justice is everyone’s right, yet Huawei risks coming off as belligerent instead of the calm and trustworthy partner it’s trying to portray. 

And the irony of appealing to Canada’s rule of law when no such option exists back home isn’t lost on the hordes of critics who were already wary of this new charm offensive.
Huawei was doing a pretty good job trying to convince people that it’s not their foe. 

Suing Canada shows that the company’s biggest enemy is probably itself.

Rogue Company

Canada approves Huawei extradition proceedings

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA -- The Canadian government, as expected, on Friday approved extradition proceedings against the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co Ltd.
Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, was detained in Vancouver last December and is under house arrest. 

In late January the U.S. Justice Department charged Meng and Huawei with conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions on Iran.
Meng is due to appear in a Vancouver court at 10 a.m. Pacific time (1800 GMT) on March 6, when a date will be set for her extradition hearing.
“Today, department of Justice Canada officials issued an authority to proceed, formally commencing an extradition process in the case of Meng Wanzhou,” the government said in a statement.
China, whose relations with Canada have deteriorated badly over the affair, denounced the decision and repeated previous demands for Meng’s release.
U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman Nicole Navas Oxman said Washington thanked the Canadian government for its assistance. 

“We greatly appreciate Canada’s steadfast commitment to the rule of law,” she said in a statement.
Legal experts had predicted the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would give the go-ahead for extradition proceedings, given the close judicial relationship between Canada and the United States.
But it could be years before Meng is sent to the United States, since Canada’s slow-moving justice system allows many decisions to be appealed.
A final decision will likely come down to the federal justice minister, who will face the choice of angering the United States by rejecting the extradition bid, or China by accepting it.
Professor Wesley Wark of the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs said “the Canadians will take a beating throughout this whole process” from China.
“I suspect the Trudeau government is desperately hoping that the Americans reach a deal with the Chinese,” he said by phone.
Donald Trump told Reuters in December he would intervene if it served national security interests or helped close a trade deal with China, prompting Ottawa to stress the extradition process should not be politicized. 

Last week Trump played down the idea of dropping the charges.
After Meng’s detention, China arrested two Canadians on national security grounds, and a Chinese court later sentenced to death a Canadian man who previously had only been jailed for drug smuggling.
Brock University professor Charles Burton, a former Canadian diplomat who served two postings in China, said Beijing was likely to retaliate further.
“They’re not going to take this lying down ... one shudders to think what the consequences could be,” he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp, saying Beijing might crack down on Canadian canola shipments or stop Chinese students from going to Canada.
Ottawa rejects Chinese calls to release Meng, saying it cannot interfere with the judiciary.
Beijing had earlier questioned the state of judicial independence in Canada, noting the government faces accusations that it tried to intervene to stop a corruption trial.
Canadian Justice Minister David Lametti declined to comment.
Huawei was not immediately available for comment.

China's State Terrorism

Don’t Let the Chinese Take the World Hostage

By Hal Brands

Take no prisoners.
Discussions of what China’s rise will mean for the world often take on an abstract, impersonal quality. 

We use terms like “international order,” “geopolitical competition” and “balance of power.” 

Yet the case of Michael Kovrig, the Canadian ex-diplomat who has been unjustly detained in China for nearly two months, reminds us that the rise of a brash authoritarian power comes with profoundly human consequences.
No less, this episode shows how Xi Jinping’s China risks alienating those foreign observers who have worked hardest to build connections and understanding between Beijing and the outside world.
Kovrig certainly fits this description. 

He is fluent in Mandarin and served at posts in Hong Kong and Beijing. 

Since 2016, he has been covering China for the International Crisis Group, a non-governmental with a strong reputation for objectivity and quality. 

Kovrig’s work for ICG has covered an array of issues: China’s role in U.S.-North Korea diplomacy, its involvement in the conflict in South Sudan, and its growing global military footprint.
The official story about Kovrig’s detention in early December is that his work ran afoul of China’s laws on NGOs, which impose strict restrictions and reporting requirements on foreign institutions operating in that country. 

But it’s hard to see his arrest as anything other than geopolitical blackmail by the Chinese government.
The timing of Kovrig’s detention and the commentary of quasi-official mouthpieces such as the Global Times make clear that he was picked up as revenge for the Canadian government’s arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of telecom giant Huawei. 

After Meng was detained for violating U.S. financial laws and sanctions on Iran, China arrested Kovrig and another Canadian citizen. (According to reports, up to 13 Canadians have since been detained by the Chinese.) 

Beijing then re-tried a Canadian citizen accused of drug trafficking and sentenced him to death. 

In essence, China has responded to a Canadian-American law-enforcement decision it didn’t like by arbitrarily punishing Canadians.
Kovrig is thus a reminder that authoritarian regimes behave in inhumane ways as a matter of habit. 

It is a clear warning that, as China becomes more powerful, foreign citizens who displease Beijing will be at risk so long as they are within reach of Chinese authorities. 

All of Canada’s democratic allies must stand firmly against this sort of hostage-taking. 

They must condemn, on as multilateral a basis as possible, Chinese behavior; make clear that they will not be bought off or bullied into silence by Beijing’s economic influence; and demonstrate that China will face public pressure and isolation in international diplomatic forums until Kovrig and others who have been been unjustly detained are released. 

The alternative to hanging together is being coerced separately — and having one’s citizens deliberately victimized — the next time a diplomatic row with China occurs.
Yet Kovrig’s saga also carries dangers for China, because it risks weakening some of that country’s most important links to the outside world. 

Kovrig’s work and tweets make clear that he was not naïve about China. 

He was skeptical, for instance, about allowing Huawei to build critical 5G networks in the U.K. 

Yet in his role with ICG, Kovrig worked to give the wider world an objective understanding of Chinese politics and policies; he interacted regularly with Chinese officials, organizations, citizens; he appeared on Chinese television and in other media. 

In doing so, Kovrig has been one of many foreign experts who have sought to improve the West’s understanding of China, promote better communication and exchanges, and thereby contribute to constructive relations between Beijing and the world.
In recent years, China has shown a remarkable talent for alienating these people. 

Late last year, the Hoover Institution released a report detailing Chinese efforts to influence the U.S. political system, as part of a broader strategy for manipulating democratic politics overseas to dull the global response to China’s rise. 

China’s influence operations, the report concluded, often “involve use of coercive or corrupting methods to pressure individuals and groups and thereby interfere in the functioning of American civil and political life.” 

Notably, many of the members of the working group that helped produce the report are academics and former officials who had argued for greater engagement with China in the past.
Kovrig’s arrest imperils those efforts. 

In mid-January, the Canada warned its citizens “to exercise a high degree of caution in China due to the risk of arbitrary enforcement of local laws.” 

The U.S. State Department issued a similar warning. 

Business leaders have grown wary of traveling to China. 

Moreover, Kovrig’s case is impeding longstanding talks involving influential U.S. foreign policy figures and their Chinese counterparts. 

A number of think-tank colleagues in Washington have told me that their employers are restricting travel to China. 

People who have traveled regularly to China over a period of years now say, quite understandably, that they are hesitant to go back.

Visits to China, interactions with Chinese officials, and other such exchanges offer valuable insights into Beijing’s ambitions and behavior. 

What Beijing doesn’t seem to realize is that this is bad news for China.
A country that still needs foreign investment and technology will not benefit from making foreign CEOs wonder whether they or their employees should take the risk of traveling there. 

A country that harps on how it is misunderstood and mistreated by the West will not benefit from constricting critical channels of communication. 

“NGOs, journalists, and diplomats all play a role in connecting China to the wider world,” said David Mulroney, Canada’s ambassador to China from 2009 to 2012. 

“The alternative is a China that is isolated, poorly understood and cut off from important ideas and conversations.”
Kovrig’s case is tragic on a human level; it should be a clarion call for the world’s democracies. 

It is also an example of how China is weakening the relationships and exchanges that are so important to its own future.

China's State Terrorrism

Kevin and Julia Garratt on their experience as detainees in China
By Jessica Murphy

Julia and Kevin Garratt (centre) with their children Peter and Hannah. Their second son Simeon is not pictured.

Canadian couple Kevin and Julia Garratt were detained in China in 2014 and accused of spying. Amid an escalating feud between Canada and China and allegations of retaliatory detentions, the pair tells the BBC about what it was like -- and how they ever made it home.
Kevin Garratt remembers well the night he and Julia were arrested in north-eastern China.
He recalls being pulled away from his wife as they walked through a restaurant's downstairs lobby, and pushed into the back of a black sedan filled with burly officers.
He thought the whole thing was some terrible mistake.
Julia, forced into a separate sedan, found herself shaking in fear and shock at the sudden turn of events, and the drive in the darkness.
She thought: "This is going to be my last night.
"I don't think I've ever felt that level of fear and panic before. And also just sad for my family and my children, because there was no warning, there would be no chance to say goodbye."
The Garratts had lived in China since 1984, and from 2008 operated a coffee house popular with Western expats and tourists in Dandong, a city on the North Korean border, while continuing to carry out Christian aid work.

The couple lived in Dandong, at the main China-North Korea border.

But unbeknownst to either of them, early in 2014 and thousands of miles away, American authorities were launching a crackdown on Chinese cyber-espionage. 

One of the men in their sights was Su Bin, a Chinese resident working in Canada.
That June, Canadian authorities picked up Su, accused of stealing data about military projects and selling it to China, for extradition to the US.
Canadian officials and observers believed the Garratts' arrest was a tit-for-tat detention and an attempt to pressure Canada for Su's release.
Canada's ambassador in Beijing at the time, Guy Saint-Jacques, describes them as "a couple of Canadian missionaries who had been in China 30 years doing good work".
He tells the BBC their arrest "was the first case where we saw a clear retaliation for something that had happened in Canada".
When he met counterparts at the foreign ministry about the case, Saint-Jacques recalls: "They never said directly 'let's do a swap.' But it was very clear what they wanted."
On the night of the Garratts' arrest -- the beginning of months of detention for the pair -- they had been invited for dinner by a friend of a friend, who told the couple they wanted to talk about their daughter going to study in Canada.
But something about the dinner felt strange.
"It didn't seem genuine, and the daughter never came," Kevin says.
Julia says it was only later they realised the whole evening had been a set-up for their arrest.
"It was very carefully thought through and planned in advance. We had no idea," she says.
Parts of the couple's story could be pulled directly from today's headlines.

Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Vancouver last December

In December, Chinese telecoms executive Meng Wanzhou, 46, was detained in Vancouver for allegedly breaking US sanctions against Iran.
This week, the US filed charges against Huawei and Meng, and the US is seeking her extradition.
Following Meng's arrest came threats of "grave consequences" from China if the tech heiress and chief finance officer at Huawei, China's largest private company, was not released.
In mid-December, two Canadian men -- former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor -- were held in China on accusations of harming national security.
Like in the Garratts' case, their detention is seen by China analysts as a reprisal.Michael Spavor (L) and Michael Kovrig have been put under "compulsory measures"

The Garratts' experience in detention parallels what Canadian officials and others have suggested that Kovrig and Spavor are living through -- daily interrogations, being kept in a room with lights on day and night.
"I don't know what they did or didn't do, but I know what they're going through right now," says Julia.
The Garratts say they were never physically harmed but were watched by guards around the clock, and had to request the most basic necessities when they needed them.
"You want a drink of water, they have to go get it for it. Brush your teeth, they get it for you. It's really meant to frighten and control you," says Kevin.
Julia says the first few nights, she put a blanket over her eyes to block the light, but the guard pulled it down.
They also experienced daily interrogations for up to six hours.

------
Tit for tat arrests

• About 200 Canadians held in China
• The cases of Michael Spavor, Michael Kovrig and Robert Lloyd Schellenberg are linked to China's displeasure at arrest of Meng Wanzhou
• Kovrig, a diplomat on leave, and Spavor, a businessman with close ties to North Korea, are accused of engaging in activities that harm China's national security
• Schellenberg was convicted last year on drug smuggling charges and given a death sentence in January
• Canada has accused China of acting arbitrarily in his sentencing
• The country updated its travel advisory to China following Schellenberg sentencing, urging caution due to risk of "arbitrary enforcement of local law"

--------
Their interrogators had a decade of details about their time in China and their travels, and asked over and over about the minutia of their activities -- the why, the when, and the where.
Whom they met.
"They would ask the same questions two month later and compare the answers," says Julia.
"It's very, very gruelling."Kevin Garratt is reunited with his wife Julia in Vancouver

Some four years later, they have documented their experience in a book, Two Tears on the Window, published in November.
Devout Christians, they say prayer and the support of both their close family and the wider church community helped them through their time in detention.
"I had the sense that my peace cannot be stolen from me, my true freedom cannot be stolen from me. And I think there was great comfort in that," says Julia.
She was released on bail in February 2015, pending trial.
In January 2016, still in detention, Kevin was charged with stealing state secrets.
A month later, Su waived extradition and headed to the US, where in March he pleaded guilty to hacking into major US defence contractors, stealing sensitive military data and sending it to China.
Saint-Jacques says that Chinese officials seemed taken by surprise by Su's decision to cut a deal with American officials.Justin Trudeau raised the Garratt case with Chinese officials in August 2016

He believes that turn of events, combined with a visit to China by Justin Trudeau, during which the newly elected PM raised Kevin's case, were instrumental in securing Kevin's release.
He was deported to Canada in September 2016 after 775 days in detention, and reunited with Julia, who had left the country earlier that year.
Meanwhile, Meng's case continues to strain China's ties with Canada and the US.
Chinese officials have called her arrest a "serious mistake", accusing Canada of double standards and "Western egotism and white supremacy".
She is out on bail and under house arrest in Vancouver, where she owns property.
She is next due in court on 6 March, but the case could possibly drag on for years.
It also comes amid growing scrutiny in Western countries over Huawei, which is a world leader in telecoms infrastructure, in particular the next generation of mobile phone networks, known as 5G.
Concern about the security of the company's technology has been growing, particularly in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and Germany, which fear its products could be used for spying.
Amid the diplomatic dispute, Canada has worked to rally international allies to its corner.
Earlier this month, over 140 diplomats -- including Saint-Jacques -- and academics signed an open letter to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping calling for the release of Kovrig and Spavor.
Canada also fired ambassador John McCallum on Sunday following controversial comments he made about Meng's extradition case.

How China uses shadowy United Front as 'magic weapon' to try to extend its influence in Canada

Its activities include influencing the Chinese diaspora to back China, co-opting foreign political and economic elites and promoting Beijing’s agenda worldwide
By Tom Blackwell

The scene outside the offices of the Toronto public school board was raucous.
It was October 2014, and the board was planning to vote on a contract with the Confucius Institute, an organization affiliated with the education ministry of the government of China, which had offered its services to teach Mandarin to the city’s schoolchildren.
Critics decried the arrangement, calling the institute a propaganda or espionage arm of the Chinese state. 

But its supporters were out in force, scores of them, rallying noisily and waving Chinese flags in the heart of Canada’s biggest city.
“You are a damn traitor to China,” one of them shouted to an institute opponent of Chinese descent. “Down with traitors!”
The demonstration was no spontaneous occurrence. 

Three days earlier, as the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Associations hosted a farewell banquet for the departing Chinese vice-consul, Consul General Fang Li had urged locals to come out in support of the institute.

After a request for support from the local consul general of China, Chinese-Canadian backers of the Confucius Institute rally outside the Toronto school board offices in 2014. Subtitles were added by Falun Gong practitioners but the translation was independently verified by the National Post. 

The confederation, according to the local MingPao newspaper, echoed his call, predicting 500 would attend the rally.
While the Toronto trustees eventually voted to send the Institute packing, Confucius is now entrenched at three other school boards and on nine university and college campuses across Canada. 

And the Toronto dispute underscored Beijing’s sometimes surprising reach into Canada — the subject of renewed scrutiny amid the bitter diplomatic dispute sparked by Canada’s arrest of Meng Wanzhou, an executive with Chinese infotech giant Huawei, at the request of the United States.
China has long strived to influence and monitor Chinese-Canadians, Chinese citizens who study here and Canadian society as a whole — and done the same in many other countries. 

In recent years, however, that project appears to have surged in importance.
Since rising to prominence in 2012, the country’s paramount leader, Xi Jinping, has overseen what one leading academic expert calls a “massive expansion” in China’s use of soft power overseas, much of it under the auspices of the United Front Work Department, a shadowy offshoot of the Chinese communist party.
The United Front began in pre-revolutionary China, used by the party to co-opt non-communist groups into its struggle for power. 

In recent years, it has been increasingly deployed to win over overseas Chinese — and the broader societies around them.
“United Front work has taken on a level of significance not seen since the years before 1949,” Anne-Marie Brady, a political scientist at New Zealand’s University of Canterbury, told a U.S. conference last year. 

“(China) is increasingly able to use its soft-power ‘magic weapons’ to help influence the decision-making of foreign governments and societies.”
Working partly through officials in foreign missions, its activities include influencing the Chinese diaspora to back China, co-opting foreign political and economic elites, promoting Beijing’s agenda worldwide and forming a China-centred economic bloc, the political science professor says.
And doing “United Front work” is considered the duty of all party members — who now include a majority of Chinese corporate CEOs — not just the department itself, says Brady.
Xi himself has quoted Mao’s description of the United Front as one of the communists’ “magic weapons,” and has elevated the United Front’s role in the party, an expansion that has included adding 40,000 staff to the department and absorbing three government agencies, according to Gerry Groot, a China-studies lecturer at Australia’s University of Adelaide.
Last August, Xi made a direct appeal to ethnic Chinese residents of countries like Canada — what Beijing calls the “overseas Chinese” — urging them to “remember the call from the Party and the people, spread China’s voice, support the country’s development, safeguard national interests.”

The Huawei research and development centre at Dongguan, China. 

Charles Burton, a political scientist at Ontario’s Brock University who closely monitors China-related rights issues, says one of the United Front’s key goals is to soften opinions around issues like Chinese companies’ acquisition of Canadian natural resources and technology, or the looming decision Canada must make about Huawei’s involvement in building the country’s 5G telecom network. 

The company, considered to have close links to the Chinese state and having for years faced accusations of corporate espionage, was barred from taking part in 5G trials in the U.S., Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand — the four countries that with Canada comprise the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance.
It’s difficult to map exactly how the United Front Work Department deploys its resources in places like Canada. 

But Burton argues its influence — helped by immigration in the last two decades made up increasingly of people raised under Communist rule on the Chinese mainland — has been tangible. 

A substantial portion of Chinese diplomatic staff in Canada are United Front operatives, interacting with Chinese-Canadian leaders, politicians, students and others.
And there are a lot of those staffers. 

Global Affairs Canada lists 211 accredited representatives of China, not much less than the 276 fielded by the U.S., Canada’s closest ally and neighbour. 

The U.K. has 38. 

The Chinese embassy did not respond to a request for comment.
Most of the Chinese-language media in Canada are now owned by businesses tied to Beijing, offering positive coverage of China, while Chinese-Canadian community groups have largely fallen under the sway of the “motherland.” 
In his own region, the Niagara Chinese Cultural Association was once dedicated to domestic causes and reaching out to the wider community, but now seems just as interested in cheering on a rising China, says Burton, a fluent Mandarin speaker. 

Both the Canadian and Chinese flags are raised at meetings today, and there was even discussion of adding the Chinese anthem, he says.
“An organization that once had another purpose has gradually been taken over to serve China’s national interest. Where United Front work becomes problematic is when it’s engaging persons of Chinese origin who have Canadian citizenship … to serve the interests of the motherland, when in fact the motherland should be Canada.”
One of the Niagara group’s leaders denies there has been any change in direction, or political thrust. “Our executive committee’s background is a combination of Canada, mainland China, Taiwan and Chinese from other Asian countries,” says Li Yu, the association’s former president. 

Yet Michel Juneau-Katsuya, former Asia-Pacific chief for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, documented ties between the leaders of a number of Chinese-Canadian groups and China, arguing in a presentation to the Toronto school board the groups “are following Beijing’s request, not the Canadian constituents.”
The Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Associations has joined forces with the local consulate on contentious issues other than just the Confucius Institute, while China’s Overseas Affairs Office — under Xi, now officially part of the United Front — heaped praise on the group in a recent online article, since removed, that cited its willingness to defend Chinese interests.
Confederation executives could not be reached for comment. 

Their website talks of building “a truly beautiful and wonderful homeland — Canada,” while pledging to also help strengthen both the bridge of friendship to China, and China’s economic development.

In August 2018, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping made a direct appeal to ethnic Chinese residents of countries such as Canada urging them to remember the call from the Party and the people, spread China's voice, support the country's development, safeguard national interests.

Even an Ottawa Chinese senior’s group was not immune. 

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal ruled in 2006 the association had violated the law by throwing out a member who practiced Falun Gong. 

Asked to explain the decision, one group leader allegedly said the expelled senior was “against the Chinese government,” another that the organization had to “maintain unity and solidarity” with Beijing, the tribunal reported.
Not all experts are convinced that China’s attempts to shape opinion in Canada have borne much fruit.

“There is definitely an attempt to influence domestic public opinion here,” Lynette Ong, a University of Toronto professor and China expert, said in an interview. 

“But from what I see, the extent of success here is rather limited.”
And the Canadian government has been reluctant to do what Australia did earlier this year and implement laws geared to countering undue foreign influence. 

A spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland did not respond when asked whether Canada would now consider such legislation.
But politicians themselves have also been the target of Beijing’s influence campaigns.
In the Antipodes, where the issue has been most prominent, a New Zealand MP landed in hot water after his pre-immigration past as a member of Chinese military intelligence was revealed, while an Australian senator quit amid revelations that he had taken pro-China positions after getting donations from a Beijing-linked tycoon.
Ong argues that Beijing’s political influence in Canada has been negligible compared to what has happened in New Zealand or Australia, whose economies are far more dependent on China.
Yet a training manual for United Front cadres, obtained by the Financial Times newspaper, notes with approval that the number of politicians of Chinese descent elected in Toronto had almost doubled between 2003 and 2006.
Department officials should “aim to work with” those and other individuals who have prospects for advancement, the manual advises, while offering no details of what exactly that means.
It’s not just politicians of Chinese background who are targeted, although not necessarily by the United Front.

Huawei Technologies Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou exits court following a bail hearing at British Columbia Superior Courts in Vancouver on Dec. 11, 2018. 

Prime Minister Trudeau was forced on the defensive in 2016 when it emerged that he took part in a private fundraiser attended by a Chinese billionaire with close ties to the Beijing leadership. 

A billionaire who then donated $250,000 to the charitable Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation and the raising of a Trudeau statue.
At least nine MPs have taken trips to China in recent years — usually flying business class — that were paid for by Chinese government agencies, indicate Ethics Commissioner records, which don’t include former members. 

The Canada-China Legislative Association meets regularly — and as recently as this month — with members of the Chinese People’s Congress. 

The Congress is an unelected body that rubber-stamps Communist Party decisions, not equivalent to Canada’s Parliament, Burton notes.
While a backbench MP, Canada’s current ambassador to China, John McCallum — who was forced to withdraw comments this week he made to a group of Chinese-Canadian stakeholders and media suggesting Meng had a strong case that her arrest was politically motivated — accepted $73,000 worth of trips to the country, paid for by both the Chinese government and pro-Beijing business groups, the Globe and Mail has reported.
Chinese-Canadian politicians, meanwhile, have to be cognizant that recent Chinese immigrants are mostly products of the mainland Communist regime, said Kenny Chiu, a losing 2015 federal Conservative candidate in B.C.
“That has a significant impact or influence on the view of China in the community,” Chiu said. “There are many immigrants coming to Canada who are actually very proud of the development that has occurred in the motherland.”
To encourage such leanings, the United Front’s tools include both the Confucius Institutes, and the less-well-known Chinese Students and Scholars Associations at post-secondary institutions across Canada — and in numerous other countries.
The associations are sometimes dispatched to counteract protests against visiting Chinese dignitaries, promote the homeland and monitor the activities of Chinese students, Burton says.
In an echo of the Toronto school board protest, shortly after Meng’s arrest a little-known Chinese women’s group held a news conference in Vancouver to call for her release — though they said they had no link to the People’s Republic — and another group rallied outside the courthouse in her support.
Meanwhile, a leaked video obtained and translated by the Falun Gong appears to show an embassy first secretary briefing students about a planned pro-China demonstration on Parliament Hill in 2010, promising them food and accommodation. 

The work was mandatory for any student funded by the Chinese government, he said.
It would be a “battle that relates to defending the reputation of our Motherland,” the diplomat says on the recording.

Chinese fifth column: People hold a sign at a B.C. courthouse prior to the bail hearing for Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer on Monday, December 10, 2018. 

Students coached by embassy staff staked out an Ottawa hotel all night in 2016 to welcome visiting Chinese Premier Li Keqing the next afternoon — and try to drown out protesters, says Grace Wollensak, a Falun Gong spokeswoman who was there.
Lingdi Zhong, a Falun Gong practitioner and Chinese student, told the authors of an Amnesty International-led, confidential report on intimidation tactics by Beijing in Canada that the vice-president of the University of Ottawa association warned her in 2005 his group was under the guidance of the Chinese embassy and that she was being watched.
China’s actions may raise questions about the appropriate role of a foreign power in domestic affairs, but they are unlikely to be debated in Canada’s Chinese-language media.
With the exception of Falun Gong’s Epoch Times and one or two other newspapers, most toe Beijing’s line, says Cheuk Kwan, head of the Toronto Association for Democracy in China.
Journalists from such outlets have told him they sometimes even get calls from the consulate with advice on what to cover, and not cover.
Whether all this has an impact depends on the individual, when they immigrated and where they came from, adds Kwan.
“A lot of people don’t think of the long arm of influence of China in Canada, because they’re under the influence, to put it mildly,” he says. 

“Outsiders like me, who is a Hong Kong immigrant … we see very clearly that this is a United Front effort, a very subtle, soft-power kind of advance into Canadian society.”