Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread

[MarkOttawa]

Griff nach der Weltmacht:

China, U.S., Canada: trade and political disputes and world domination (interview)

A trade dispute is growing between China and the U.S which could easily have repercussions worldwide.

The U.S and China will be together at the upcoming G-20 summit, at which point the situation may calm, or as many think, escalate.

At the same time the trade and diplomatic dispute between Canada and China continues over a Chinese executive detained in Canada and wanted by the U.S.

Charles Burton (PhD) is a political science professor at Brock University and former Canadian diplomat to China [ http://charlesburton.blogspot.com/ ]. He says this is playing out against a longer term Chinese policy to become the world’s superpower [emphasis added].

Professor Burton says the U.S has long been unhappy with the huge trade imbalance with China, When China recently reneged on a deal that had been worked out towards more equity and requiring adherence to World Trade Organisation rules, the U.S. upped tariffs on many Chinese imports from 10% to a hefty 25% affecting about $250 billion worth of Chinese imports.

Charles Burton (PhD) political science professor, and former diplomat to China. (via Brock University News)

If a settlement isn’t reached in June prior to or at the G20 meeting, there are plans being discussed to add duties to an additional $325 billion worth of Chinese products.

This comes amid the ongoing Canada-China dispute. It is widely believed that China continues to exert pressure on Canada over its arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. Under relaxed house detention at one of her luxury properties in Vancouver, she awaits an extradition hearing to the U.S to face charges there connected to sales of equipment to Iran.

Michael Spavor (left) and former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig have been in Chinese custody under extremely harsh conditions on a charge of being a threat to Chinese security. This is widely believed to be retaliation for the detention of a Huawei executive in Canada wanted in the U.S for charges there (Associated Press/ International Crisis Group/Canadian Press)

Chinese pressure comes in the form of refusing imports of Canadian canola, and bureaucratic delays of other Canadian imports further harming Canada’s agricultural sector. There has the arrest and harsh imprisonment of two Canadians on charges of being threats to China’s security, and the sentencing to death of two Canadians accused of drug trafficking.

Professor Burton says Canada’s polite gestures of objection will not work in changing China’s position. It is felt that this only adds to China’s perception of the current government being weak [emphasis added]. Burton notes there are a number of things Canada can to exert pressure on China in return such as inspect all Chinese shipments into Canada to cut off the supply of deadly fentanyl drugs. These delays would hurt China’s economy. Certain diplomatic expulsions would also send a strong signal.

These trade and diplomatic bullying tactics by China can be seen as part of a long term geo-strategic plan by China aimed at domination and becoming a world power if not the top world power. He says international organisations like the U.N and W.T.O. which are based on rules and which run counter to China’s ambitions.

In an article he wrote to the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, he said, “Currently, there is no coherent multi-national strategy against Chinese influence operations. The less we respond to it in any substantive way, the more China is emboldened in its practice of global disruption.

China’s remaking of the global rules is making the world safe for autocracy, tacitly demanding that Canada passively surrender our values to an authoritarian state [emphasis added]. Canada should be uniting with our allies in a coordinated stand for political justice and fair economic engagement with China. But this requires more than allocating resources and government expenditure. The political will has to be there”.
http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2019/05/14/china-u-s-canada-trade-and-political-disputes-and-world-domination-interview/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Actually the Dragon rampant--note Japan section:

Panda sinks claws deep into Canada: author
New book details the extent to which Beijing is wielding influence in Canada, North America – and beyond

At a time when concern is rising in various parts of the globe that Chinese overseas investment and migration may not be benign, the latest book by Jonathan Manthorpe looks timely.

Published in January, Claws of the Panda: Beijing’s Campaign of Influence and Intimidation in Canada, alleges the malign influence of a muscle-flexing Beijing over the business, political, media and academic circles of the North American nation.

The book appeared in the midst of an ongoing spat between Beijing and Ottawa that followed the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wangzhou in Canada, and the subsequent arrests of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in China. It is widely believed that the Korvig and Spavor arrests were retaliations for Meng’s detention.

Though a Canadian by birth, the author sounding the alarm bells has been based in Europe, Africa, and Hong Kong, reporting for the Toronto Star and the Southam News. Now back in Canada, his focus continues to be on the wider world, with a specialization in things Sinic: his previous book was Forbidden Nation: A History of Taiwan.

Now a columnist for Asia Times, Manthorpe recently shared his thoughts and findings from his latest book, and his wider concerns about the rise of the People’s Republic of China and its leadership, the Chinese Communist Party.

Beijing vs Ottawa

“Canada is importing corruption along with money” from China, Manthrope maintains – though he adds that China-related corruption has a long history in Canada. The difference today is one of scale.

“There is a distinction between the political corruption in Canada that created and benefited from the investor immigrant program of the 1980s, which I describe in some detail, and the corruption that has accompanied the vast amounts of money brought into Canada by the ‘Red Aristocracy,’” he said.

“I had hoped the distinction in size and in kind would be evident between Canada’s homegrown corruption and the triffid-like monstrosity that has grown out of the CCP royalty’s use of Canada as a money-laundering center in the last two decades or so.”

Claws of the Panda documents a confluence of corruption among politicians, businesses, casinos, organized crime and ordinary Chinese citizens. “At the core of the CCP’s campaign here, and in other target countries like Australia and New Zealand, has been what is known in shorthand as ‘elite capture,’” he said.

“There has been, and is, a strong element of corruption of Canadian establishment figures in that campaign.”

So can the corruption of the elites, the wealthy, and the politically-connected be separated from the day-to-day mindset of average Chinese-Canadians?  They can.

“Hundreds of thousands of people have come to Canada from Hong Kong and mainland China without having to use corrupt channels, or to find it necessary to make corruption a tool of their daily lives,” Manthorpe said.

“For the most part, Canadians of Chinese heritage lead ordinary Canadian lives, working hard … trying to ensure that their children have better opportunities and lives than they have, and being thankful that they live in a country where – by-and-large – the government can be depended on to see their role as providing services for and protecting the citizenry.”

The bad actors, he stresses, are the elite, but it is the elite who – due to their wealth and status – are the most visible. This visibility is to some extent due to dubious activity that does not stop at political corruption.

It is “exhibited in property purchases, expensive cars, behavior at casinos, obscene displays of wealth at public occasions, attempts to use bribery at private schools and universities, and the keeping of several households with concubines.” Manthorpe said.

The author paints a portrait of a deeply dysfunctional symbiosis between Canada and China. His book includes occasional references to offshore financial havens such as the Virgin Islands and the Caymans; it seems that Canada is now seen as a similar vector for laundering money and hiding business deals.

Manthorpe also depicts Canada as “the stalking horse for Washington.” It would appear Canada, thanks to its location, is emerging as a way for the PRC to launder its political ambitions through what many in the world view as a “clean” government in Ottawa, and a friendly and open society in Canada overall. And in addition to leveraging Canada’s cultural and geographical proximity to the US, Beijing also leverages Canadian prejudices.

“I think on some occasions the CCP has used both Canada’s closeness to the US to Beijing’s advantage, and has also understood and used Canadian antipathy towards the US for its own ends,” he said.

Beijing vs Washington

Still, as a critic of populists, Manthorpe is unconvinced that US President Donald Trump’s verbal and tariff assault on Beijing will make much difference to either the long game or the big picture.

“I don’t think either Trump’s tough talk with Beijing or the actions of the ideologues will have any beneficial results in either Washington’s relationship with Beijing or the CCP’s view of the world in general,” he said.

In fact, Trumpian policy, with its focus on economics and “America First,” is weakening key mechanisms that have the potential to strategically contain China. Related risks may be particularly high in the flashpoint South and East China Seas.

“The big danger I see at the moment, and one that makes a conflict more likely in my view, is that we have a US administration that does not seem to be dependable in its alliances,” he said.

“With the PRC rampant and neighboring Asian nations unsure whether they can trust Washington to honor its security treaty obligations, we have a dangerous situation where mistakes can easily happen.”
Beijing vs Japan

While the book offers a wealth of information on various politicians and groups in Canada who provide sluices for PRC influence infiltration into North America, the author also researched how the CCP spreads anti-Japan and anti-US propaganda in Canada as a way to weaken the US-Japan alliance, and to keep South Korea and Japan at daggers drawn.

However, some passages related to the United Front Work Department of the CCP’s Central Committee – the body that manages relations with various individuals and organizations that are not party entities, but which hold social, commercial, or academic influence, or which represent interest groups – was excised by editorial guillotine.

“In the first draft of the manuscript there was quite a bit about the efforts of the various UFWD operations here to attack Japan, using both the Nanking Massacre and comfort women as agencies,” he said.

One such case covered a suburban Vancouver council. The local government body was persuaded to allow the erection of a statue to “The World’s Women” – which turned out to be comfort women propaganda. The Japanese consul-general in Vancouver managed to get that rejected.

“The ability to attack Japan and Japanese interests in Canada is one of the important aspects of the infiltration and influence-peddling of the CCP,” he noted.

Beijing: Dominant or doomed?

Manthorpe ends his book with the hope that the authoritarian regime in Beijing will “shatter.”

Yet that looks – from present vantage – to be a very vain hope. The One Belt, One Road initiative is advancing across the globe, suggesting that, far from weakening, Beijing is very successfully deploying capital and selling its system as a viable alternative to Western-led liberal democracy.

So how fragile, really, is the PRC?

“The point I was trying to make with my ‘shatter’ image was that we can never quite be sure how brittle the CCP regime really is,” he explained. “With the end of the Soviet Union and the Arab Spring we have seen several totalitarian states disappear overnight. I would suggest that the CCP’s fixation on the collapse of the Soviet Union indicates that it, too, is unsure of how firmly it is in power.”

This paranoia is reflected in the vigor with which state agencies are executing policies designed to forestall any such outcome. Beijing “has been brutal in its destruction of anybody that emerges, especially since 1989, that might become a national organization,” he said.

Meanwhile, the CCP is marshaling new formats of Chinese power. In an age when Beijing’s lack of soft power has been scoffed at, the CCP – the same body that executed the “Cultural Revolution” – is now promoting itself as the custodian of traditional Chinese culture. “I think the edifice of Chinese culture and history gives the PRC a stability, even in an authoritarian state, that other regimes have not had,” he said.

But a huge risk also lies at the very heart of Sinic legacies. “There has never been a peaceful transfer of power between Chinese dynasties that I am aware of,” the author warned.

Follow Jonathan Manthorpe’s columns in Asia Times here.
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/05/article/panda-sinks-claws-deep-into-canada-author/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

And see this 2016 post on the earlier Garratt detention, then arrest--Justin and the Liberals refuse to wake up and smell the Maotai:

Dragon Arrests Canadian: Retaliation for Our Help vs Chinese Spooking Against US?
https://mark3ds.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/mark-collins-dragon-arrests-canadian-relation-for-our-help-vs-chinese-spooking-against-us/

And now video of a CBC interview with Kevin Garratt:
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1523396163729

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

The Panda's claws in Canada reach broad and deep:

Who’s going to stand up to China? This Canadian senator, for one.
Terry Glavin: Arrested Canadians, human rights abuses, spying: ‘Send the Chinese ambassador home,’ says Senator Thanh Hai Ngo

Setting aside Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s preferred option of pretending that it isn’t even happening, there are what you could call two schools of thought in and around Ottawa about how to respond to what all sides agree is the deepest rupture in Canada-China relations since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 30 years ago.

The first is the old Liberal establishment standpoint. It’s the one that has run an almost uninterrupted course ever since Jean Chretien’s first big Team Canada mission to China in 1994, the one Prime Minister Trudeau put into hyperdrive as soon as he took office in 2015.

It’s all about a deepening of trade, political connections, cultural ties and other such entanglements, a policy enthusiastically described by John McCallum, Canada’s last ambassador in Beijing, as “more, more, more.” It would be more than fair to say that this way of looking at things has been quite thoroughly discredited in recent months, but it’s still dominant in the Liberal Party’s governing circles.

The idea is that Canada’s overarching priority at the moment should be to grant whatever concessions Beijing deems necessary in order to put things back together again. That’s how to secure the release of diplomat-on-leave Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor, and it’s how to secure the lifting of Beijing’s embargo on billions of dollars’ worth of Canadian canola and pork exports. What Canada’s China-trade lobby and its variously supportive think-tanks and academic institutes want is to get everything back to the days of “more, more more,” as plausibly and discreetly as possible [emphasis added].

In Canada’s Senate, this remains the dominant view. And it’s strictly enforced.

An important dissenter from that view is Senator Thanh Hai Ngo, a 72-year-old human rights activist appointed by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2012. Senator Ngo is among a minority in the Upper Chamber whose view of the current state of play reflects the second school of thought.

In this way of looking at things, Xi Jinping’s brute-force retaliation for Canada’s detention of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. Justice department extradition request is of a piece with Beijing’s long game of global domination by alternatively subverting by “elite capture” and bullying weak and ordinarily China-compliant governments of the sort typified by Team Trudeau’s government.

President’s Xi’s most recent thuggish behaviour is all in the cause of undermining and supplanting the international rules and conventions that Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland has attempted to rally UN member states to get behind—the global order that has allowed the world’s liberal democracies to flourish over the past 70 years or so.

To the great annoyance of Liberal senators and the Senate’s mostly Liberal-appointed “independent” majority, Ngo sees things this way, and he has refused to comply with the long-standing policy dictum around Ottawa that it’s best to keep our heads down and behave the way Beijing wants in hopes of winning favourable trade concessions for Canadian corporations with business interests in China [emphasis added].

Ngo has fought for tough responses to the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of minority groups, Beijing’s regional belligerence, and the Chinese state’s intrusions in Canada. Over the past three years, Ngo has put 29 questions to the government about China’s human rights abuses, its infiltration of Canadian society and its harassment and intimidation of Chinese-Canadians and Tibetan-Canadians.

Over the past year, Ngo has put six pointed questions to the government side about the Trudeau cabinet’s wishy-washy response to the danger of Canada’s fifth-generation (5G) internet auction being thrown open to Huawei. The Shenzhen telecom behemoth, an arm of the Chinese state in everything but name, is owned by a “trade union” committee that does not represent Huawei workers but rather answers directly to the Communist Party brass in Beijing. Huawei’s CEO, Ren Zhengfei, Meng Wanzhou’s father, is a ranking Communist Party member.

Recent events have proved Ngo to have been consistently right about the threats Beijing poses to the international order, and about the sinister role Beijing’s agents of influence are playing in Canada. It’s a wonder he doesn’t just burst out with “I told you so,” lean back in his comfortable seat in the Upper Chamber and just sit there from now on, watching his adversaries squirm. But Ngo is not for sitting back.

Xi Jinping is engaged in a spiteful campaign against Canada at the moment and he’s winning, hands down, says Ngo. “I think so, yes.” In response to the arbitrary arrest of Spavor and Kovrig just days after Meng Wanzhou was detained in Vancouver on a U.S. warrant involving charges of bank fraud and violating U.S. sanctions in Iran, “Canada, so far, we didn’t do anything. . . we did nothing,” Ngo told me the other day.

“I think Canada should go a different way. I don’t think we should negotiate at the moment because they’re not going to budge at all. “They don’t even pick up the phone.” Another pair of Canadians convicted on drug offences in China have recently had their sentences conspicuously elevated to the death penalty. “What did we do? Nothing.”

In the bigger picture, Canada has remained mostly quiet about Beijing’s confinement of at least a million Uighur Muslims in concentration camps in the remote and almost entirely off-limits province of Xinjiang. Ngo describes Being’s draconian measures “nothing short of a cultural genocide.” Canada has further allowed itself to become hostage to a Beijing-patrolled “One China” policy that has grossly stunted Canada’s relations with a sister liberal democracy, Taiwan.

Ngo says the reach of Beijing’s influence in Canada extends deeper than most people understand, and Canadians should pay attention to the way the Senate’s behaviour is enforced in China’s favour [emphasis added].

Senator Peter Harder, who headed up Trudeau’s 2015 transition to office, is a former president of the Canada-China Business Council. He’s also a former president of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, which was controversially enriched in 2016 by a $200,000 donation from a Chinese banker and Communist Party insider. Harder is now the government leader in the 105-member Senate.

The Senate’s small “official” Liberal caucus is headed by Senator Joseph Day, the chairman of the Canada-China Legislative Association, which regularly brings together Canadian parliamentarians with China’s rubber-stamp People’s Political Consultative Conference. Even though Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi won’t even return Chrystia Freeland’s telephone calls, Day and a small group of legislative association parliamentarians were on a guided tour of Chinese cities just this past week. During the group’s previous tour in January, only a month after Kovrig and Spavor were whisked off to detention centres and denied access to lawyers, their case wasn’t even on the agenda, Senator Day admitted at the time.

The Conservatives claim the loyalties of 30 senators, but by far the largest caucus in the Senate is the 58-member “Independent Senators Group,” now led by one of the most controversial senate appointments in recent years, Yuen Pao Woo. The group is made up mostly of Liberal senate appointees.

While Trudeau has been choosing prospective Senate candidates from recommendations put forward by a newly-established “independent” advisory panel, the Independent bloc almost always votes with the government side. And although Woo doesn’t like being described as “Beijing-friendly,” he is rarely described any other way.

Woo’s maiden speech in the Senate was in opposition to a motion Ngo put forward protesting Beijing’s annexation of the South China Sea and its persistent defiance of international law.

Ngo’s motion was finally passed last year, but only after a great deal of procedural brinksmanship, and Ngo expects the same stiff opposition to greet the bill he’s put forward to amend the Investment Canada Act to ensure that all Canadian acquisitions by Chinese state-owned enterprises are subject to national-security reviews.

Canada can’t do much to restrain China except in alliance with like-minded democracies, Ngo says, but in the meantime there are tools at Canada’s disposal. Canada’s “Magnitsky law” has allowed Freeland to impose sanctions on notorious human rights abusers with the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela and Myanmar, but strangely, not against human rights abusers in China – not for what has been done to Kovrig and Spavor, and not even over what is being done to the Muslims of Xinjiang.

“All these things we know, and we don’t do anything. We should sanction them. But we sanction no Chinese official under the Magnitsky law,” Ngo said. “Not even one Chinese official.”

Among several defensive and diplomatic actions Canada could take, Ngo says Ottawa should close the many Beijing-sponsored Confucius Institutes that have set up shop in Canada’s schools and universities. “Close all these Confucius Institutes in Canada. These are spy hubs.”

At the top of Ngo’s list: revoke Chinese ambassador Lu Shaye’s credentials and order him out of the country. “Send the ambassador home. That’s it. Let China see that we’re serious about this.”

“We have to change our course. It doesn’t work.”
https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/whos-going-to-stand-up-to-china-this-canadian-senator-for-one/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[OldSolduer]

Just an observation: The government of China is Communist right? With a President for life as well?

 

[MarkOttawa]

China's lovable, laugh-a-minute ambassador:

Kelly McParland: China's ambassador has a simple message — give us what we want
While Lu may not be much of a diplomat, he fits in fine when it comes to his country’s growing ugliness and ballooning view of its own importance

Lu Shaye is China’s ambassador to Canada. Ambassadors are typically referred to as diplomats, though that’s not a term that appears to apply in this instance, as Ambassador Lu’s idea of diplomacy is to deliver extended lectures on the failings and inadequacies of Canada as a country and a culture, occasionally tossing in insults or a warning or two for good measure. As the local face of an increasingly swaggering one-party state, he seems well-suited to his role. As a diplomat he’s a bust.

Lu set the tone for his ambassadorship soon after arriving in 2017. In an interview with The Canadian Press, he reprimanded Ottawa for paying too much attention to journalists, a profession for which China’s communist rulers have very little regard. Journalists in China understand that upsetting the powerful forces that run the country and its stifling censorship operations could be unhealthy for their career development, not to mention personal freedom.

Canada, of course, lets journalists run wild, blathering on about human rights and other unimportant issues, without even the cudgel of some potential jail time to keep them in line. As reported by The Canadian Press at the time, the new ambassador advised that politicians “should spend less time bowing down to Canadian journalists preoccupied with human rights and get on with negotiating an important free trade agreement with China.”

Lu has expanded on his numerous criticisms and complaints since then. Earlier this year he equated Canadians to white supremacists. He accused Ottawa of “backstabbing” China by detaining Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in her Vancouver mansion at the request of the U.S, and warned of “repercussions” if she wasn’t freed. In an address Friday he gathered many of these themes into one prolonged diatribe on the inadequacies of Canadian values and our fixation on democracy.

The core of the problem, as Lu explained it, is that Western societies don’t understand Chinese history and are misinformed about its present. The West views China as an “abnormal” country, to which we “condescend” in our mistaken belief that other societies value democracy as much as we do. As an example, he noted recent reports on the vast network of detention camps set up in China’s Xinjiang region, where a million or more Uyghur Muslims are being held in a massive state effort to eradicate their ethnic identity.

Despite plenty of evidence attesting to the ugly realities, Lu insisted the camps are just “vocational education and training centres” aimed at exterminating the threat of terrorism, just as the brutalities of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution were justified as necessary in eradicating “counter-revolutionaries” and “bourgeois elements.” Lu doesn’t question China’s latest cleansing program any more than Mao’s thugs questioned the need to imprison, torture and humiliate “revisionists.” Reports on the camps, he complained, are both “distorted” and “defaming.” As proof, he boasted, “In the recent two years or so, there has not been a single violent and terrorist attack and no more innocent people have been harmed.” Jailing people by the hundreds of thousands will do that for you.

Lu was similarly indignant about Western concern over Beijing’s burgeoning geo-political ambitions. “I want to tell you that the Chinese nation does not have the gene of aggression,” he retorted. “We have never launched a war of aggression against any other country and we have never occupied one inch of overseas colony in history.”

This would be news to Tibet, which China invaded in 1950 and has occupied since, during which tens of thousands of Tibetans are reported to have been killed as Beijing seeks to eliminate Tibetan cultural practices and religious traditions. China’s argument would be that Tibet is rightfully part of China, so the invasion was not an invasion, but a re-establishment of historical reality. It’s an old ploy used by dictatorial powers, and would be rolled out again if Beijing ever followed though on its numerous threats to seize Taiwan, or sought to turn Hong Kong into just another obedient Chinese province. It’s the same excuse cited for China’s construction of a series of islands in the South China Sea, dredging up sand and piling it on coral reefs so it can claim ownership and expand its territorial demands. Despite what Vietnam, the Philippines or other countries in the region may think, insisted Lu, “the South China Sea islands have all along been the inherent territory of China.” So there.

As Lu sees it, “Western countries’ psychological imbalance towards China’s economic and technological development comes down to the West-egotism.” We’re all a bunch of self-important ego-maniacs, too ignorant to understand the greatness of China’s past. On Friday he professed that Westerners “always believe that they are superior to any other nations.” Sure, the West has had a few good centuries, but lately it’s in over its head. The end of the Cold War, he charged, ushered in a period in which democracy-lovers “arrogantly believed that the Western system reached the peak of perfection and it was the best system in the world.”

What Lu would like would be for Canada and some of its fellow travellers to wise up and see things from China’s enlightened viewpoint.

“Chinese people are in the best position to judge China’s development,” he lectured. “We are confident about our own path, theory, system and culture. We will never change our own development path because of the different viewpoints of Western countries and several discredited articles in the West. We will stick to the path that we choose. For Western countries, the problem is how to get along with China.”

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/kelly-mcparland-chinas-ambassador-has-a-simple-message-give-us-what-we-want

Mark
Ottawa

 

[GK .Dundas]

Just an observation: The government of China is Communist right? With a President for life as well?

A more accurate description might be an industrial feudal state.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Likely this visit was arranged 6 months to a year in advance. Berths, tugs, pilots would be needed, along with diplomatic clearances.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/chinese-warships-cause-surprise-in-sydney-harbour/ar-AACiEwO?ocid=sf

 

[MarkOttawa]

Terry Glavin has a almost everybody, but China top of mind:

Glavin: So much for having a rules-based international order. The G20 shows it no longer exists

Here’s an idea. Let’s pick 20 people at random from the millions of Hongkongers who have braved nightsticks and tear gas and pepper spray in the cause of democracy over the past few weeks, and replace the leaders of the G20 with them. This is totally out of left field, I fully realize. But for the fun of it, do you think you could make a case that the world would be, even in the slightest, worse off?

This wouldn’t be democratic, of course, but then again, look who’s in charge of the G20, and look at the disingenuous mumbo jumbo of the 12-page G20 Osaka Leaders Declaration. It’s exactly what you would expect of a document that must somehow purport to bear the imprimaturs of China’s Xi Jinping, Germany’s Angela Merkel, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and 15 more such characters, including of course the infamously louche American president, Donald Trump.

There’s all sorts of JibJab about harnessing powers, seizing opportunities, tackling challenges and redoubling efforts, as well as affirming this, enhancing that, achieving things, fostering other things, reiterating even more things, and so on. The lies are amazing. “We share the notion of a human-centred future society…” No you don’t. “We remain committed to play a leading role in the global efforts to prevent and fight against corruption…” No you don’t. “We commit to continue support for girls’ and women’s education and training…” Like hell you do.

Behold, the rules-based international order. Twenty world leaders, ostensibly representing 90 per cent of the global economy and two-thirds of the world’s peoples – and really half of the world’s unfree peoples – and of course anything of substance occurs on the sidelines, even the gossip. Are we really going to allow Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman to host next year’s meeting, in Riyadh? Wouldn’t that be just a bit indelicate, now that Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, has just more or less accused bin Salman of ordering the execution of that annoying Washington Post correspondent Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi in Istanbul last October?

And what in heaven’s name is Ivanka Trump doing here? Oh yes. Well, among other things, Justin Trudeau and Ivanka are supposed to showcase this thing Trudeau cooked up with the president’s daughter in Washington a couple of years back at Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women Summit. It’s morphed into something called EMPOWER, in capital letters, and they’ve since rooked Her Majesty Queen Maxima of the Netherlands into it, and that’s why she’s here, too.

Poor dear Justin. Canada is enduring a sustained economic, technological and diplomatic attack waged by China, which has embargoed Canadian canola products and meat products and soybeans, made hostages of diplomat-on-leave Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, sentenced two other Canadians to death on drug-smuggling convictions, and he just can’t get a break. All because Canada was a good global citizen and agreed to act on a U.S. Justice Department extradition warrant for Meng Wanzhou, wanted stateside on 13 counts of wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy arising from the Shenzhen telecom behemoth Huawei’s alleged double-dealing and sanctions-busting in Iran. Trump said he’d put in a good word for Canada at the G20, but there’s no evidence he did. And poor Chrystia Freeland! All she’s managed to do is get a handful of countries to sign a petition to the effect that kidnapping is a bad thing.

It’s not like any country is going to go out of its way to risk enraging Xi Jinping, though, if Canada won’t even make the effort. After all, who was that at the COWS ice cream parlour in Beijing this week, chatting up all the wonderful business opportunities that lie just waiting to be seized, or harnessed, or tackled, in China? Why it was Mary Ng, Trudeau’s minister of small business and export development. And who was that with her? Senator Peter Harder of course, the head of the Canada-China Business Council who Trudeau recruited to head up his transition team after the 2015 federal election, then appointed to lead the government side in the Senate [emphasis added].

“We hope that Canada is not naïve,” the Chinese foreign ministry stated after the G20 summiteers and their various sherpas and attachés and deputies and hangers-on had left Osaka. This was in reference to the gallant “coalition” Ottawa says it has assembled around the Korig and Spavor case. “Canada should not naïvely believe that mustering so-called allies to put pressure on China will have any effect.” You can’t say Beijing is wrong about that. It’s not like Trudeau’s government has done anything to cause Beijing to take Canada seriously. To Trudeau’s advantage, mind you, the sharpest media scrutiny he was subjected to in Osaka devolved into a controversy surrounding whether or not a video clip making the rounds had unfairly portrayed him as having been snubbed by Brazilian strongman Jair Bolsonaro.

At least Freeland is still plugging away at shoring up Ukraine’s sovereignty, what with that Toronto conference and everything, where Canada convinced Ukraine to steady the course on democracy and expand trade with Canada, in exchange for Ukraine taking $25 million to spend on “inclusive and gender-responsive” policy as part of a $45-million support package. At least somebody, somewhere, cares about Ukraine. Only last month, the Council of Europe readmitted Russia to its parliamentary assembly, charging Russia only 33 million Euros in blood money. Russia was kicked out five years ago after invading and annexing a huge chunk of Eastern Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula, resulting in 13,000 deaths and causing more than one million people to pack their bags and trudge the backroads in search of food and shelter. Hey, bygones.

More bygones: As much as half of China’s pig population has had to be slaughtered and incinerated or buried because of a swine flue outbreak that Qu Dongyu, China’s vice minister of agriculture and rural affairs, did not seem to notice until it was a full-bore crisis. But Qu was elected to head up the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization on June 25. Wouldn’t want to upset Beijing and vote against their guy, would we?

And that’s the rules-based international order for you. Everywhere you look, it’s humming along just brilliantly, the G20 even moreso than the despot-packed UN Human Rights Council, or, say, Interpol, which held its cybersecurity meetings in Russia just a couple weeks back at a conference sponsored by the Kremlin-owned Sberbank. But at least Interpol isn’t run by China’s nominee, Meng Hongwei, anymore, since China disappeared the guy. Something about corruption, apparently. Who the hell knows?

Picking 20 random marchers in Hong Kong to run the G20 doesn’t sound so bad now, does it?
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/glavin-so-much-for-having-a-rules-based-international-order-the-g20-shows-it-no-longer-exists

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Influence/interference ops in full public view via high profile Canadian compradors:

The real election threat is China
Terry Glavin: Ottawa has been focused on cyber-meddling. But consider the case of John McCallum for a glimpse at a more present danger.

By happily admitting last week that he has been advising senior Chinese foreign ministry officials about how to influence the outcome of the October federal election, John McCallum, Canada’s disgraced former ambassador to China, has once again invited a whole lot of spirited public speculation about what the hell gives with this guy.

The most charitable view is that he’s just clueless, which is an easier hypothesis to defend than you might think. McCallum’s fumbles during his two years as Canada’s ambassador in Beijing reached such an embarrassing crescendo in January that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had to fire him. It was in the early innings of the total collapse in diplomatic relations between Canada and China, and McCallum’s contribution was to give every impression that he’d broken with Ottawa and gone over to the other side.

The view of Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives is that there is something far more disquieting about McCallum’s candid admissions to the South China Morning Post last Monday. McCalllum said he’s been telling top Chinese officials that if Beijing played its cards right, it might be able to head off a Conservative election victory in October.

The Conservatives have issued a formal request to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to look into it. “I forcefully and unequivocally condemn recent comments by high-profile Liberals encouraging the Chinese government to help re-elect the government this October,” Scheer says. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland says she’s similarly appalled. “I think that it is highly inappropriate for any Canadian to be offering advice or opinions to any foreign government on how that government ought or ought not to behave to secure any particular election outcome in Canada.”

McCallum said he’d advised top Chinese officials that any further “punishments” Beijing inflicts upon Canada would heighten the likelihood of Canadian voters turning to the Conservatives, who are “much less friendly to China than the Liberals.” He’s right about that. A case can be made that McCallum would have to be clueless to have said that out loud, but it’s not idiotic advice. And John McCallum is not just “any Canadian,” or just any random clueless person. And if CSIS were to properly scrutinize what’s up with McCallum, it’s a thick file.

    READ MORE: Whose side is Jean Chrétien on?

Ottawa’s recent initiatives against foreign interference in elections have been focused on Russian-style disinformation and cyber-meddling of the type that preceded the 2016 election of Donald Trump. But Canada’s predicament is more like Australia’s, and Australia’s recent Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme would be a better model.

Launched last December in response to Beijing’s accelerated subversion of Australian politics and a series of scandals involving several Beijing-compliant politicians, the Australian law requires individuals or companies politicking on behalf of a foreign power to register and set out their activities on a public website.

It’s been eight years since Richard Fadden, who was then the CSIS director, warned that numerous Canadian politicians had come under Beijing’s spell. For his trouble, Fadden was admonished by the House of Commons Security Committee, which recommended that he be fired.

He should have been thanked for what has lately become obvious as prescience, but in any case, there is no evidence that McCallum, who has been a Liberal Party fixture since the days of Jean Chretien, has done anything illegal.

During his time in the House of Commons, long before his appointment as ambassador, McCallum took $73,000 in free trips to China, courtesy of the Chinese state and Chinese business interests—all perfectly legal. Following in Chretien’s well-worn footprints, McCallum is now working as a strategic adviser on China trade with the firm McMillan LLP. Again, perfectly legal.

As soon as he resigned in 2004 in the wake of the AdScam corruption scandal, Chretien carved out a lucrative practice greasing China’s investment wheels in Canada and Canadian corporate interests in China. And like McCallum, the former prime minister has been busy lately with indiscretions of his own on Beijing’s behalf.

Freeland has been forced to publicly rebuke Chretien for badgering the government to placate Beijing by simply instructing Justice Minister David Lametti to drop the extradition proceedings against Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou—the impudence that prompted Beijing to punish Canada in the first place. It was Meng’s defence case that McCallum was fired for pleading in January. McCallum also said it would be “great” if Trump intervened with the U.S. Justice Department’s prosecution of Meng by somehow forcing the department’s lawyers to drop the whole thing.

Ever since Meng was picked up in Vancouver on the Justice Department’s extradition warrant—she faces 13 counts of fraud and conspiracy charges related to Huawei’s alleged sanctions evasions in Iran—the “punishments” Beijing has inflicted on Canada have been ominous and cruel. Among them: the Ministry of State Security’s detention of diplomat-on-leave Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor and a trade embargo on Canadian canola, soybeans, peas and meat products. With threats of further retaliation to come.

While McCallum and Chretien are just two among several former Liberal cabinet ministers, Liberal insiders and senior diplomats who have gone on to more lucrative engagements as corporate advisers, fixers and influence-wielders in the China trade circuit, there’s nothing illegal about any of this. Over the years, the practice has become normalized.

Appointing McCallum instead of a seasoned diplomat to the embassy post in Beijing back in 2017 was the Trudeau government’s way of boasting about just how much Canada wanted to deepen its ties with China. The credentials McCallum was fond of citing on his own behalf included his enthusiasm for China, his ethnically Chinese wife and the fact his three sons had each married Chinese women.

But McCallum’s enthusiasm has proved rather less than an asset. It turned out to be Canada’s greatest liability the moment Beijing began to bare its fangs over Meng’s arrest last December.

What got McCallum fired in January was not just that he expressed the opinion that owing to offhand remarks by U.S. President Donald Trump, Meng had a good case that the charges against her were political—thus contradicting Trudeau and Freeland, but pleasing Beijing. It was that he was warned to knock it off, and after explaining that he “misspoke,” he stated publicly that it would be “great” if the U.S. could secure Kovring and Spavor as part of a U.S.-China exchange to free Meng—when Freeland and Trudeau were insisting that Meng’s case be left to the courts. Freeland described McCallum’s conduct as “untenable,” and Trudeau fired him.

Ironically, only a few months before McCallum’s appointment, Trudeau’s officials had signed a multi-faceted agreement with Beijing that committed Canada to enter into talks for an extradition treaty. It is precisely the spectre of an extradition agreement with Beijing that has spurred hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers to take to the streets in recent weeks in a series of unprecedented and dramatic protests. No such protests erupted in Canada.

Beijing’s influence operations in Canada are at least as deeply entrenched as they have been in Australia, but there isn’t much in Canadian law to stand in Beijing’s way. The all-powerful United Front Work Department, which Chinese president Xi Jinping calls China’s “magic weapon,” is increasingly hyperactive in Canada. And Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives have painted a big target on their backs by promising a dramatic break with what McCallum calls Canada’s “friendly” China policy going back a quarter of a century.

The election of a Conservative government would mean China can forget about a free trade deal with Canada. Scheer has further promised that China’s state-owned enterprises would lose their untrammelled access to Canadian markets. Along with the Kremlin and various state sponsors of terrorism, especially Iran, a Conservative government would count China as one of the “three of the greatest foreign threats to Canadian security and prosperity in the 21st century.”

Scheer says he’d deny any role for Huawei Technologies, Beijing’s “national champion,” in Canada’s fifth-generation (5G) internet connectivity rollout—it now seems certain that Ottawa will postpone its decision on Huawei and 5G until after the October election. Scheer says he’d also pull back the $250 million Trudeau’s Liberals have deposited in Beijing’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. A Conservative government would also launch complaints with the World Trade Organization to address the economic “punishments” that Beijing has already inflicted upon Canada.

In their letter to CSIS director David Vigneault, deputy Conservative leader Lisa Raitt and the Conservatives’ public safety critic Pierre Paul-Hus said: “Canadians expect that the upcoming election will be conducted in a free and fair manner, and that any and all incidents of foreign interference will be fully investigated.”

Canadians may well expect this, but it is specifically covert foreign election interference that is against the law in Canada, as is foreign funding of political parties and foreign funding of third-party activists during the legal campaign period. And Ottawa’s new multi-agency Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force was set up to block “covert, clandestine, or criminal” interference in elections, and not the sort of mischief McCallum has been making.

When foreign influence operations are conducted out in the open, and foreign governments are invited publicly to influence voter preferences in order to achieve a particular election result, what is CSIS supposed to do [emphasis added]?
https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-real-election-threat-is-china/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Chicoms doing it to Aussies too--great kidnappers and a lovely bunch of people. And the fellow lived in the US:

Australia 'deeply disappointed' by detention of citizen in China

Canberra on Friday [July 19] said it was "deeply disappointed" with the criminal detention of an Australian-Chinese writer in China, demanding Beijing release him if he is being held for "his political views".

Foreign Minister Marise Payne said Australia had received confirmation Friday that Yang Henjun, held by Chinese authorities since January, had been transferred to criminal detention, apparently on national security grounds.

In a strongly worded statement, Payne said the government had raised Yang's case repeatedly with Beijing at senior levels and written twice to China's foreign minister requesting a "fair and transparent" resolution, as well as access to his lawyer.

"This has not occurred," Payne said.

"The government has expressed concern about Dr Yang’s welfare and the conditions under which he is held," she added.

Payne said she had still not received clarification as to why Yang, also known as Yang Jun, was being held.

"If he is being detained for his political views, then he should be released," she said.

The author and democracy advocate was detained had been held in a secret location since being detained in January shortly after making a rare return to China from his current residence in the United States.

The foreign ministry in Beijing said then he was suspected of endangering "China's national security" -- which often implies espionage allegations.

Until this week he was being held under "residential surveillance at a designated location" (RSDL), a form of detention that allows authorities to hold people for serious crimes.

Payne confirmed Friday that he had been transferred to a criminal detention centre.
https://www.afp.com/en/news/3954/australia-deeply-disappointed-detention-citizen-china-doc-1ix13h3

More detail at earlier story:

Yang Hengjun: Australian writer detained in China expected to be charged, lawyer says
Yang, who has been detained for six months, is expected to be charged with endangering national security
...
Yang, a Chinese public intellectual who has long advocated for democratic reforms in China, has been detained for the last six months in an unknown location in China...

Yang’s case could complicate already cooling ties between Australia and China, over concerns about potential Chinese interference in national affairs, Huawei and human rights...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/18/yang-hengjun-australian-writer-detained-in-china-expected-to-be-charged-lawyer-says

Meanwhile that interference in Canada:

Falun Gong incident more reason Canada needs system to handle complaints of Chinese intimidation: Amnesty
Ottawa handles the issue with a scattershot approach that leaves possible victims unclear how to get help, Amnesty International's Canadian head says

The alleged harassment of a Falun Gong practitioner at Ottawa’s Dragon Boat Festival is one more reason the federal government needs dedicated officials to handle complaints of Chinese-government intimidation, says a prominent human-rights watchdog.

The incident involving practitioner Gerry Smith was “very troubling,” and part of a wider pattern of coercion by Beijing’s representatives, said Alex Neve, Canadian head of Amnesty International.

But Ottawa continues to handle the issue with a scattershot approach that leaves possible victims unclear how to get help, he said.

“When something happens, they don’t really know where should they turn to report this,” he said. “Is this a criminal law matter, is this a security and intelligence matter, is this just a diplomatic incident? Is it all of the above, is it none of the above?”

Neve said Amnesty has been urging federal authorities for some time to create a single point of contact for people and groups “who feel intimidated by Chinese government.”

Such a system would also help Ottawa track the extent of the problem, he said.

Smith says he briefly entered the festival grounds last month with the nine-year-old son of a friend, and was ordered to remove a T-shirt bearing the words Falun Dafa — another name for Falun Gong — by the festival’s CEO. He said John Brooman told him he didn’t want the event politicized, and mentioned that it was co-sponsored by the Chinese embassy. Brooman also threatened to remove a group of other Falun Gong followers doing exercises outside the festival in city-owned Mooney’s Bay park, Smith charges.

A city councillor said he also saw some Falun Gong supporters handing out leaflets to people entering the festival.

China has a well-documented history of persecuting the group — seen as a threat to Communist control — while Canadian authorities have deemed the Falun Gong a spiritual movement deserving of human-rights protections...
https://nationalpost.com/news/falun-gong-incident-more-reason-canada-needs-system-to-handle-complaints-of-chinese-intimidation-amnesty

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

One wonders how involved the Chinese consulate general in Vancouver, and various CPP United Front Work Department-supported local Chinese organizations, are in promoting pro-China actions on campus:

Hong Kong protests tension spills over onto Simon Fraser University campus

Tensions over the ongoing protests in Hong Kong are growing globally, spilling over onto university campuses as far afield as Brisbane, Auckland — and now to Burnaby.

At Simon Fraser University, a controversy over three “Lennon Walls” — fixtures where people can post notes of support or inspirational wishes — shows how tensions related to increasingly violent protests in Hong Kong may get harder to manage on Canadian campuses. At least one academic is calling on all involved — both students and universities — to take a more formal, respectful approach.

“There are currently two walls,” said Joel Wan, founder of Vancouver Hong Kong Political Activists, a weeks-old, student organization whose Facebook page has posts about the situation at SFU.

The original Lennon Wall, located outside the main Bennett Library, was “repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt, with post-it notes taken down. It’s gone for now,” said Wan.

On Wednesday, some students set up a temporary, second Lennon Wall with post-it notes at a booth. Plans for a third, more permanent Lennon Wall to be established Wednesday were scrapped after assessing security concerns.

“What’s been happening is that we have been reading about other universities having issues where the peaceful and respectful intent of the (Lennon Walls) hasn’t been respected,” said Sylvia Ceacero, executive director of the Simon Fraser Students Society, which supported the third wall.

“We are concerned about the safety of our board and staff and of all students. We just want to ensure and minimize the potential for altercations and conflict that has been seen at other universities.”

Lennon Walls have sprung up in Hong Kong in the wake of citizen protests against its government, with people sticking hundreds of post-it notes in an array of colours on pedestrian underpasses and outdoor staircases. They are handwritten scribbles of support and inspirational wishes for demonstrators protesting a controversial extradition bill that would ease the transfer of fugitives to mainland China.

Other cities have now picked up on mounting Lennon Walls, a concept that originated in Prague, Czech Republic, in the 1980s as an homage to the late John Lennon, assassinated in 1980.

Videos posted on social media show how disagreements over the political situation in Hong Kong between pro-Beijing students and those who support Hong Kong protesters have ended in shoving and punching at the University of Queensland in Australia and at New Zealand’s University of Auckland.

Leo Shin, a professor of Asian Studies at UBC, said Canadian campuses should consider what they can do to head off any serious conflict here.

“I think it is a matter of concern. That we have seen clashes among students in Hong Kong, in Australia and in New Zealand. We should anticipate similar kinds of conflicts to spill over to Canadian campuses,” he said.

“What’s happening in Hong Kong is of a great deal of interest to students who are migrants and among students, in general. There is a large population on Canadian campuses and here at UBC and SFU of students with ties to the Chinese-speaking world. China, Hong Kong and, to some extent, Taiwan. And there are also many second-generation and ‘1.5’ generation students,” he continued.

“There are all kinds and not all are equally concerned, but many are. There are some in the student population supporting the Hong Kong movement and some on (Beijing’s) side, and of course there will be differing opinions. The conflict or clashes in Hong Kong will spill and touch us.

“The tricky thing is what can be done? (A solution will involve finding ways to promote dialogue) in a manner that befits a university where we can disagree in a peaceful manner.”

Simon Fraser University spokeswoman Angela Wilson said it is aware the board of the student society is “considering erecting a Lennon Wall for students’ use. The society has shared that it is currently reviewing protocols to ensure that all safety considerations are met. SFU Campus Public Safety continues to monitor this situation and support campus safety.”

JLee-Young@postmedia.com
https://theprovince.com/news/local-news/hong-kong-protests-tension-spills-over-onto-simon-fraser-university-campus/wcm/baed18be-fde7-43a7-9a9b-5627d3456199

See this earlier by CCP mouthpiece "Global Times':

Chinese consulate in Australia praises patriotic students for counter-protest against separatists
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1159212.shtml

1330 update--note this in New Zealand:

Chinese consulate praises students in scuffle at Auckland University
https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/114669992/chinese-consulate-praises-auckland-university-students-in-scuffle-for-spontaneous-acts-and-deeds

Mark
Ottawa

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Chicoms threaten India with a trade hammer:

Exclusive: China warns India of 'reverse sanctions' if Huawei is blocked - sources

China has told India not to block its Huawei Technologies [HWT.UL] from doing business in the country, warning there could be consequences for Indian firms operating in China, sources with knowledge of the matter said.

India is due to hold trials for installing a next-generation 5G cellular network in the next few months, but has not yet taken a call on whether it would invite the Chinese telecoms equipment maker to take part, telecoms minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said.

Huawei, the world’s biggest maker of such gear, is at the centre of a geopolitical tug-of-war between China and the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration put the company on a blacklist in May, citing national security concerns. It has asked its allies not to use Huawei equipment, which it says China could exploit for spying.

Two sources privy to internal discussions in New Delhi said India’s ambassador in Beijing, Vikram Misri, was called to the Chinese foreign ministry on July 10 to hear China’s concerns about the U.S. campaign to keep Huawei out of 5G mobile infrastructure worldwide.

During the meeting, Chinese officials said there could be “reverse sanctions” on Indian firms engaged in business in China should India block Huawei because of pressure from Washington, one of the sources said, citing a readout of the ambassador’s meeting.

In response to Reuters’ questions, China’s foreign ministry said Beijing hoped India would make an independent decision on 5G bidders.

“Huawei has carried out operations in India for a long time, and has made contributions to the development of Indian society and the economy that is clear to all,” spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement.

“On the issue of Chinese enterprises participating in the construction of India’s 5G, we hope the Indian side makes an independent and objective decision, and provides a fair, just and non-discriminatory commercial environment for Chinese enterprises’ investment and operations, to realize mutual benefit.”

The Indian foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-india-exclusive/exclusive-china-warns-india-of-reverse-sanctions-if-huawei-is-blocked-sources-idUSKCN1UW1FF

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Meanwhile at Simon Fraser and other universities in Anglosphere:

Hong Kong protests to Uygur camps: how Chinese students became a subject of scorn

    Campus confrontations have erupted from Canada to New Zealand as mainland Chinese students react, sometimes violently, to public scrutiny of Beijing’s policies
    Such conflict is likely to persist as Chinese diplomatic missions support robust rebuttals to those who disagree with China’s stance [emphasis added--that's one way of describing undiplomatic interference in domestic affairs]

A creative but controversial meme has been racking up likes on a Facebook page titled SFU Dank Memes, a private group frequented by more than 3,700 students at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University (SFU).

It features a Photoshopped image of a duplicitous masked operative from the popular video game Team Fortress 2 and an accompanying caption that reads: “Try to figure out who’s the Chinese communist spy at SFU when half the school is Chinese. And worst of all, he could be any one of us [emphasis added].”

The purported undercover agent in their midst is an unidentified vandal captured by security cameras last week wrecking the university’s so-called Lennon Wall, a noticeboard turned campaign space which has been covered with a mosaic of multicoloured messages in support of Hong Kong’s anti-government protests
.
The wall has become one of several flashpoints amid an increasingly bitter debate among overseas ethnic Chinese students, which has sparked sometimes testy confrontations emotionally charged by questions of identity, history and political belief. 

“To me, these memes aren’t even funny and merely show ignorance – similar to the racist jokes people made during earlier decades of Chinese immigration,” said 20-year-old student Matthew Wu, who hails from mainland China. “We are talking about serious discrimination towards mainlanders here.”

Wu, who declined to provide his real name, is among the 1.5 million Chinese students studying outside the country who have found themselves thrust into the spotlight at university campuses from Australia
to New Zealand to Canada.  Hong Kong’s extradition bill protests, sometimes unruly, have rocked the city since June and have renewed international scrutiny of Beijing’s policies...

At the University of Queensland in Brisbane, mainland Chinese students last month came to blows with a group supporting the Hong Kong protests when the latter held a demonstration on campus.

The group, comprising of Hong Kong and Australian students, also condemned China’s mass incarceration of ethnic Uygurs in its far western region of Xinjiang. Mainland Chinese make up about 9,000 of the university’s 50,000-strong student population.

Meanwhile, at the Australian National University in Canberra and University of New South Wales in Sydney, local Lennon Walls have also been vandalised or become the site of verbal clashes.

And in New Zealand, at the University of Auckland, where mainland Chinese students make up about 10 per cent of the student body, a man made headlines last month when he was captured on film pushing a female Hongkonger to the ground after an argument over a Lennon Wall...

Canada, Australia and New Zealand, with their natural beauty, clean air and large Chinese diaspora, have long been popular destinations for mainland Chinese youngsters seeking an education overseas. More than 140,000 study at Canadian higher-learning institutions, where they pay an average of C$27,159 (US$20,400) per year in tuition – over four times that of Canadians.

Australia plays host to more than 135,000 mainland Chinese students, and New Zealand almost 30,000.

In Vancouver, one of Canada’s most expensive cities, mainland Chinese students are often perceived as uber-wealthy Lamborghini-driving migrants who lead lavish lifestyles and buy up expensive properties. Yet with all their privilege, perceived or otherwise, they often face difficulties integrating into mainstream society.

...Ma said he and many other mainland Chinese saw displays of support for the Hong Kong protesters as campaigns aimed at separating the city from China, which they took personally.

“It challenges my understanding of my country and myself,” Ma said. He argued that Australian society should seek a greater understanding of the Chinese perspective.

“I do respect freedom of speech – that is a core value – but another core of Australia is multiculturalism. So in that sense, white Australians should also respect Chinese culture – and unity and unification are a very important part of it.”..

Beijing’s influence is on display through some 150 campus organisations that are chapters of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA), some of which receive partial government funding for events.
Billed as a student-led group to help adjust to life abroad, American media reports claim to have seen CSSA members in WeChat conversations coordinating with consular officials to rally students for political ends.

Examples include attendance at a protest against a visit by the Dalai Lama to the University of California in San Diego in 2017, and the disruption of a talk by a Uygur activist at McMaster University in British Columbia earlier this year.

“They throw parties and provide rides for new mainland Chinese students, but they also serve as a powerful socialising and monitoring function, where new mainlanders learn that they do not enjoy all the freedoms other students at international universities have,” said Anders Corr, a geopolitical analyst who has written about the influence of these student associations on Western university campuses.

“Chinese students must still promote a positive image of China.”

Meanwhile, Chinese diplomatic missions have made no secret of their support for students promoting Beijing’s line abroad [emphasis added].

After last month’s clashes at the University of Queensland, the consulate in Brisbane issued a statement in Chinese condemning Hong Kong students for “talk of separatism” and “igniting anger and sparking protests”. It praised counter-demonstrators for their “acts of patriotism”.

In New Zealand, after scuffles at the University of Auckland, the city’s consulate lauded students backing Beijing for their “spontaneous acts and deeds out of their love of China and love of Hong Kong”...
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/3022207/hong-kong-protests-uygur-camps-how-chinese-students-became

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

By Prof. Charles Burton, one of those rare Canadians who has grokked the nature of the Chicoms for quite a while:

Xi Jinping may want to rule the world, but he has problems at home, too

Charles Burton is associate professor of political science at Brock University at St. Catharines, Ont., senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad, and former counsellor at the Canadian embassy in Beijing [as an academic on special assignment, 1991-93, type of position since eliminated,pity https://www.macdonaldlaurier.ca/experts/charles-burton/].

While the Hong Kong showdown continues to deteriorate in clouds of tear gas, hundreds of arrests and increasingly dark rhetoric out of Beijing, the Chinese Communist Party senior leadership has relocated to the seaside town of Beidaihe, 200 kilometres east of Beijing, for their summer retreat.

A party tradition since the 1950s, this is not simply two weeks of sun, sand and sea-bathing with the bodyguards. It is also about political factional posturing in secretive preparation for this fall’s policy debates. There will be a lot of politicking by the beach, as party General-Secretary Xi Jinping strives to reinforce the critical support he needs from the party and military elders, and to stave off any challenges to his authority over the next year.

But things may not go as smoothly as in past retreats. Among the elders attending Beidaihe is former strongman Jiang Zemin. At 92, Mr. Jiang is the patriarch of a significant faction of senior officials who have been severely discomfited by Mr. Xi’s purges, anti-corruption investigations and administrative restructuring to centralize party authority in his own office.

Now that China’s economy and foreign relations are in major turbulence, Mr. Xi is left holding the bag. Much of the problem stems from his attempts to turn back Deng Xiaoping’s legacy of politically accountable collective leadership and undo Mr. Deng’s program of openness to the outside world and market-based economic reform.

It is the betrayal of Mr. Deng’s commitment to 50 years of “one country, two systems” that is the source of Hong Kong’s unrest. China’s propaganda blames the United States as the “black hand” behind the protests, specifically accusing junior diplomat Julie Eadeh, a “trained subversion expert at the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong,” of directing the whole thing. Besides being petty and ridiculous, it is appallingly disgraceful of China’s party-controlled press to openly name Ms. Eadeh’s spouse and two children – apparently an open invitation for the People’s Republic of China’s triad thug supporters to menace the family.

Mr. Xi’s mismanagement of the Hong Kong file strengthens the momentum of Taiwan’s pro-independence regime, seriously compounding the failure of Mr. Xi’s leadership in the eyes of Chinese nationalists who yearn for Taiwan’s reunification with the motherland.

He has aggressively asserted China’s goal to overtake the United States as the global military and political hegemon by 2050, using the Belt and Road Initiative to reorient the world’s economy toward Beijing. This determination is evidenced by shameless flaunting of accepted norms of trade and diplomacy. It is not just Canada that has been outraged by the arbitrary detainment of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, and China’s retaliatory banning of Canadian agricultural products on spurious grounds. In recent years, the Philippines, Japan, Norway, France and South Korea have all had comparable trade and consular pressures put on them for similar political reasons.

But now China’s geostrategic boldness has started to backfire, with a kick back from the United States unifying Republicans and Democrats alike against “the China threat.” The U.S.-China trade war is leading manufacturers with operations in China to pull up stakes and move to locations such as Vietnam, to avoid U.S. tariffs. Moreover, China’s plans to dominate and potentially control global telecommunications infrastructure through its telecom giant Huawei have now been shattered by U.S. opposition.

China’s economy – already unsteady due to pervasive corruption, as well as by overextended banks with too many bad loans on their books – now faces a crisis of business confidence and economic decline. Mr. Xi is unable to respond to U.S. demands that trade relations be fair, honest and reciprocal, lest he alienate too many of the Communist Party elites who ultimately sustain his grip on power.

Perhaps Mr. Xi has done the world a favour by exposing the true nature of the Communist Party’s long-range intentions, but as American commentator Gordon Chang has observed, ultimately his is “a militant, one-person regime that feels surrounded and threatened.”

A “surrounded and threatened” China feeling under siege does not bode well for making a rational conciliatory response to Hong Kong’s unrest. It also does not bode well for the future of Canada-China relations or for global peace. China desperately needs to find a way out of its political conundrum before it’s too late – for all involved.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-xi-jinping-may-want-to-rule-the-world-but-he-has-problems-at-home/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[daftandbarmy]

One reason why Hong Kong might wind up being treated like a foreign invader by China...


CHINA’S SECURITY PROBLEM
(Rand)

The twin security goals of preserving domestic order and well-being
and deterring external threats to Chinese territory are closely interrelated,
from the Chinese perspective. On the one hand, the maintenance
of domestic order and well-being is viewed as the sine qua non
for the defense of Chinese territory against outside threats. Specifically,
a weak, divided and conflictual, or “unjust” (i.e., highly coercive
and corrupt) leadership and an impoverished, disgruntled populace
are viewed as the primary sources of domestic instability and conflict
and invariably lead to a weakening of China’s defenses, which in turn
invite foreign manipulation and aggression. On the other hand,
maintaining a strong defense, eliciting political (and, during the premodern
period, cultural) deference from the periphery, preserving
the broader goal of Chinese regional centrality, and influencing the
actions of more distant powers are seen as absolutely necessary not
only to ensure regional order and deter or prevent foreign aggression
and territorial dismemberment but also to avert internal social unrest.
This is because a state that is unable to control its borders and
command the respect of foreign powers is seen as weak and unable
to rule its citizenry.

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1121/mr1121.ch2.pdf

 

[MarkOttawa]

Aren't Canadian sociology profs wonderful?

Professor Nathan Lauster says Vancouver’s China-money fears mirror Nazism. He just made millions selling home to China-money lobbyists
    UBC academic Nathan Lauster says the role of Chinese money is exaggerated and a ‘moral panic’, testifying in lawsuit aiming to axe Vancouver’s foreign buyer tax
    But at the same time, he was selling his home for C$3million (US$2.3 million), more than double its valuation, to two of the city’s top China-money lobbyists

Ian Young (https://www.scmp.com/author/ian-young)

Godwin’s Law, as anyone remotely familiar with social media should know, posits the shift towards certainty that a comparison to Hitler or Nazism will be made, the longer any online discussion proceeds.

It’s usually a gambit of last resort. But Nathan Lauster – a professor in sociology at the University of British Columbia – went there with little prodding.

Focusing on the role of foreign money in Vancouver’s unaffordable real estate market “mirrors how you move from ‘socialism’ to ‘national socialism’”, he said on Twitter in November.

Lauster is no anonymous troll.

The author of the 2016 book The Death and Life of the Single-Family House, he has been an influential and dismissive voice when it comes to the role of Chinese money in Vancouver’s real estate unaffordability crisis.

Instead of the “exaggerated” role of Chinese investors, Lauster believes Vancouver should be worrying about single family homes, which he calls “invasive parasites”.

It’s a well-liked position by the development industry and supply-side circles.

Lauster has pressed his case widely in social and mainstream media – and in the court battle against Vancouver’s 20 per cent foreign buyer tax.

Lauster was asked to provide expert testimony by Chinese homebuyer Jing Li in her high-profile case against the BC government that seeks to have the tax deemed illegal. It is a wildly popular tax – backed by 81 per cent of BC residents in a 2018 poll. Support among residents of Asian ethnicity is even stronger than among whites, according to a previous survey.

Lauster volunteered to the court in a March 29, 2018, affidavit that “concerns over foreign buyers have taken on the characteristics of a moral panic”.

“This is not to say there aren’t investors living overseas and bidding up local properties in Metro Vancouver, but rather that their impact on the market overall has likely been exaggerated through the stylised and stereotyped social construction of the ‘foreign buyer’ problem, especially as it’s been identified as a particularly Chinese problem,” he said.

“As a result, changes in policy (ie: the Foreign Buyer Tax) have imposed real hardships on individuals … and have inflamed long-standing prejudices against (and within) the Chinese-Canadian community.”

What Lauster did not say in his affidavit was that at the time he was in the process of selling his Vancouver home for millions of dollars, at a price more than double its valuation, to two of the city’s most prominent China-money lobbyists, Pan Miaofei and Chen Yongtao [emphasis added].

A C$3.09 million windfall

This is not to say that Lauster’s views should be disqualified as insincere, or that he, Pan, or Chen, behaved improperly in the sale.

But it is one thing to publicly rubbish a phenomenon – and quite another to do so while privately pocketing millions of dollars as a result of that same phenomenon, courtesy of two of its most enthusiastic facilitators...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (centre) shakes hands with Pan Miaofei at a political fundraising dinner hosted in Pan's Vancouver mansion in November 2016. The dinner became the focus of a “cash for access” furore. Photo: Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the Wenzhou People's Government
...
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2181447/professor-says-vancouvers-china-money-fears-mirror

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Further to above post, this from 2016:

With Serious Chicom Links: "Influential Chinese-Canadians paying to attend private fundraisers with Trudeau"
...
Former Liberal cabinet minister Raymond Chan, who was Mr. Trudeau’s British Columbia fundraiser in the 2015 election campaign, helps with fundraising activities on the West Coast, while Toronto business consultant Richard Zhou is a key organizer of these events in Ontario.

Mr. Chan was at the most recent Trudeau fundraiser, which was held on Nov. 7 at the West Vancouver mansion of B.C. developer Miaofei Pan [same fellow as in preceding post], a multimillionaire from Wenzhou province who immigrated to Canada a decade ago. More than 80 guests got their pictures taken with Mr. Trudeau at the $1,500 per ticket event, including Mr. Chan.

Mr. Pan told The Globe and Mail he lobbied the Prime Minister to make it easier for well-heeled investors from China to come to Canada. He said he told Mr. Trudeau the program put in place by the former Conservative government was “too harsh.”

In exchange for permanent residency, rich immigrants must invest $2-million and are subject to strict audits…

A Chinese government agency in Mr. Pan’s hometown that builds ties with and keeps tabs on expatriate Chinese, supplied photos of the Trudeau-Pan event to media in China. The Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the Wenzhou People’s Government promotes China’s interests abroad, according to former Canadian diplomat and China expert Charles Burton.

“That is an agency of the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. Burton told The Globe and Mail. “The fact that the photos appeared in the [Wenzhou Metropolis Daily] in China suggests that the people who participated in that activity must have been tasked by the Chinese state to try and promote the Chinese position with influential people in Canada. In this case, our Prime Minister.”

Mr. Pan is honorary chair of a Chinese-Canadian organization that is an unabashed backer of Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and East China Sea [emphasis added, see “Ethnic Chinese Abroad: Once a Dragon, Always a Dragon Says Beijing“]…
https://mark3ds.wordpress.com/2016/12/05/mark-collins-with-serious-chicom-links-influential-chinese-canadians-paying-to-attend-private-fundraisers-with-trudeau/

Links to to other posts in one above no longer work, but do if copy and paste in "Search" box at top right.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

More on Dragon's scary reach in Canadian education (with videos):

Chinese influence in Canada ‘alive and well,’ says student leader threatened by trolls

Canada is failing to combat the spread of Chinese influence that is “alive and well” throughout the country, one prominent student leader says.

And she argues the presence of politicians like former Ontario trade minister Michael Chan [see below after this quote] as a headliner at a rally last week to mobilize the Chinese diaspora against pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong is just another sign of how far Beijing’s influence has spread.

READ MORE: YouTube pulls 210 channels linked to Hong Kong protests influence campaign

“I’m definitely concerned,” said Chemi Lhamo, president of the student union at the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus, and a Canadian citizen of Tibetan heritage, in an interview with The West Block‘s Mercedes Stephenson.

“These are the folks that are actually implementing the propaganda and amplifying the propaganda that the Chinese state is trying to control.”

WATCH: Ottawa has been weak responding to Beijing, expert says

Lhamo made headlines earlier this year when her election as student union president prompted a wave of abuse by Chinese trolls who mobilized online to threaten Lhamo’s position, her future — and even her life.

“Somehow the international Chinese community came to find out that I was running for the elections, but to be specific, it was more like a Tibetan running for the campaign. When they found out, they immediately released a petition online against me. In addition to that, they took it on social media and they started giving me comments in the thousands from rape threats to death threats — not only to me but my family members,” she said.

“There was a pattern in these comments. Everything was talking about Tibet and China.”

READ MORE: Over 900 Chinese Twitter, Facebook accounts disabled over ‘deceptive tactics’

Those attacks came both from abroad and at home. In some cases, she says she was even told by attackers that they went to school right on her campus.

And Lhamo believes what she experienced is part of a broader pattern of Chinese influence spread throughout Canada.

“It’s alive and well, and it’s creeping on us in every corner.”

Lhamo cited the influence the Chinese government is able to extend through the Confucius Institute, a network of hundreds of centres around the world funded by the Chinese government and branded as educational programs that offer services like Mandarin lessons to students.

But critics argue they are in fact a propaganda arm for the Chinese state used as a means to mobilize pro-Beijing actors in their regions.

WATCH: How far will China go to impose change in Hong Kong?

Last week, the Australian government scrapped Confucius Institutes in that country amid growing fears of the extent of Chinese influence and cited concerns about potential interference and inappropriate influence in its review of the programs.

The U.S. Senate’s Homeland Security committee also released a scathing report earlier this year calling for the centres to be shut down.

In Canada, CSIS has already issued warnings about Chinese influence across all levels of government in this country and declassified intelligence reports pointed to the creation of the centres as part of China’s plans to exert soft power abroad [emphasis added].

But universities and public school systems have continued to sign agreements with the Confucius Institute amid a the backdrop of broader funding cuts for education and increasing demands for services that will prepare students to work in a world with growing Asian power.

There continue to be 12 Confucius Institutes across the country, along with regional programming with public school boards, with more than 20,000 students.

China has repeatedly said the goal of the centres is simply to teach Mandarin and increase awareness about China.

READ MORE: Conservatives want CSIS to investigate John McCallum for election interference

The New Brunswick government tried and failed to axe the programs earlier this year over concerns the institute was blacklisting topics that countered the Chinese state’s opinions. The Toronto District School Board also cancelled plans for the programs several years ago.

Confucius Institutes and connected programming remain in public schools in Alberta, B.C, and other provinces, as well as numerous university campuses including Ottawa’s Carleton University, the University of Regina, the University of Saskatchewan, Toronto’s Seneca College and the University of Waterloo [emphasis added].

Lhamo says without a much stronger stance from the government, Chinese influence will continue to spread.

“There is so much more that we can do,” she said, suggesting attention should turn to students studying in Canada, many of whom she suggests are coming under intense pressure from the Chinese government back home to carry out activities abroad that advocate the state line.

“Chinese international students are one of the biggest cash cows for universities and academic institutions. It’s time that we take a stance and let them know their human rights record does not reflect international standards.”
https://globalnews.ca/news/5804742/chinese-influence-canada/

From 2016 on Michael Chan (link at start no longer works, but does if copy and paste in "Search" box at top right)

How Convenient: “Ontario minister Michael Chan defends China’s human-rights record”
https://mark3ds.wordpress.com/2016/06/09/mark-collins-how-convenient-ontario-minister-michael-chan-defends-chinas-human-rights-record/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Will Justin Trudeau or Andrew Scheer dare suggest similar action in Canada, what with the federal election close at hand and all those voters of Chinese origin?

Australia investigates foreign interference at universities as fears of Chinese influence grow

    A new task force will comprise of university staff and government officials, and will look at issues such as cyberattacks and national security
    The announcement comes amid heightened scrutiny of China’s influence at Australian universities following a spate of cyberattacks and demonstrations

Australia on Wednesday [Aug. 28] launched a task force to clamp down on foreign interference at universities amid growing concerns about Chinese influence on college campuses.

Education Minister Dan Tehan said the task force, which will be equally comprised of university staff and government officials, would tackle the “intersection of national security, research, collaboration and a university’s autonomy”.

“Universities also understand the risk to their operations and to the national interest from cyberattacks and foreign interference and we are working constructively to address it,” Tehan said.

The initiative will include separate working groups tasked with cybersecurity, fostering a “positive security culture”, protecting intellectual property, and ensuring transparency in collaborations between universities and foreign entities.

“The task force has the potential to be a valuable channel to consult and coordinate efforts by the government and universities,” said Alex Joske, a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra.

“I hope it will lead to genuine action by universities, and encourage effective solutions that involve proactive measures from both government and universities.”

The announcement comes amid heightened scrutiny of China’s influence at universities following a spate of cyberattacks, aggressive demonstrations by ultranationalist mainland students, and incidents of Australian academic research allegedly being used by Beijing to violate human rights. It also follows the release of a report by the Sydney-based Centre for Independent Studies last week which warned that universities were taking a “multibillion-dollar gamble” due to a massive overreliance on Chinese students for revenue.

The report found that seven “too big to fail” universities had much higher numbers of Chinese students than universities in countries such as the United States and the UK, relying on their fees for 13-23 per cent of revenues [emphasis added--Canada?].

John Blaxland, a professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at Australian National University in Canberra, said the launch of the task force reflected a “mood shift” in Australia around the issue of foreign interference [emphasis added].

“Nobody wants to turn off the Chinese students but at the same time, one of the things that’s so attractive about our universities is that we’re open liberal institutions of learning,” Blaxland said. “And what we’ve seen, particularly in the last couple of weeks in Australia in response to what’s happening in Hong Kong, has been a little bit chilling.”

In recent weeks, nationalist [actually pro-Beijing] Chinese have staged at times violent counter-demonstrations against pro-democracy Hongkongers and their supporters in Australian cities including Melbourne and Brisbane.

On Monday, the University of Queensland in Brisbane said it had launched an investigation after the ASPI’s Joske published evidence that a firm founded by one of its professors had supplied technology used in the mass surveillance of Uygurs in westernmost Xinjiang. The professor, Heng Tao Shen, disputed the claims as “totally irresponsible” and “wrong”.

Last month, the University of Technology Sydney said it would review a A$10 million partnership with China Electronics Technology Group, a supplier of surveillance technology in Xinjiang, and Curtin University in Perth announced an investigation after an academic helped develop artificial intelligence technology used to pinpoint Chinese ethnic minorities [YIKES!]...

Students in Brisbane hold placards during a protest against the Chinese government’s funding of education organisations in Queensland. Photo: EPA-EFE
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/3024742/australia-investigates-foreign-interference-universities

Mark
Ottawa