Chinese Fifth Column

Beware effects of Chinese interference in Canada
By Mike Blanchfield

GUANGZHOU, China -- He was a curious 23-year-old in a bustling train station somewhere in China, at the height of its busiest season, Chinese New Year. 

He and his two friends didn't have tickets, but it didn't matter.
"It was wonderful," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said this week in Beijing as he recalled his first adult excursion to the country. 

He'd been to China before, of course -- as a child, with his father visiting on official political business -- but this trip was different.
"The landscapes I got to see, the discovery of myself through travelling through China was extraordinary for me."
Trudeau referenced the formative influence of his backpacking experiences in China repeatedly this week as he tried to sell the merits of doubling the number of Chinese tourists next year. 

With his pursuit of free trade, it is one part of a major plan to deepen relations with the economically ascendant People's Republic, the country Pierre Trudeau established relations with the year before he was born.
The attempt to create a tourism boon comes amid concern over a more malevolent form of cross-cultural influence -- a deliberate and unprecedented effort by Xi Jinping to project the power of his country in ways that some say amounts to international political meddling.
"China does have a strategy for influencing public opinion and political opinion in other countries on issues that are important to China," said David Mulroney, a former Canadian ambassador to China and a senior national security adviser.
Under Xi, China has undertaken a co-ordinated campaign known as the "united front" to influence events in foreign countries, including Canada, said Mulroney.
That includes mobilizing Chinese students and tapping the diaspora in Canada. 

During past visits by Chinese leaders to Ottawa, the Chinese embassy has bussed in students from Kingston and Montreal to counter the inevitable demonstrations against the Chinese government.
The protests are commonplace, ranging from the treatment of religious minorities in Tibet to allegations of organ harvesting.
"The Chinese communist successfully links patriotism to support for the party and the government," Mulroney said. 

Chinese students often bristle at reading criticism about their country when abroad and feel embattled, so it can drive them to be "super patriots."
It has similarities to what Canada does in the United States by reaching out to Congress, business leaders and others to sell the merits of NAFTA -- with one key difference.
"We do that above board, we do that publicly. Where China differs is its willingness to use diaspora groups, people who have an economic stake in China to work behind the scenes," Mulroney said.
"That's a form of interference in Canadian affairs."
Despite the new assertive Chinese posture under Xi, Canada still has no choice but to engage and attempt to deepen relations even if there are some serious implications, said Paul Evans, a China expert at the University of British Columbia.
China has decided it will project itself as a "great power" in the world and "that's a phrase the Chinese have not used in my lifetime."
Mulroney said that effort includes putting pressure on academics and journalists to write favourably about China, he said.
During Trudeau's trip, the Communist-run Global Times ran a scathing editorial that lashed out at the Canadian media's coverage of China.
"The superiority and narcissism of the Canadian media is beyond words," the editorial declared. "This is the most genuine attitude of Chinese society."
It said that China should "not (be) in a rush to develop its relations with Canada. Let it be."
The editorial was not an isolated incident. 

As Trudeau arrived at Beijing's Great Hall of the People this week, security staff tried to prevent Canadian photographers from shooting his arrival by blocking their view -- a move that surprised some journalists based in Beijing. 

On a visit to Ottawa last year, the Chinese foreign minister berated reporters for asking a question about human rights.
And in a Canadian Press interview this summer, Chinese ambassador Lu Shaye blamed an "ill-informed" Canadian news media for forcing human rights onto the bilateral agenda for the Liberal government to confront. 

Lu said it was the role of the media "to lead and mobilize people for a common cause."
Before departing China this week, Trudeau delivered what amounted to a sermon on press freedom -- clearly destined for his hosts, as well as local media -- when asked about the Global Times editorial.
"You play an essential role: a challenge function, an information function," the prime minister told the gathered reporters.
"External factors make your job difficult. But it's an essential role that you play in the success of the society. That is my perspective. That is a perspective shared by many, and it's one that I am very happy to repeat today."
The Chinese use less hostile approaches to get their message across -- pressure Mulroney has experienced first-hand as Canada's ambassador to China from 2009 to 2012 under former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper.
Before big visits, Mulroney said he got positive and negative approaches from his Chinese counterparts. 

He would be told, "'You've got to make sure the prime minister doesn't raise the following things"' -- a suggestion that would have gone nowhere with Harper.
"It never stops," said Mulroney. 

"It's like a warm bath they immerse you in."
Trudeau was subjected to a more benign version of relentless Chinese messaging off the top of a meeting with the secretary of the Communist Party for Guangdong province, Li Xi on Guangzhou's picturesque Shamian Island.
Instead of the usual minute of small talk that usually opens the photo-ops for such meetings, Li welcomed Trudeau with a 15-minute monologue about his province's priorities and aspirations.
Trudeau sat patiently listening, occasionally smiling and nodding, his eyes fixed straight ahead at Li.
When he was finished, the prime minister thanked his host for the warm welcome and remarked how vividly he recalled walking the tree-lined cobblestone streets of the neighbourhood they were in his halcyon backpacker days.
This time, Trudeau need not have mentioned his formative busman's holiday.
Li made sure to include that too in his welcoming monologue.

Malcolm Turnbull's government urged to publicly stand up to China over Hong Kong

Activists warn of erosion of press freedom, attacks against academics and the disappearance of booksellers.

By Katharine Murphy 

Hong Kong democracy activists Anson Chan and Martin Lee. Lee said he would like the Australian government ‘to voice its concerns publicly as well as in private’.

The prominent Hong Kong democracy activists Martin Lee and Anson Chan have urged the Turnbull government to stand up to China publicly over the deteriorating state of civic freedoms, warning there has been a progressive diminution of the “one country, two systems” policy.
Lee, the founding chairman of Hong Kong’s democratic party, and Chan, a former chief secretary in both the British colonial government of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong special administrative region government under the Chinese sovereignty, made the appeal at the National Press Club on Thursday after a meeting with Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop.
Lee said he would like governments, including the Australian government, “to voice its concerns publicly as well as in private”.

Chan said the success of the “one country, two systems” policy was demonstrably in Australia’s interests, given Australia’s deep linkages with Hong Kong, and given it was in the interests of all foreign powers that China abide by its international obligations. 

She urged Australia to “take a consistent stand on reaffirming your values”.
The public intervention by the two veteran campaigners followed a display by the new generation of democracy campaigners in Hong Kong at a swearing-in ceremony at the legislature on Wednesday.
New parliamentarians from the pro-democracy movement used the swearing-in ceremony as a vehicle to launch fresh protests, with some refusing to read the required oath, which is a precursor to them being sworn in to the legislature.
Lee told the National Press Club he had urged the current crop to take the oath to ensure they took their places in the Hong Kong parliament but he said young participants in the pro-democracy movement were intent on creating a point of tactical difference with the previous generation.
He said if the Chinese government delivered on their undertakings on “one country, two systems” then young people would not escalate their activity to the extent of calling for independence from the mainland.
Lee said he believed the calls for independence were not really serious and most people in Hong Kong did not want to sever ties with the mainland, they wanted democracy.
Chan warned civic conditions were deteriorating in Hong Kong, with a serious erosion of press freedom, attacks against academics and the disappearance of booksellers critical of Chinese leaders.
She said the case of the booksellers had sent a message that “we are no longer safe, even on Hong Kong soil”.
She also pointed to the presence of “paid agitators” in Hong Kong who were pushing a pro-Beijing line and she expressed concern that Beijing’s propaganda machine was infiltrating Hong Kong culture.

Canada's disgraceful silence on Taiwan

By Terry Glavin

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen speaks during National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Palace in Taipei on October 10, 2016. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on October 10 called for a resumption of talks with China and pledged that "anything" can be on the table for discussion. Relations with Beijing have deteriorated under Taiwan's first female president, whose China-sceptic Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) took office in May after a landslide victory over the Kuomintang party (KMT). 

TAIPEI – The backwash from the last of three wicked typhoons wasn’t enough to dampen the mood during Taiwan’s National Day celebrations this week, although a lingering gloom hung in the air nevertheless. 

It had come from across the Taiwan Strait, as it so often does. 

From mainland China.
From her perch on a reviewing stand outside the century-old Japanese colonial governor’s complex, reconfigured in 1950 as the Republic of China’s President’s Office, 60-year-old Tsai Ing-wen was all smiles on Monday. 

More than 10,000 people had gathered in what everyone was happy was only some occasionally drizzling rain to hear what she’d say in her first key public speech since the inaugural address she’d delivered after being sworn in as Taiwan’s most defiantly democratic president last May.
There was a parade of lumbering military hardware and performances by folk ensembles. 

There were high school marching bands, pop stars, Taiwan’s medal winners from the Summer Olympics in Rio and the Taiwanese baseball team’s cheerleaders. 

Tsai stuck to the upbeat tone: “The new government will conduct cross-strait affairs in accordance with the Constitution of the Republic of China,” as Taiwan is otherwise known. 

But there was also this: “We will not bow to pressure, and we will, of course, not revert to the old path of confrontation.”
Yes to negotiations, yes to the “status quo” of trade, yes to peace, but no to kowtowing. 

It was about as conciliatory a tone as Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party will allow her to take in any statements she makes about the People’s Republic regime in Beijing.
Tsai’s DPP was swept into power by the turbulence of the pro-democracy Sunflower Movement of 2014 – an anti-Beijing, anti-corruption revolt that was both a model and a replication of Hong Kong’s near-simultaneous Umbrella Revolution. 

The Taiwanese are not in the mood to turn back now, and Tsai’s speech was mostly well received among Taiwan’s 24 million people.
Nobody wants a fight with Beijing. 

Neither does anybody want to go on putting up with Beijing’s insistence that Taiwan is merely a temporarily wayward Chinese province that needs to mind its manners or be taught a lesson. 

Predictably, China’s Communist Party bigshots were furious about Tsai’s speech. 

A regime spokesman reiterated Beijing’s demands that Tsai submit to what the People’s Republic calls “the 1992 consensus” between the rival republics, a convoluted agree-to-disagree diplomatic fiction involving the term “One China” that was never even close to a consensus to begin with.
In Beijing’s view, the 1992 consensus was an acquiescence by Taiwan that the “status quo” meant a continuation of the Communist Party’s domination of the country until the full realization of Mao Zedong’s vision of retaking the island from the remnants of the 1912 Chinese republic that his communists had overthrown on the mainland. 

Taiwan’s now-defeated Kuomintang government was willing to go along with that, so long as the 1992 consensus came with the “status quo” of its continuing enrichment by collaboration with its former enemies, the communists-turned-capitalists on the mainland.
Tsai’s refusal to go along with capitulation by either of these cynical understandings is seen by Beijing as a provocation to invasion and war. 

Over the past few months, China has been putting the squeeze on Taiwan by shutting down all formal and informal Beijing-Taipei communications, blocking Taiwanese imports, cutting off the flow of tourists from the mainland and throwing its weight around on the “world stage” to further Taiwan’s isolation. 

Only 22 United Nations member states extend full diplomatic recognition to Taiwan.
Canada isn’t among them.
Tsai has little choice but to stand firm. 

Subservience to Beijing – either in the form of Leninist centralism or corporate gangsterism – was overwhelmingly rejected by Taiwanese voters when they elected the DPP in droves in January. 

The Beijing-friendly Kuomintang was left without either the presidency or a legislative majority for the first time in Taiwan’s history.
Tsai is the first woman to be elected Taiwan’s president. 

Her government is committed to gender equality, a stronger safety net, a robust middle class, an emphasis on small-to-medium-sized business, social justice, reconciliation with the island’s aboriginal people, massive investment in public infrastructure and social housing, more generous pensions, a national daycare program and a special focus on youth.
With the election of Justin Trudeau’s avowedly feminist, socially progressive and emphatically democratic ideals, you might think Canada would be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Tsai’s DPP – the Taiwanese affiliate of Trudeau’s party through the Liberal International. 

The opposite is the case.
I was in Taipei as a guest of Taiwan’s foreign ministry, and while the Taiwanese officials I spoke with were too polite to say so out loud, they’ve noticed Canada’s quietude. 

When China strong-armed Taiwan away from the recent conference of the International Civil Aviation Organization, the United States and several European countries loudly objected. Canada did not, even though the ICAO conference was in Montreal.
Ottawa and Beijing have lately agreed to begin discussions on a free trade agreement, an extradition treaty and the resumption of Chinese state-owned enterprises buying up Canadian energy-sector companies. 

Trudeau has been lavishly flattered in an official visit to China, and he has returned the favour in Canada to Li Keqiang. 

Although not yet a year in government, Trudeau’s Liberals have struck 29 separate agreements with China, and have set out to double bilateral trade over the next 10 years.
But such single-minded devotion to business deals with the Beijing regime will inevitably invite the worst kind of influences and will exact a price to be paid in democratic values, warns Szu-chien Hsu, president of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, an institute that operates at arms-length from Taiwan’s government. 

Xi Jinping is no friend of democracy, Hsu told me. 

“It alarms us. We have to be very objective about what’s going on in China.”
Xi is adept at consolidating his own power and pursuing what the Communist Party regards as China’s national interests, “but not in accordance with universal values,” Hsu said. 

“Quite on the contrary. It’s not just peculiar to Taiwan. It’s happening everywhere, in Australia, Canada, and even in the United States.” 

Beijing’s anti-democratic reach is spreading quickly. 

“I think we have to be very alarmed about that.”
Hsu said he was heartened by the recent submission to the Liberal government, prepared on behalf of 35 international organizations by the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, calling on Canada to put human rights, especially freedom of expression and press freedom, at the heart of Canada’s renewed relationship with the People’s Republic. 

The submission’s backers include Human Rights Watch, the National NewsMedia Council, PEN International, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Index on Censorship. 

National and regional groups to sign on include journalists’ associations from Afghanistan, Palestine and the Pacific Islands.
“The relationship between prosperity and democracy – we would like to see a positive relationship between these two paths. If we don’t have a healthy path, one will destroy the other,” Hsu said. 

“This is very, very dangerous. It is self-destruction. It is the destruction of civilization. We are not opposing China. We have to defend democracy. It’s civilization for human beings. It’s even for China’s sake.”