Take political interference claims seriously, Chinese community leaders say

2023/03/02 Leave a comment

Is it only the PM and his supporters that aren’t taking this seriously? The drip-drip of evidence, along with the refusal for some form of public enquiry, continues to undermine trust in the governing party and government more generally:

It isn’t racist to raise concerns about foreign interference in Canadian elections, say Chinese community leaders, adding Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should investigate concerns openly.

When Trudeau said recent media attention to foreign interference in elections was racist, he was using a deflection technique also employed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), said Bill Chu of the Chinese-Canadian Concerned Group on the Chinese Communist Party’s Human Rights Violations.

“He should be more concerned about national security, he should be more concerned about sovereignty,” Chu said.

Chu, a longtime anti-racism advocate in British Columbia, said the comments also ultimately conflate Chinese people with the CCP, a tactic China’s government often uses to try to silence criticism by trying to spin it into an instance of racism.

On Monday, after more than a week of political pressure over explosive news reports about China’s attempts to influence Canadian elections, Trudeau said the most recent attention on Toronto Liberal MP, Han Dong, stems from racism.

“One of the things we’ve seen unfortunately over the past years is a rise in anti-Asian racism linked to the pandemic, and concerns being arisen around people’s loyalties,” Trudeau said Monday in Mississauga.

“I want to make everyone understand fully: Han Dong is an outstanding member of our team, and suggestions that he is somehow not loyal to Canada should not be entertained.”

Last week, Global News reported Dong was a “witting affiliate” in Beijing’s attempts to help him become the Liberal candidate and run for the party in North York.

The report cited unnamed sources who said that Canada’s spy agency — the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) — started tracking Dong in 2019. Officials also suggested to Trudeau’s office that the Liberals should drop Han as a candidate due to the concerns.

Trudeau has said CSIS cannot direct political parties on what candidates they can run in elections.

“Instead of allowing the CSIS input to stand he’s actually allowing the input of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to stand.

“The PRC has been using the racism card for the longest time,” Chu said.

Meanwhile, Fenella Sung of Canadian Friends of Hong Kong said she doesn’t think the news stories come from racism.

“I would encourage people to no longer pull the racist card out every time those kind of legitimate questions are asked about our politicians,” Sung said. “You need to look at the facts.”

Sung said Chinese Canadians are more vulnerable to infiltration by CCP officials because of the shared language, culture and communities, making it more important for Ottawa to address the issue head-on rather than allow a cloud of suspicion to hang over them.

She said the government is throwing Chinese Canadians under the bus by trying to subdue the conversation with allegations of racism when it should be getting everything out in the open.

A full independent inquiry with subpoena power to investigate the allegations is in order, adding such an inquiry would be beneficial to Canada’s Chinese communities, Sung said.

Audrey Champoux, press secretary for the office of the Minister of Public Safety, said in a statement the federal government is “soberly aware of incidents in which hostile foreign actors have attempted to monitor, intimidate or threaten Canadians and those living here.”

It said it uses all tools to respond to such threats.

Former Canadian ambassador to China Guy Saint-Jacques said Trudeau’s reaction to the unfolding concerns suggests he’s “getting desperate” and the racism allegations would be welcomed by the Chinese embassy as it echoes their own lines of deflection.

Saint-Jacques said Canada is risking its international partnerships by not acting fast and taking the allegations seriously.

“Once your security services tell you ‘watch out this candidate has close links with the Chinese government,’ and probably that comes with some details to buttress the allegations, then you have to take this seriously,” he said.

Source: Take political interference claims seriously, Chinese community leaders say

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Saint-Jacques: After the two Michaels’ release, Canada must work with allies to challenge China’s bullying tactics

2021/10/01 Leave a comment

Sound commentary:

The return of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor to Canada should be celebrated as they were unfortunate pawns in the geopolitical contest between China and the United States. Let’s hope that they can get back to a normal life quickly ‒ and that Canada was not forced to agree to egregious demands from China to guarantee their release.

As we take stock of this sad episode, we have to look at our China policy from the perspectives of security, trade and co-operation. The starting point should be the defence and protection of our values and interests. As trust has been broken, future Canadian engagement with China will have to be a lot more selective to areas that serve our interest, and be implemented in a consistent manner.

Canada needs to recover its voice. Ottawa must call China into question when it transgresses obligations undertaken through international treaties. This includes problems such as the trampling of human rights in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, the militarization of the South China Sea, the undue pressure on Taiwan and Beijing’s refusal to collaborate with the World Health Organization to investigate the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After the case of Meng Wanzhou, it is not impossible that we will be asked again to arrest a prominent Chinese citizen at the request of a foreign country with which we have an extradition treaty ‒ or that we will have to arrest someone here who is engaging in espionage or interference activities. We have to put mechanisms in place to prevent future hostage taking. One way would be for Canada to develop criteria that would trigger common responses, including sanctions, by countries that have signed the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations. All these countries have realized that what happened to the Michaels was pure hostage diplomacy and that it could happen to their citizens, too.

Canada should also ban Huawei from its 5G development to ensure that the company’s equipment cannot be used for espionage and to align with the United States. It must also become a lot more active to prevent Chinese interference in domestic affairs, including cyber espionage. A good starting point would be to look at the four foreign interference laws adopted by Australia.

To prevent China from using trade to punish opponents, Canada should impress on Washington that it needs to make the World Trade Organization functional again by allowing arbiters to be appointed to panels. Countries could then launch actions against China when it imposes punitive sanctions(this would apply to other countries that enact these measures as well). Canada could suggest an alliance to Australia and U.S. (to start), whereby they agree not to increase exports to China beyond their historical share of a given product if one of them is victim of such sanctions. Trade data for the first six months of 2021 show that our exports to China have increased by 23 per cent on a year-to-year basis. This gives us more leeway to take strong measures as China will always need our agri-food products, iron and copper.

There are, of course, areas where it is in our interest to pursue co-operation with China. For example, on the environment, Canada already has a reputable record of providing assistance. This can facilitate business opportunities for Canada to provide China with clean technologies, liquefied natural gas and hydrogen to help reduce its coal emissions. On public health and pandemics, Canada should continue to collaborate with China ‒ especially to ensure it doesn’t cut corners. There’s also people-to-people exchanges: Chinese people like to travel to Canada for tourism and appreciate Canadian education for their children. We also have our own homework to do: Let’s increase Canadian literacy on China by devoting more resources to Mandarin training and centres studying the country’s politics, economics and culture.

But demonstrating strength, first and foremost, is key. To be successful, this new engagement strategy will have to be implemented in close collaboration with like-minded countries. An impending test to do so will be at Beijing’s 2022 Winter Olympics. Let’s propose that delegations to the opening ceremony be limited, and that foreign leaders not attend. The more we speak with one voice and the more China will be forced to stop its bullying tactics.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-after-the-two-michaels-release-canada-must-work-with-allies-to/

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Saint-Jacques: Canada needs a new engagement strategy that opposes China’s thuggery

2021/08/19 Leave a comment

Good practical approaches us, although not easy to implement. The Winter Olympics provide an important pressure point that should be used:

The 11-year prison sentence handed to Michael Spavor is just the latest example of the ruthlessness of China’s efforts to put pressure on the Canadian government, and in turn on the U.S. administration, to return Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. As The Washington Post’s editorial board wrote on Aug. 13: “China’s kangaroo courts operate in service to the country’s Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping, whose contempt for international standards of law and justice is manifest.” As Times Wang outlined in The Globe last week, Canadians should refuse to recognize China’s “justice” system.

While a short-term resolution of the case can only come from Washington, it is not clear that U.S. President Joe Biden is ready to spend the political capital necessary to let Ms. Meng return to China. Of course, an elegant solution for both Ottawa and Washington would be if the judge presiding over the case were to decide after the extradition hearings conclude that Ms. Meng’s rights were not respected when she was arrested and orders her released.

In any case, detailed negotiations will still be required to guarantee the safe return of the two Michaels to Canada and, hopefully, a decision by the Chinese supreme court to cancel the death penalty against Robert Schellenberg, who was convicted of drug smuggling. And let’s not forget that we have three other Canadians sitting on death row in China with no consular access to other Canadians, including Xiao Jianhua and Huseyin Celil, both abducted abroad by China.

Ottawa needs to adopt a more robust strategy to counter China’s attack on international law and norms, as well as its interference and spying activities in Canada. The electoral campaign offers an opportunity to ask political parties how they envisage future relations with China.

Knowing China has used hostage diplomacy with increasing frequency in the past 15 years, and following the adoption of the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-States Relations in February, Canada should agree with its allies on a common strategy, including sanctions, that would be applied against China if it dares to take people hostage again.

To prevent China from weaponizing trade, as it did against us after the arrest of Ms. Meng and is doing now with Australia, and since some commodities come from a limited number of countries, Canada should propose to the United States and Australia to conclude an agreement that no signatory would increase its exports to China of wheat, canola, beef, pork, metallurgical coal, iron ore and others above its historical share of the Chinese market if one of the three is victim of such sanctions.

An offer could be made to other countries to join later. China would quickly understand that it could no longer divide us by increasing its imports from another supplier.

Democratic countries should also agree to continue to protest against China’s flouting of the agreement to guarantee Hong Kong’s autonomy until 2047, and against China’s human rights abuses – including the continuing genocide in Xinjiang – by asking for a full investigation by the UN.

One important and difficult deadline is looming on us: the holding of the Winter Olympics in Beijing next February. Since the number of cases related to the Delta variant is increasing in China, Canada and allies should ask that the Games be postponed to February, 2023. They should also specify that if China does not agree to let a UN investigation team go to Xinjiang immediately, and if it continues to deny the World Health Organization complete, unrestricted access to investigate the origin of COVID-19, Canada and the United States will offer to jointly host the Olympics using existing facilities in Vancouver, Whistler and Seattle. This would also prevent China using the event for propaganda purposes.

To counter China’s influence in the developing world through its Belt and Road Initiative, which finances global infrastructure projects, Western countries need to offer an alternative with more investment and assistance. They must also demonstrate that a democratic system presents more long-term potential than the Chinese authoritarian regime.

It is important to distinguish between Chinese leaders and Chinese citizens: Chinese immigrants have made a great contribution to Canada’s development and the government should declare that Canada remains open to Chinese nationals, including students, and will provide support to all Chinese nationals seeking asylum from state persecution, including those from Hong Kong.

Let’s hope the new government elected on Sept. 20 will quickly produce a new engagement strategy with China that opposes its thuggery and meets the expectations of Canadians.

Guy Saint-Jacques served as Canada’s ambassador to China from 2012 to 2016.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canada-needs-a-new-engagement-strategy-that-opposes-chinas-thuggery/

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Could Olympics offer leverage against China’s ‘hostage diplomacy’?

2021/08/13 Leave a comment

More discussion regarding potential boycott of the Beijing winter olympics. Good comments by former ambassador Guy Saint-Jacques:

The looming espionage convictions of two Canadians in what has been called an act of “hostage diplomacy” should push this country to take a tougher stand toward the Chinese regime — and a hard look at the upcoming Beijing Olympics, observers say.

Verdicts in the cases of the so-called two Michaels — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — were expected this week, with Spavor’s verdict anticipated as early as Tuesday evening.

The outcome scarcely seemed in doubt. The conviction rate in China is 99.7 per cent, as touted by China’s own Supreme People’s Court.

A third Canadian, Robert Schellenberg, had his death sentence upheld Monday as a Chinese court rejected his appeal. He had been sentenced in January 2019 on charges of drug trafficking.

All three Canadians are widely believed to have been targeted by China in retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, who is going through extradition proceedings in Vancouver that would send her to the United States to face fraud charges related to her company’s dealings with Iran.

The Chinese executive comes from a powerhouse family in China with influence in both the political and business world, and her arrest in December 2018 at the Vancouver airport was seen by Beijing as a grave insult. Kovrig, a Canadian diplomat on leave, and Spavor, an entrepreneur, were arrested in China days after Meng was detained in a tactic that observers have dubbed “hostage-taking diplomacy.”

Beijing has made it clear that they will not release the men unless Meng walks free.

So, what is Canada — a small player on the international scene — to do as tensions mount and the fate of the three detainees grows bleaker? The country finds itself stuck between two of the world’s most powerful nations in China and the U.S., which has an extradition treaty with Canada and holds most of the cards in the geopolitical situation swirling around the prisoners.

Former Canadian ambassador to China, Guy Saint-Jacques, says this country could reach out to its allies and lobby that the Winter Olympics, set to take place in Beijing in February, be taken off the table and perhaps even relocated to North America.

“What does a country need to do for the world to decide, ‘Well, this country does not deserve to host the Games?’” he said.

“We know there’s a genocide going on in Xinjiang; we know they aren’t respecting the agreement with the UK on the autonomy of Hong Kong; we know how badly they managed the first phase of the pandemic; we know what they are doing in the South China Sea, how aggressive they are towards Taiwan.”

Should the Games continue to be held in Beijing anyway, there should be an agreement that no foreign leaders attend the opening ceremony, he said.

“You make this public and tell China, ‘This is what’s going to take place unless you agree to a full investigation … in Xinjiang,’” he said, referring to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region where reports of genocide carried out by China have caused international condemnation.

“China will use it for political purposes, for its prestige,” said Saint-Jacques.

Clive Ansley, retired from 36 years of legal practice in both Canada and China, who now works as a consultant on legal issues related to China, said there are well-documented human rights abuses in China and called the idea of the Games being held there “absolutely obscene.”

Ansley cautioned, though, that using Olympics as leverage poses risks.

“It’s almost like a kind of blackmail,” he said, adding that negotiating on that front could make the situation look like it’s politically driven, rather than driven by the principle of law and Canada’s treaty obligations to the United States.

Ansley said he supports continuing the extradition process for Meng — as bad as the situation facing the detainees is.

“We can’t just walk away from that,” he said. “Because the result of that would be an absolute guarantee that every time we have a dispute with China, their first recourse will be hostage diplomacy. Their first instinct will be to grab the nearest Canadian.”

Both Sainte-Jacques and Ansley said that the world has to consider tough trade sanctions on China.

“China, under the Chinese Communist Party, is an international outlaw,” said Ansley. “When China commits an illegal act under international law, then we need to stop pussyfooting around and trying to appease China.”

Saint-Jacques said the federal government has to “develop more concrete” strategies for dealing with China. He said there has been some movement from Canada, which led the way for the recent signing of the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations by dozens of countries.

When the closed-door trials for the two Michaels took place in March, representatives from other countries showed up to support them and to denounce the secrecy of the Chinese court, labelling it a violation of the country’s international bilateral treaty obligations.

“We are at the stage where we have send some concrete challenges to China and we cannot do this working alone,” Saint-Jacques said.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/08/10/three-jailed-canadians-spavor-kovrig-and-schellenberg-share-a-spotlight-this-week-in-next-stage-of-chinas-hostage-taking-diplomacy.html?li_source=LI&li_medium=thestar_canada

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Canada’s visa application centre in Beijing run by Chinese police

2021/02/09 2 Comments

Getting a fair amount of attention and concern. Comments by former Canadian Ambassador Guy Saint-Jacques of note:

Chinese police own a company that collects details of people applying for visas to Canada and numerous other countries, giving Beijing security services a direct stake in the processing of private information provided by people planning travel outside China.

Beijing Shuangxiong Foreign Service Company, which operates the Canadian visa-application centre in the Chinese capital, is owned by the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, a Globe and Mail investigation has found. And at least some of the people working inside the centre are members of the Communist Party, recruited from a school that trains the next generation of party elite.

Beijing Shuangxiong is a subcontractor for VFS Global, a company headquartered in Zurich and Dubai that holds a wide-reaching contract to provide visa-processing services around the globe for the Canadian government. VFS offices collect personal and biometric information that is then forwarded to Canadian immigration officials for decisions on who shall be granted visas.

In China, VFS relies on subcontractors to operate its 11 Canadian visa centre locations. The company, which provides visa services for 34 countries in China, says it has strict processes in place to safeguard personal data.

However, the police ownership of the Beijing centre raises questions about the extent to which it is possible for VFS to shield people’s private and confidential information from authorities in a country such as China, which maintains a sweeping and invasive surveillance apparatus, and restricts international travel for some officials and ethnic groups.

Chinese security services “obviously have a huge interest in mining visa data,” said Robert Potter, a cybersecurity consultant in Australia who has worked as an adviser to the Canadian government.

Knowledge of what happens inside a visa centre could have high-level intelligence value. “If you can see who is getting declined and who is getting approved, it gives you a better chance of getting your agent through,” Mr. Potter said.

It could also be used to bar people from leaving China. For some people, like the country’s Muslims, “even applying for a visa to get out of China is enough to get flagged as a terrorist,” he said. “If you’re a Uyghur and you’re applying for a visa to Canada on humanitarian grounds, giving that information to the security service is really dangerous.”

Ward Elcock, a former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said the fact that companies connected to China’s security forces or its government are playing a part in the Canada visa-application process “represents a lazy abdication of our standards to those of a police state.”

VFS Global said in a statement that neither individuals nor operators of the local companies with which it partners are able to gain access to visa-application data.

Other Western countries also use Beijing Shuangxiong, including Britain, Italy, Belgium, Ireland and New Zealand.

VFS Global handles visa services for Canada in at least 83 countries.

The Globe has previously reported that China Investment Corp., one of the biggest state-run financial institutions in the world, is a backer of an investment fund that is VFS’s majority owner. VFS says investors do not have a say in how the company operates.

In Ottawa, opposition parties have urged the federal government to reconsider its contract with VFS. NDP MPs have written to Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino and Public Services Minister Anita Anand to express “serious concerns around the security of information handled by VFS Global.”

VFS, which operates in 144 countries, has said the investment fund “doesn’t have access to any data from VFS Global nor any of its other portfolio companies.”

But the company has developed much closer operational ties with Chinese state-backed companies inside China, The Globe has discovered.

The Shanghai Municipal Education Commission owns 30 per cent of the Canadian visa office in that city. China Travel Services, a large centrally owned company, owns the majority of the centre in Guangzhou. In Jinan, the 93.55-per-cent owner of the subcontracting company is Pei Zhongyi, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a key part of China’s ruling apparatus. People who answered the phone at those locations declined to answer questions.

But the Beijing centre stands out for its proximity to China’s security and political establishment.

Chinese corporate records show that Beijing Shuangxiong is wholly owned by Beijing Tongda Asset Management Group, which is a subsidiary of Beijing Sifu Enterprise Management Office. Corporate records list Beijing Sifu as an arm of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, the city’s police. A 2017 city of Beijing document describes Beijing Sifu as a work unit of the city’s police.

Asked if police or security services had access to visa-application information, a woman who answered the phone at the Canada Visa Centre in Beijing said she could only discuss visas. Beijing Shuangxiong did not respond to an e-mail request for comment. A receptionist at Beijing Sifu provided a fax number to the Beijing police, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Peter Brun, chief communications officer for VFS Global, said that like many foreign companies, VFS operates with locally owned “facility management companies” to provide visa-application services on the ground. “Individuals or local companies having a stake in the facility management companies you describe have no access to visa-application data. They cannot influence the visa-application process set by the Canadian government,” the VFS official said.

Mr. Brun said all application data are encrypted upon entry and then transferred “securely and directly to servers located in Canada only.” He said only Canadian government officials can gain access to this data.

He said no data are stored in China and the servers processing the applications are located in Canada. Mr. Brun said VFS conducts thorough “credit and criminal record checks on all employees before they are hired” and staff’s e-mail and telecommunications are monitored “for security risks.”

He said the Canadian government either installs or supervises the Immigration department data servers and biometric equipment at the visa-application centres.

Mr. Brun said it has 64 governments as clients around the world including the U.S., Britain and nearly all European Union countries.

Guy Saint-Jacques, who served as Canada’s ambassador to China between 2012 and 2016, said it’s best to assume there is no privacy for visa applications made in China.

“You can bet the Chinese government is interested in knowing who is going to study where abroad, who is going as a tourist and who wants to leave and immigrate,” he said.

Canada’s Department of Citizenship and Immigration is defending the visa-application arrangements it has made in Beijing and throughout China.

“For any foreign company to operate in China, they must be partnered with a local Chinese company, and Canadian contractors are not exempted from this,” department spokesman Rémi Larivière said in a statement. “Canadian officials closely monitor the activities of visa-application centres (VACs) around the world to ensure that our stringent privacy standards are met.”

He said applications are handled “according to Canada’s privacy laws” and the service providers have pledged not to interfere with visa applications. “As set out in the contract, VACs are expressly forbidden from providing any visa-related advice to applicants or from making any type of determination on their application.”

Beijing Shuangxiong dates back to 1993, and describes itself as among the first agencies approved by the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau to provide entry and exit services.

It also has close ties with China’s ruling party.

You Xiangdong, the company’s legal representative and general manager, serves as secretary of its Communist Party branch, and the company has cultivated close ties to Beijing Youth Politics College, a school that has for decades played a foundational role in training new generations of Communist Party leadership.

The college’s English study students have become coveted workers for Beijing Shuangxiong, which has brought many in to work in its visa centres. In a report on the partnership, the company said it valued the political reliability of students from the school.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-canadas-visa-application-centre-in-beijing-run-by-chinese-police/

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Alan Freeman: Boycotting the 2022 Winter Games should be one way Canada sticks it to China

2020/10/10 Leave a comment

Extremely hard on the athletes but valid approach if done in concert with other countries:

The Pew Research Center this week came out with some shocking, yet unsurprising, numbers. China’s reputation is in free fall around the world.

According to Pew, a majority of respondents in every one of 14 nations surveyed had a negative view of China. In nine of the countries, including Canada, negative views are at the highest point since the respected research institute began polling on the question more than a decade ago.

In Canada, 73 per cent of respondents had a negative view of China in 2020, compared with only 27 per cent back in 2007.

China’s human-rights abuses against the Uyghurs and other minorities, its attack on democracy in Hong Kong, and its assertive territorial claims in the South China Sea have had an impact.

For Canadians, these bully tactics have a particular edge after the kidnapping and imprisonment on trumped-up charges of our fellow citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

What to do? We all know there’s a crowd of well-connected China-appeasers here who want to start hostage talks with Beijing, and are willing to trade away not just Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, but our self-respect, in the naive hope that the two Michaels will be freed. Thankfully, the Trudeau government has kiboshed that idea.

Furthermore, we’re now seeing more signs that our government realizes Canadians are paying attention and don’t want to roll over in the face of China’s aggressiveness. According to the Globe and Mail, Canada has quietly begun accepting pro-democracy activists from Hong Kong as “Convention refugees,” individuals with a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion or political opinion.

Beijing won’t be happy.

That follows Canada’s earlier suspension of its extradition treaty with Hong Kong, a ban on exports of sensitive goods to Hong Kong, and a suggestion it could soon boost immigration from the beleaguered former British colony. It’s clearly not enough.

What else can we do? Well, look at the calendar. In just 16 months’ time, Beijing is due to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, another opportunity for China to strut itself as a superpower, the way it used the 2008 Summer Games to make a big splash.

How can we even contemplate sending the cream of our athletes, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looking on, and watching them gleefully enter Beijing’s Olympic Stadium for glitzy opening ceremonies while Canadians remain behind bars in a Chinese prison?

There is an alternative. This week, the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, suggested that if evidence continues to mount that the rights of Uyghur Muslims are being trampled, the U.K. will consider boycotting the Games. “Generally speaking, my instinct is to separate sport from diplomacy and politics, but there comes a point when this is not possible,” Raab told a parliamentary committee.

In Australia, where anti-China sentiments are even more ingrained than in Canada, Parliament will soon be asked to support a boycott of the Games. “The time has come for the freedom-loving countries to say to Beijing: ‘Enough is enough,’ ” according to an Australian Liberal senator, Eric Abetz. He also wondered why individual Australian athletes would want to lend their credibility to such a regime.

Easy for the U.K. and Australia to say no to Beijing 2022, you might say. They’re hardly a presence at the Winter Games, winning only a few medals apiece in a good year. Canada, on the other hand, is a Winter Olympics powerhouse, earning the No. 3 spot in the medal take in 2018 in South Korea.

All the more reason for us to boycott. The Winter Olympics is one place where we can make a difference. If Canada could convince Norway, Germany, the U.S., Netherlands and South Korea to pull out of the Games (the top six performers in Korea), China would be stuck with a shell of an Olympic Games. It means we have a chance to make a real difference.

I reached out to Guy St-Jacques, a former Canadian ambassador to China, and asked him for his views. “It is now impossible to remain ambivalent on China, knowing what they are doing in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, the South China Sea, etc., and the way they have punished Canada for the arrest of Meng Wanzhou,” he told me.

St-Jacques said Canada should adopt a concerted approach with our allies, and threaten an Olympic boycott “if they don’t allow a UN delegation to go to Xinjiang to investigate the situation of the Uyghurs, repeal the National Security Law (in Hong Kong), or suspend its application and free the two Michaels.”

China needs to be reminded that if it wants to play a larger role on the world stage, it has to abide by international laws and treaties and stop acting the bully, including by engaging in hostage diplomacy, he said.

For those who argue that the Games are above politics, that’s clearly hogwash. The Olympics have been subject to political machinations since the beginning, and authoritarian regimes going back to Hitler’s Germany in 1936 have used them to legitimize their unsavoury policies.

Boycotts have been done before. In 1980, Canada joined a stream of Western countries and boycotted the Games in Moscow. And the 1976 Montreal Games was hit by a walkout of African nations in protest of apartheid in South Africa.

Standing up to a bully exacts a price. Not watching Team Canada play for gold in hockey or curling at Beijing in February 2022 should be a price Canadians are willing to pay.

Source: Boycotting the 2022 Winter Games should be one way Canada sticks it to China

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Chinese diplomat accuses critics of sowing division among Chinese Canadian community

2020/07/30 Leave a comment

As if Chinese diplomats are not themselves sowing divisions:

A Chinese diplomat is accusing Canadians who criticize Beijing’s new Hong Kong security law of trying to sow discord among people of Chinese origin in Canada.

Tong Xiaoling, China’s consul-general in Vancouver, told a Chinese-language radio program in Vancouver this week that pro-democracy activists in Canada who criticize the new security law enacted in Hong Kong are trying to foist their views on people who support Beijing’s move. Her interview was broadcast over Monday and Tuesday.

She said a “very few people, in both Hong Kong and local [Canada], have been maliciously denigrating and sabotaging Hong Kong’s national security legislation,” and she accused them of colluding with “anti-China forces” and trying to cause “trouble” overseas.

“Some people were trying to intimidate people who truly care about Hong Kong, stop them from voicing [their opinions] and launch personal attacks on them. [They] also try to create divisions in the ethnically Chinese community and sabotage China-Canada relations,” Ms. Tong said to Vancouver radio station 1320 AM, which bills itself as the “voice of Vancouver’s Chinese community.”

Ms. Tong proceeded to list various members of the Chinese community in Vancouver: those from Hong Kong, from Macau, from mainland China and the self-governing island of Taiwan.

Canadian activists for democracy in Hong Kong say that’s an unusual thing for a foreign government official to be concerned about. It’s not the Chinese government’s business to be actively concerned with the opinion of Canadians of Chinese origin, they say.

The Beijing-drafted national security law punishes what China broadly defines as subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison. Critics of the law fear it will crush the wide-ranging freedoms promised to the territory when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997, including the right to protest and an independent legal system. Supporters of the law say it will bring stability after last year’s often-violent anti-government and anti-China unrest.

Vancouver has been home to a number of rallies against the new national security law Beijing imposed on Hong Kong, including demonstrations outside Oakridge Centre and the local Chinese consulate.

Cherie Wong, executive director for Alliance Canada Hong Kong, an umbrella group for Hong Kong pro-democracy advocates in this country, said the Chinese government acts as though it has a proprietary claim on people of Chinese origin in Canada.

“Why would a foreign diplomat care about what the Chinese Canadian community thinks? It’s because the Chinese Communist Party feels a level of ownership over ethnically Chinese individuals,” Ms. Wong said.

“The accusation that we are dividing Chinese people is in fact reinforcing the idea that we are a monolith, which is very much incorrect. It’s part of the same propaganda, erasing the differences in political opinions.”

Guy Saint-Jacques, a former Canadian ambassador to Beijing, said that in his opinion the Chinese government devotes a lot of resources to try to shape the opinions of ethnically Chinese communities in foreign countries in the hope of influencing public policy. “The message is repeated all the time: Don’t forget the Motherland.”

He said Ms. Tong’s comments reflect a more assertive brand of Chinese foreign policy. “She should be reminded that Canadians are Canadians: We don’t make a distinction between Canadians of Chinese origin and Canadians of British origin.”

Members of the House of Common’s special Canada-China committee, meanwhile, are meeting this week to consider holding hearings on the new Hong Kong security law.

“Conservatives proposed months ago for the Canada-China Committee to reconvene for intensive study of the horrific and deteriorating situation in Hong Kong. A lot of time has been lost in the interim, and it is all the more urgent now for us to hold intensive hearings on the situation in Hong Kong,” Conservative MP Garnett Genuis, a member of the committee, said.

Ms. Tong told 1320 AM that the national security bill was designed to bring calm to Hong Kong. Mass protests began in mid-2019 over proposed legislative changes that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China. This civil disobedience later evolved into demands for greater democracy and autonomy.

She blamed foreign governments and even the self-ruled island of Taiwan for encouraging this disobedience.

She also said she understands some overseas Chinese people have expressed concerns over the new law, worrying that it will violate Hong Kong people’s rights and freedoms, but blamed biased media reports and foreign politicians for their concerns.

She said the law will target only a tiny minority of people who sabotage Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability and the national security.

“If you do not break such law, and aren’t involved in these activities, why do you need to worry about your safety?”

Source: Chinese diplomat accuses critics of sowing division among Chinese Canadian community

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Parliamentary association chair defends Canada-China group as critics call for its suspension

2020/06/05 Leave a comment

Engage for what purpose when the two Michaels are still detained under awful conditions, repression of religious minorities such as the Uighurs continue, and China proceeds to end Hong Kong’s autonomy.

Wilful naiveté at best. Arguments mirror those used by the International Metropolis Secretariat to justify the holding of Metropolis in Beijing that our petition successfully cancelled.

These kinds of contacts should be suspended until the Michaels are released at a minimum:

As Beijing’s behaviour grows increasingly strong-willed and the Canada-China relationship continues to flounder, some are calling for the suspension of a parliamentary association between the two countries, while one of the co-chairs says the group facilitates dialogue.

The 50-member Canadian-side of the Canada-China Legislative Association, which was founded in 1998, is composed of MPs and Senators who work to “promote better understanding” in the bilateral relationship on both common interests and differences.

“There’s so much to be gained from maintaining that discussion,” Independent Senator Paul Massicotte (De Lanaudière, Que.) told The Hill Times. “We have an immense interest in this relationship—[from a] human rights point of view, economically, future growth, climate change. There’s so much to gain from our relationship, in spite of the fact that we have serious disagreements about some key issues.”

Sen. Massicotte is one of two co-chairs of the Canada-China Legislative Association. Liberal MP Han Dong (Don Valley North, Ont.), the group’s other co-chair, didn’t respond to an interview request.

“Its [purpose is] to be frank and chat with each other and maintain as good relations as we can, in spite of possible differences—in this case, serious differences between our approach as a country and our value system and their thought pattern,” Sen. Massicotte said about the association. “But just because you disagree with somebody doesn’t mean you put an end to it.”

He said if the association is suspended, the dialogue between the two countries would be damaged.

Macdonald-Laurier Institute fellow Shuvaloy Majumdar called for the association’s suspension in a National Post op-ed last week, citing China’s National Party Congress’ imposition of a national security law on Hong Kong which threatens the “one country, two systems” foundation of the region.

“Canadian Parliament has no business legitimizing the masquerade of Beijing’s National Party Congress as it institutionally represses Hong Kong’s Legislative Council and constitutional rights,” wrote Mr. Majumdar, a former policy director to multiple foreign affairs ministers in the government of then-prime minister Stephen Harper.

Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne (Saint-Maurice-Champlain, Que.) released a joint statement last week with his counterparts in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, calling the imposition of the national security law “a deep concern” and “in direct conflict with its international obligations under the principles of the legally-binding, UN-registered Sino-British Joint Declaration.”

Mr. Majumdar told The Hill Times that the parliamentary association gives the Chinese Communist Party “unrivalled access to lobby Canadian Parliamentarians.”

“If you were interested in the spirit of dialogue with the Chinese people, then why not also pursue similar arrangements with Hong Kong’s Legislative Council or with Taiwan’s Parliament in conjunction with the National Party Congress?” he noted. “That’s not happened. So this is not about dialogue.”

Mr. Majumdar added that China’s National Congress has “broken faith” with the sprit of “honest dialogue” with the imposition of the national security law on Hong Kong and that they are “subverting and distorting” an understanding of China in Canada that is coming at the cost of Canadian interests.

“It ought not to be tolerated.”

Sen. Massicotte, who met with Chinese Ambassador Cong Peiwu alongside Mr. Dong on Feb. 26, said he raises the issues of disagreement in all the meetings the association has with Chinese officials.

“You can do it politely,” he said. “You can raise up issues that you don’t agree on, but you don’t have to be disagreeable.”

“Usually we’ll say we agree to disagree because we don’t have the same starting point or same culture. We don’t brush over our differences,” said Sen. Massicotte, calling discussions with the Chinese ambassador “very cordial.”

Conservative MP Michael Cooper (St. Albert-Edmonton, Alta.), vice-chair of the Canada-China Legislative Association, said there should be a consideration to the association’s role going forward.

“I think we do need to review the activities of the legislative association,” he said. “Does that mean suspending the association? Perhaps. But we need to have those discussions in light of what needs to be and what will be a different relationship between Canada and China, at least in the short and intermediate term, as a result of the fallout of COVID-19 and the unlawful actions the Chinese Communist regime has taken against Hong Kong.”

Mr. Cooper said that there needs to be an overall evaluation of Canada’s bilateral relationship with China stemming from how Beijing handled the COVID-19 pandemic, including the use of Magnitsky sanctions on Chinese officials who were involved in “silencing and jailing whistleblowers” in the early days of the virus’ outbreak and officials “involved in the cover-up” of the pandemic.

He said the parliamentary association has not met as an executive since the start of the year.

“So at this point, the association, speaking as an executive, has been inactive,” Mr. Cooper said.

Debate over parliamentary group comes at tipping point for Canada-China relations

It was feared that a B.C. court judge ruling against Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou last week on a “double criminality” principle, which continued her extradition trial, would further inflame tensions between Canada and China.

The Chinese Communist Party-supported Global Times stated that the decision would bring about the “worst-ever” period in the bilateral relationship. So far, retaliation has been muted, as reported by The Globe and Mail, with a Chinese government spokesperson commenting on the 50thanniversary of Canada-China relations

Ms. Meng was arrested in December 2018 at the behest of the United States. The arrest of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in China soon followed in apparent retaliation. The two Canadians have been detained by Chinese authorities ever since.

The parliamentary association took a trip to China in January 2019 shortly after the arrests of Mr. Kovrig and Mr. Spavor, during which then-co-chair and now-retired senator Joseph Day said the detained Canadians were not on the agenda. Mr. Cooper, who was also on the trip, brought the cases up and said raising the issues didn’t help “in the sense that they are still in China,” but added at the same time that discussing the issue “did not hurt.”

Former Canadian ambassador to China Guy Saint-Jacques, who served in the post from 2012 to 2016, said the Canada-China Legislative Association “can be useful.”

He added that it takes “a bit of guts” for Canadian Parliamentarians to raise contentious issues with Chinese authorities, noting that he has experienced foreign affairs ministers that were reticent to raise contentious issues with China.

“If it’s properly managed, we should proceed,” he said. “But, on the other hand, if something dramatic were to occur in Hong Kong, I think we will have to think about sanctions against China and then maybe the suspension of those [association] visits would be required.”

“The key is preparation,” said Mr. Saint-Jacques of when Canadian Parliamentarians in the association travel to China.

He said that when he was ambassador he would “regularly” meet with the members of the association when he returned to Ottawa to give briefings on important issues and prepare them for upcoming trips.

When the group arrived in China, the visit would start with a breakfast at the embassy to give the MPs and Senators the latest information that Canadian diplomats in China have collected before they met with Chinese officials, he said.

With Parliamentarians from many different parties and political ideologies, Mr. Saint-Jacques said it gives the Chinese officials an insight into the Canadian system where politicians don’t speak with one voice, unlike in the Chinese system.

While he said that the association can serve to legitimize the National Congress, it is better than the alternative of no contact.

“If you have no contacts, then you leave them to think that things work the same way here than over there,” he said.

Brock University professor Charles Burton, a former counsellor at the Canadian Embassy in Beijing, said he has long been calling for the suspension of the association.

“I feel that we are being played by the Communist Party in this association,” said Prof. Burton, a Macdonald-Laurier Institute fellow.

He said the parliamentary association serves as a way for the Chinese government to establish “moral equivalency” between Canada’s Parliament and China’s non-democratic National Congress.

“The Members of Parliament who go have a very pleasant time in China with delicious banquets and interesting tourism … but I don’t see it as furthering the interest of Canada in any way,” he said.

Prof. Burton said Parliamentarians can engage with Chinese diplomats in Canada through other forums such as the Special House Committee on Canada-China Relations.

“Typically, Parliamentarians don’t have the expertise to represent Canada’s position effectively and tend to be put into photo-ops and make joint statements that support the Chinese Communist Party’s agenda in Canada,” he said.

Since the creation of the association, there has been no adoption of democratic reform in the National Congress, Prof. Burton said, adding that the group hasn’t had “any positive impact” on fostering the development of parliamentary democracy in China.

Source: Parliamentary association chair defends Canada-China group as critics call for its suspension

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Working with China can’t be at the expense of our values or the rule of law

2020/06/01 Leave a comment

Good opinion piece by former ambassador Guy Saint-Jacques:

“Canada is China’s best friend,” former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji famously said in November, 1998. There was then a heavy flow of visitors in both directions and a genuine desire in China to move forward with the rule of law and gradual democracy. Its impending entry into the World Trade Organization was going to result in more business opportunities and more contacts with the outside world, which would help China move in the right direction. Well, that plan didn’t work.

Instead, China has become more assertive and aggressive – certain that maintaining an authoritarian regime is the best way for the Communist Party of China (CCP) to survive and protect the privileges of its princelings and their families. Technological development has enabled the CCP to better limit freedom of speech and religion, while silencing calls for a more transparent political process.

When Xi Jinping became the paramount leader in November, 2012, he gave a new impetus to this model. He declared that the time had come for China to take its rightful place on the international scene, placing its people in prominent international organizations, creating its own institutions and launching the Belt and Road Initiative to increase its sphere of influence (and the size of its markets). At the 19th CPC Congress in October, 2017, Mr. Xi went further by underlining the economic success China had achieved without adopting Western values.

In terms of its relationship with China, Canada has gradually lost influence. We are now China’s 21st export market, and China has lost hope in concluding a free-trade agreement with us, which would have been its first with a G7 country. This potential agreement was our last bargaining chip. Despite repeated warnings about Mr. Xi’s tightening grip on Chinese society, and events such as the arrests of Kevin and Julia Garratt in August, 2014, some of the political class in Ottawa remained ambivalent about China.

All this changed after the arrests of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in retaliation for the arrest of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou in December, 2018. The successful campaign to get international support for Mr. Kovrig and Mr. Spavor’s release took Beijing by surprise and tarnished its image of a benevolent superpower that pretends to be the new champion of multilateralism and free trade. Even still, Ottawa decided to adopt an appeasement strategy, hoping that it would lead to the release of our two Canadians.

A year and a half later, what has been achieved? There has been no improvement in the detention conditions of Mr. Kovrig and Mr. Spavor, and we lost $4.5-billion in exports in 2019, with a further 16-per-cent drop in the first quarter of this year. We expressed little criticism of what is happening to Uyghurs in Xinjiang and pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong. We were late to support Australia’s resolution for an independent investigation of the COVID-19 pandemic. And we tolerate Chinese interference on Canadian campuses, not to mention continuing industrial espionage. China has succeeded in getting us to exercise self-censorship without ever giving us anything in return. The way China handled the new coronavirus pandemic confirmed how the CCP functions. Simply put, China has lost the trust of the international community.

After the decision by Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes in the case of Ms. Meng, we have to brace ourselves for the fact that relations with China won’t improve for a long time. The extradition process may drag on for years unless it is decided after a June hearing that Ms. Meng’s rights were not respected when she was arrested.

It is high time for the Canadian government to adopt a much firmer attitude with China: That is the only language the CCP respects. As Paul Monk put it in the Australian on May 16, “We have nothing to hope for from [Mr. Xi] and must accustom ourselves to playing economic and strategic hardball, because it is the way he is playing the game.”

We should continue to work with like-minded countries to put pressure on China to free the two Michaels and to reinforce a multilateral system. The message should be clear: We want a constructive relationship with a prospering China and constructive change inside China – as long as it respects international laws and treaties and stops acting like a bully when a country does not follow its diktats. We can also take domestic measures to make China realize that while we may be insignificant to them, there is still a price to pay. Finally, we need to build up our China competencies to better inform our dealings with the CCP’s leadership.

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Freeland mum on whether Hong Kong asylum seekers will be granted refuge as bigger wave predicted

2020/05/06 Leave a comment

Hard to see why these claims would not be accepted by the IRB:

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, asked about dozens of asylum claims made by Hong Kong protesters in Canada, praised the rich contribution immigrants from this former British colony have made to this country but declined to indicate whether Ottawa would grant the applicants refuge.

Ms. Freeland told media Monday that while she can’t comment on specific asylum claims, which she said need to be adjudicated “very carefully and very thoughtfully,” Canadians agree that migrants from Hong Kong have been a boon for this country.

“Canada has benefited hugely from the immigration of people from Hong Kong to Canada. They contribute tremendously to our society and I think all of us are very glad that so many people from Hong Kong have chosen to make their home and their lives here,” Ms. Freeland said.

As the Globe and Mail first reported Monday, 46 Hong Kong citizens – many of whom took part in the massive demonstrations that began last year as China tightened its grip on the Asian city – are seeking asylum in Canada, citing harassment and brutality at the hands of police and fear of unjust prosecution.

This may only be the start of a bigger wave of asylum seekers, experts say.

Guy Saint-Jacques, a former Canadian diplomat, and Richard Kurland, an immigration lawyer and immigration policy analyst with extensive experience in dealing with Asian migration, both say these cases are likely the beginning of a surge in refugee claims from Hong Kong as political turmoil there continues.

The 46 would-be refugees from Hong Kong applied for asylum claims between Jan 1, 2019, and March 31, 2020. The claims, which are all pending, were received at airports, Canada Border Security Agency bureaus and Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada offices (IRCC) across the country. Many of those claiming asylum in Canada face charges in Hong Kong in connection with the protests.

Wenran Jiang, an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, said Canada should proceed cautiously. “If Ottawa officially encourages and offers political asylum to protesters in Hong Kong, even [if] some of them clearly broke the law by being violent, Beijing is likely to interpret such a move as interfering in China’s domestic affairs, leading to adding more chill to an already cold-bilateral relationship.”

Canada’s relations within China deteriorated significantly in late 2018 after Ottawa arrested a Chinese high-tech executive on a U.S. extradition request and Beijing, in what was widely seen as retaliation, locked up two Canadians – former diplomat Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor.

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis, who sits on the House of Commons Canada-China committee, said there are valid reasons for granting asylum to pro-democracy activists from Hong Kong. He said he hopes Canada doesn’t turn away these claimants for fear of offending China.

“The adjudication of asylum claims is an independent process and certainly determination should never be influenced by politics or fears of political retaliation,” he said. “We should absolutely be accepting asylum claims on their merit and … based on what I have heard about these claims there is a strong case to be made for their merit given the human rights abuses that we know of in Hong Kong.”

Mr. Saint-Jacques, a former Canadian ambassador to China, agrees that Beijing would be displeased if Canada were to grant asylum to Hong Kong pro-democracy advocates, but he also says they merit refuge.

“Given what is happening in Hong Kong and the fact that China is encroaching more and more on the rights of Hong Kong citizens …. clearly these people have a legitimate [reason] to think that their rights will not be respected,” he said.

Mr. Saint-Jacques said he expects there will be a large influx of people coming from Hong Kong in the months ahead, including many of the 300,000 residents of the Asian city who hold Canadian passports.

“I think these people would make a good contribution [to Canada] but the big dilemma for the federal government is that this is happening at the time when we need China’s goodwill to supply medical equipment we are desperate for,” he said.

Mr. Kurland said he thinks the 46 asylum claims may be the beginning of a rise in refugee applicants from Hong Kong.

“There may be legs to this,” he said. “Planning for a sudden climb in Hong Kong refugee claim numbers is prudent.”

Today, as many as 500,000 Canadians of Hong Kong descent live in Canada, according to Hong Kong Watch.

Source: Freeland mum on whether Hong Kong asylum seekers will be granted refuge as bigger wave predicted

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