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Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread

1) Justin Trudeau's government's pathetic efforts to appease the Chicoms continue:

Canada's defence minister says China is not an adversary

Canada's defence minister says he doesn't see China as an adversary, as a security conference in Halifax this weekend prepares to focus heavily on the Asian superpower.

Harjit Sajjan said while there are significant challenges in Canada's relationship with China -- including the detention by the Chinese of two Canadians -- there is co-operation on "certain aspects of trade," and now is the time to try to work together to find solutions.

"We don't consider China as an adversary," Sajjan told reporters at the Halifax International Security Forum on Friday [Nov. 22].

"Some of the things that China from a security perspective have been doing is concerning, and we need to be mindful of that. But it's only through the appropriate discussions that we are able to get back into a rules-based order."

Several of the sessions at the Halifax forum will deal with the country many geopolitical experts see as an emerging threat.

China-Canada relations have largely remained tense since the detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor on espionage allegations last December, shortly after Huawei senior executive Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Vancouver on an extradition request from the United States.

Many China observers believe relations will remain in limbo until Meng's case is resolved.

Forum president Peter Van Praagh wasn't as careful as Sajjan in his assessment, saying China can be characterized in a variety of ways including as a strategic competitor and adversary.

"I think it's clear that China and Canada do not share the same interests," Van Praagh said. "There is some intermingling on some issues, but China has a very different view of the world than Canada's view of the world."

Van Praagh said Canada and its democratic allies in Europe and Asia need to recognize that fact in order to be properly prepared to deal with it...
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canada-s-defence-minister-says-china-is-not-an-adversary-1.4698187

2) Whilst we continue to face diplomacy with Chinese characteristics:

China's new envoy says Canadians should speak out against Hong Kong protests

Beijing has a new representative in Canada but his stern message to Ottawa remains the same as his predecessor's: release Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou, arrested in Vancouver nearly a year ago at the request of the United States.

In a roundtable interview Friday, Chinese ambassador Cong Peiwu also urged Canadians to speak out loudly against the "violent criminals" protesting for more freedom in Hong Kong, citing the risks to Canadian citizens and companies there.

"What happened in Hong Kong has nothing to do with democracy or human rights," said the 52-year-old Cong, who arrived in Ottawa two months ago.

Cong denounced U.S. legislation aimed at sanctioning Chinese and Hong Kong officials who abuse human rights. He cautioned Canada against any such action, suggesting it would cause "very bad damage" to the bilateral relationship "and that's not in the interest of Canada."

"We are determined to safeguard our national sovereignty, our core interests, our security," Cong said. "And we are determined to oppose any foreign intervention."

Relations between Ottawa and Beijing have been fractious since early last December, when Canadian authorities took Meng into custody over American allegations of violating sanctions on Iran. Her extradition case is before a Canadian court.

Soon after Meng was arrested, Beijing detained two Canadians, businessman Michael Spavor and former diplomat Michael Kovrig, on allegations of undermining China's national security.

The developments are widely seen in Canada as retaliation for the detention of Meng.

Cong said Meng's arrest and pending extradition to the U.S. amount to arbitrary detention, leading to "the severe difficulties" Canada and China are experiencing.

The ambassador tried to play down any fears about allowing Huawei to help build Canada's next-generation 5G mobile networks...
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/china-s-new-envoy-says-canadians-should-speak-out-against-hong-kong-protests-1.4698025

Mark
Ottawa
 
Canadian Defence Minister: China is not our adversary

https://www.cp24.com/news/canada-s-defence-minister-says-china-is-not-an-adversary-1.4698229

What we have here is either a magical, talking rainbow unicorn or a very brilliant man with a strong desire to detail what "adversary" means in an asymmetrical state of affairs. China is the long term main adversary politically, economically but maybe he is right from a military perspective. 
 
Cloud Cover said:
Canadian Defence Minister: China is not our adversary

https://www.cp24.com/news/canada-s-defence-minister-says-china-is-not-an-adversary-1.4698229

What we have here is either a magical, talking rainbow unicorn or a very brilliant man with a strong desire to detail what "adversary" means in an asymmetrical state of affairs. China is the long term main adversary politically, economically but maybe he is right from a military perspective.

He needs to re-read the section on "State Competition" at p. 50 of Strong, Secure, Engaged.

:cheers:
 
1) Meanwhile US senators of btoh parties go after us in Halifax on Huawei:

Canada warned of fallout on Five Eyes relationship if Huawei allowed on 5G
Social Sharing

U.S. lawmakers delivered stern warnings about the Chinese telecom giant at security forum
...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-warned-of-fallout-on-five-eyes-relationship-if-huawei-allowed-on-5g-1.5370992

2) As in Germany Chancellor Merkel's own party forces her to let parliament decide on Huawei/5G--where vote could well go against Chicoms. A transparency we won't see here:

German parliament to decide on Huawei 5G involvement, Merkel's CDU party agrees

Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) overwhelmingly approved a motion on Saturday to debate in parliament the involvement of controversial tech firm Huawei in building the nation's 5G network.
...
Germany's other parties rule out Huawei

Just days before CDU delegates met in Leipzig this weekend, nine security and foreign-policy experts with the CDU's coalition partners in Berlin, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), openly called in a policy paper for Germany to exclude "non-trustworthy manufacturers, especially if unconstitutionally controlled interference, manipulation or espionage cannot be ruled out."

Meanwhile, the environmentalist Greens, currently nipping at the heels of Chancellor Merkel's CDU in polls, also categorically rule out Huawei's involvement in Germany's 5G network. That raises the possibility that opposition parties and unruly coalition partners could stop Huawei from bidding on the project, even with Germany's most powerful politician open to the prospect...
https://www.dw.com/en/german-parliament-to-decide-on-huawei-5g-involvement-merkels-cdu-party-agrees/a-51379848

What are chances that a majority could be found in our Commons to block Huawei?

Mark
Ottawa
 
Matthew Fisher is not best pleased with the approach of Justin Trudeau and his comprador friends to China:

COMMENTARY: Canada’s new foreign minister must figure out how to deal with China

Figuring out a strategy for how to get along with the growing economic and military colossus will likely be the major preoccupation of Canadian foreign ministers and governments for the rest of this century. It should dominate the foreign policy agenda for next few years.

Whatever her strengths and her alleged power within cabinet, Chrystia Freeland was not often able to get past the Prime Minister’s Office to criticize China, though she did manage to clearly state recently Canada’s opposition to how Beijing was manhandling protesters in Hong Kong.

The Globe and Mail’s Steve Chase unearthed a nugget this week that strongly suggests that in Freeland’s successor at foreign affairs, Francois-Philippe Champagne, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has found another China fanboy to complement his new ambassador to the Court of Chairman Xi, Dominic Barton [emphasis added].

Only two years ago, Champagne praised the Xi government in an interview that he gave to the state-backed China Global Television Network.

“In a world of uncertainty, of unpredictability, of questioning about the rules that have been established to govern our trading relationship, Canada, and I would say China, stand out as [a] beacon of stability, predictability, a rule-based system, a very inclusive society,” Champagne said.

This gushing declaration was of a piece with what Trudeau himself said six years ago, when he told a party fundraiser that the country that he most admired was China’s “basic dictatorship.”

Moreover, Champagne is a protégé and friend of Jean Chretien.

The former prime minister has been one of those loudly leading the charge to have Canada ignore its legal processes and end the extradition hearing of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, who faces 13 charges of fraud, conspiracy and obstruction of justice in the U.S., in order to get China and Canada back to talking trade.

With Freeland keeping the U.S. trade file in addition to her new duties as what might best be called Canada’s first minister of national unity, that should leave Champagne with more time to seriously consider a balanced policy towards China rather than the lopsided, ardently pro-China policy favoured by the PMO and most of the country’s leading diplomats and business groups.

He should heed polls that suggest Canadians are far less keen on closer ties with Beijing than he and his government are.

The Liberals barely spoke about China or anything to do with foreign policy or national security during the recent federal election campaign. And Trudeau famously skipped the only television debate on foreign policy, causing the Munk School to entirely scrap that event.

Just about the only quasi-security commitment that Trudeau made during the campaign was an announcement that, if re-elected, the Liberals intended to try to untangle the military purchase process by creating a Defence Procurement Agency.

Trudeau has made clear that in leading a minority government during his second term, his intention will be to focus on domestic issues for the next few years.

Bringing home his peripatetic foreign minister, Freeland, underscores this commitment.

Though Freeland has been fawned over by the media for her handling of the foreign affairs ministry, she, Global Affairs Canada and the government, writ large, barely articulated any vision regarding the country’s place in the world. Truth be told, Canada does not really have a foreign policy.

There hasn’t been a statement of priorities and what, exactly, the country’s national interest is or should be. What Canadians have heard aplenty have been the usual self-congratulatory and utterly empty bromides about being advocates for NATO, NORAD, peace, stability and rule of law.

Champagne might wish to stop the Canadian practice of speaking so often about the importance of its alliances and demonstrate leadership within them or on its own. What has been urgently required for some time is a realistic national discussion about Canada’s rather limp standing in the world.

What Canadians have heard instead has been a lot of the usual nonsense about how the country punches above its weight and is regarded as a paragon of virtue.

Canada badly needs a foreign policy strategy that acknowledges that the world has profoundly changed. It must recognize that the Indo-Pacific, and not only China, is the realm of paramount importance.

This will, perforce, oblige Canada to pay less attention to its traditional partners in Europe, though it must keep a close watch on Russian intentions there, in the Middle East and in the High Arctic.

The Trudeau government has seemed to react to crises on an ad hoc and sometimes capricious basis during its first term. Much was made, and usually in a preachy way, about how bad the Venezuelan and Russian dictatorships were.

Yet little has been said about the growing list of outrages perpetrated by the Chinese dictatorship at home and abroad, including its meddling on Canadian university campuses, its relentless attempts to penetrate and co-opt Canadian political echelon and the staggering number of digital assaults that its hackers have been making on Canadian government and industry computer servers.

Nor has Canada taken a harder line with China since it kidnapped two Canadians nearly one year ago and held them in dire circumstances since, or slapped import controls on imports of Canadian pork, beef and canola in obvious retaliation for Canada putting Meng through the extradition process.

One consequence of Ottawa remaining in the grips of China trade fever, no matter what the cost to the country’s pride or principles, is that Canada has chosen to invest little in growing its economic and security relations with friendly, reliable Asian partners, or its presence and clout within APEC and especially ASEAN, which China has been busily fracturing by buying off its poorest members.

Canada has also chosen not to try to join the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, whose members are Japan, India, Australia and the U.S., which is something the Tories promised to do if elected.

While China is the elephant occupying more and more space in foreign ministry offices around the world, there are, of course, other pressing issues.

Canada had made hollow boasts about the global leadership that it has shown on the environment, yet there has been virtually no change in Canada’s failure to meet environmental targets since Stephen Harper was in power. Canada had made a noisy play for African UN votes to secure a non-voting seat on the Security Council, but paradoxically, only a few hundred Canadian peacekeepers spent 13 months in Mali.

Freeland failed to even visit Africa once and has not spoken much on the Middle East — despite the fact that, like Africa, it is full of UN votes that Trudeau allegedly covets.
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Not that you would know it in sleepy Canada, but the world is entering a highly unstable era where the most likely flashpoints will be in the maritime domain. China is constantly threatening to attack Taiwan and actively pursuing what the Rand Corporation has called “grey zone coercion” against the Philippines and Vietnam through outrageous and illegal territorial claims.

Further, China continues to harass fishermen and challenge others who build oil drilling platforms in the South China Sea while sending out its navy, coast guard and weaponized fishing militia to assert its claim to almost all of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

With every passing day, China has more of the means to do what it wants in some parts of the western Pacific. Over the past year alone, for example, it produced 19 new blue water warships. Canada may border three oceans and have the world’s longest coastline, but the entire Royal Canadian Navy’s surface war-fighting fleet consists of 12 vessels that are each 25 years older or more.

While Canada has been sleeping, the West has been on a long losing streak, not only in the Indo-Pacific but in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Its influence has receded in almost every important area and there has been no common strategy to halt the bleeding.
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All is not yet lost, though. Canada could, for example, help the West take back the initiative from China by advocating for the establishment of a NATO-like Asian security alliance of like-minded nations, by greatly increasing trade with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia and India, and by working collaboratively with partners on big infrastructure programmes to prevent the island states of the South Pacific from falling further under Beijing’s spell.

This could be the template to do more of the same across the developing world to give smaller countries a democratic alternative to counter authoritarian China’s multi-billion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative.

Whether Canada will show such leadership is an open question. But the portents are not good.

Champagne has, in his own words, shown that on China he is an acolyte of Chretien and Canada’s new ambassador to Beijing, Barton. And Canada remains far more Euro-centric than Asian-centric.

A question Champagne should ask himself as he attends his first G20 foreign minister’s meeting in Japan this weekend is whether Canada is better off in geo-strategic terms today than it was four years ago and what might make it worse off in two or three years. The answers, if Ottawa is honest with itself, should ring alarm bells.

Will they?

Editor’s Note: the line which stated Chrystia Freeland ‘did not manage to clearly state recently Canada’s opposition to how Beijing was manhandling protesters in Hong Kong’ has been corrected to state that she did.

Matthew Fisher is an international affairs columnist and foreign correspondent who has worked abroad for 35 years. You can follow him on Twitter at @mfisheroverseas
https://globalnews.ca/news/6199691/francois-philippe-champagne-china/

As for the government's priorities, Cabinet Committee on Global Affairs and Public Security has Minister of Innovation, Science & Industry as chair (Navdeep Bains) and Min of Economic Development and Official Languages as vice-chair (Mélanie Joly)--neither with experience foreign policy, defence or national security.
https://pm.gc.ca/en/cabinet-committees

Plus:

CHINA CABLES
Exposed: China’s Operating Manuals for Mass Internment and Arrest by Algorithm
A new leak of highly classified Chinese government documents reveals the operations manual for running the mass detention camps in Xinjiang and exposed the mechanics of the region’s system of mass surveillance...
https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-cables/exposed-chinas-operating-manuals-for-mass-internment-and-arrest-by-algorithm/

THE CHINA CABLES
'They can find out anything': Leaked documents show China's surveillance of Uighurs worldwide
Classified documents show China tracked members of its Uighur population around the world [including in Canada]...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/china-uighurs-canada-secret-documents-1.5369835

Mark
Ottawa
 
Hence, taking a pass on the foreign policy debate was a smart move by Trudeaus campaign team:

“ Global Affairs Canada and the government, writ large, barely articulated any vision regarding the country’s place in the world. Truth be told, Canada does not really have a foreign policy.

There hasn’t been a statement of priorities and what, exactly, the country’s national interest is or should be. What Canadians have heard aplenty have been the usual self-congratulatory and utterly empty bromides about being advocates for NATO, NORAD, peace, stability and rule of law.”
 
Local District elections are over in Hong Kong with the Government losing many council seats.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-50531408

'A wipeout beyond imagination'
Stephen McDonell, BBC China correspondent, in Hong Kong
Outside the Yau Ma Tei North polling station, local residents lined up to gain entry so they could watch the vote count. The doors opened and they poured into the public viewing area.
Six months into an ongoing political crisis, people have lost faith in government institutions. They wanted to make sure that this process was fair and transparent.
As they waited for the total in their own district council to be tallied, they could see the numbers coming in from elsewhere on their mobile phones.
By their facial expressions it was clear they couldn't believe what was unfolding, and people cheered in astonishment as one surprising result came in after another.
Nobody imagined such a comprehensive wipeout, and Carrie Lam's administration will no doubt come under renewed pressure to listen to the demands of protestors following such an overwhelming defeat for her and her allies.

Big winners and losers

More than 1,000 candidates ran for 452 district council seats which, for the first time, were all contested. A further 27 district seats are allocated to representatives of rural districts.
Pro-Beijing parties held the majority of these seats ahead of the election.
In one of the biggest losses for the pro-Beijing camp, lawmaker Junius Ho - one of Hong Kong's most controversial politicians - suffered a shock defeat.

He was stabbed earlier this month by a man pretending to be a supporter. The lawmaker has openly voiced his support for Hong Kong's police force on multiple occasions. He was in July filmed shaking hands with a group of men - suspected of being triad gangsters - who later assaulted pro-democracy protesters.
 
And beware some academic ties with China--Canadian universities should be really waking up to this:

UK academia's links to Chinese defence firms 'harmful for national security'
Report singles out Britain for ‘unprecedented levels of collaboration’ with China’s military

Extensive links between British universities and Chinese defence companies, including missile manufacturers, could threaten UK national security interests, the author of a report on China’s research activity overseas has said.

The UK has been singled out as having unprecedented levels of collaboration with Chinese military companies in the analysis by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) which identifies collaborations with scientists from China’s hypersonic missile programme and on research topics ranging from smart materials to robotics.

Sixteen university labs around the world are identified as being run jointly by Chinese defence companies, or have major investments from them. Ten are based in the UK, with the University of Manchester and Imperial College London hosting six between them. The others are in Australia, Germany, Switzerland and Austria [emphasis added].

“[Something] that really alarmed me was the level of collaboration with Chinese missile scientists,” said Alex Joske, the report’s [see here https://www.aspi.org.au/report/china-defence-universities-tracker ] author and an analyst at ASPI, referring to the UK collaborations. “I haven’t seen anything like Chinese missile manufacturers setting up these joint labs in other countries,” he added.

Earlier this month, a report by the foreign affairs select committee revealed “alarming evidence” of Chinese interference on UK campuses, adding that universities are not adequately responding to the growing risk of China and other “autocracies” influencing academic freedom in the UK.

The UK labs mentioned in the report include the Sino-British Joint Advanced Laboratory on Control System Technology at the University of Manchester and Imperial College London’s Advanced Structure Manufacturing Technology Laboratory. Both are partnerships with the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, which develops space launch vehicles and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Other labs highlighted in the report are based at the University of Strathclyde and the University of Nottingham. Research at the Strathclyde lab includes autonomous rendezvous systems for satellites, which could be used for docking, but also for anti-satellite missions.

Beyond their industrial collaborations with Chinese defence firms, dozens of British universities also work with Chinese military institutes, such as the PLA’s Army Engineering University and the National University of Defence Technology. The work ranges from hi-tech materials and design optimisation strategies to 5G networks and artificial intelligence programmes that can identify people in low-resolution surveillance footage, and control swarms of robotic vehicles on military patrols.

Bob Seely, a former Conservative MP and co-author of a critical report on Huawei for the Henry Jackson Society, said some universities appeared to have a “laissez-faire” attitude to the potential risks. “We are in danger of being extremely naive about this,” he said.

“We have to draw a line between what is beneficial for us and China and what is not so beneficial for us. I’m incredibly wary considering the amount of IP theft, espionage and cyberattacks that have come out of China. At the moment we haven’t got the balance right at all.”

Joske said that such research was often framed as “dual-use”, but that this concept was questionable when applied to collaborations with defence companies. “If you’re dealing with a company like a Chinese missile manufacturer you don’t really need to speculate about the use,” he said.

The analysis revealed what Joske described as a fundamental misalignment between the way universities approach research collaborations and how countries, including the UK, approach security interests. “Some of the collaborations that universities are engaged in with China are almost certainly harmful for national security and contributing to things that I don’t think the taxpayer would approve of,” he said.

He added that some laboratories ran risks of inadvertently violating export controls or laws around weapons of mass destruction...
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/nov/25/uk-academias-links-to-chinese-defence-firms-harmful-for-national-security

Plus on espionage bona fides or not of defector to Australia, Wang Liqiang, also by Alex Joske:

Defections are messy and we may never know the full story
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/defections-are-messy-and-we-may-never-know-the-full-story-20191123-p53dg6.html

Mark
Ottawa
 
Terry Glavin sticks his shiv in and just keeps twisting--excerpts:
Ottawa goes meek and gentle with Beijing
The Trudeau government’s newfound faith in ‘appropriate discussion’ is the Canadian equivalent of ‘thoughts and prayers’—an easy out when dealing with the China lobby

With Beijing’s most determined allies decisively crushed by a democratic alliance in Hong Kong’s district elections over the weekend, at least somebody’s putting up some kind of a fight against Xi Jinping’s increasingly savage aggression and belligerence. Because it certainly isn’t Canada.

An unprecedented 71.2 per cent turnout on Sunday in the ordinarily humdrum local elections resulted in a massive triumph for pro-democracy candidates and a withering rebuke to the Chinese Communist Party and its puppet Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive. Out of 18 district councils, all formerly under the establishment’s control, 17 are now in the democratic camp. Of the 452 posts up for election, Hong Kong’s democrats took nearly 400 of them, quadrupling their seat share. Pro-Beijing parties lost 243 seats.

It was a lot less uplifting that while Hongkongers were streaming to the polling stations over the weekend, at the 11th annual Halifax International Security Forum here in Canada, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan telegraphed the strongest signal yet that after several months of dithering, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has decisively retreated into the Liberal Party’s traditional approach to relations with Beijing—appeasement, capitulation, and normalization.

“We don’t consider China as an adversary,” Sajjan said at the forum’s opening on Friday.

Hongkongers certainly do. So do the Uighurs of Xinjiang, a Muslim people whose persecution has accelerated to the point that at least a million of them are confined to concentration camps and forced-labour zones laid bare in the greatest detail yet in a trove of leaked Chinese  government documents just released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. So do Tibetans, whose dispossession and oppression over the past seven decades is now being replayed in Xinjiang—and whose tragic predicament, once a hallowed cause in Canada, is now rarely if ever even mentioned in polite company...

The findings of Canada’s own National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians contradicts the weird claims Sajjan made at the Halifax conference. Last April, in its first-ever annual report, the committee officially declared China a threat to Canada’s national security, owing mainly to Beijing’s hostile espionage, its cyber threats and its subversive overseas influence-peddling operations...

For several weeks now it has been increasingly evident that Trudeau’s government is willing to surrender a great deal and to draw that line where Beijing has always wanted it drawn—with diplomatic and corporate relations inside the relationship, and all those bothersome “Canadian values” about human rights, democratic accountability, the international rules-based order and the rule of law left entirely outside of it.

Beijing has always understood the Liberal Party as the political wing of the Canada-China Business Council. And now Trudeau is giving every impression that the way to repair the 11-month-old crisis in Canada-China relations—as if putting things back together again should even be Canada’s objective in this at all—is to conform with Beijing’s expectations, to a fault...

As for Xi Jinping’s explicit determination to bring down the curtain on 70 years of the western-guided international order, here’s Sajjan: “Some of the things that China from a security perspective have been doing is concerning, and we need to be mindful of that. But it’s only through the appropriate discussions that we are able to get back into a rules-based order.”

So that’s it, then. Appropriate discussions will do the trick. Thoughts and prayers, in other words. In the U.S., that’s how they deal with the stranglehold of the gun lobby. In Canada, we’ve got the China lobby.

First came the September appointment of Dominic Barton as Canada’s new ambassador to Beijing. Barton took over from the disgraced China evangelist John McCallum, and while Beijing was sad to see McCallum go, Barton was the replacement China had hoped for. In August, at a multinational summit in Bangkok, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi quietly told Canadian officials as much. Barton came pre-approved by Beijing, in other words. You can see why.

Barton had been an adviser to the state-owned China Development Bank, and he’d spent several years swinging big-money deals in Shanghai. During his years as managing partner of McKinsey & Company, the global consulting giant had taken on several Chinese state-owned corporations as clients. Just one of them was an enterprise building islands in the South China Sea, which Xi Jinping has arbitrarily annexed in defiance of the United Nations. Last year, McKinsey held its glamorous annual retreat in Xinjiang, just a short walk from one of China’s several Uighur concentration camps.

...[new foreign minister] Francois-Philippe Champagne, came straight out of the corporate sector when he was elected in 2015. He is not known to have ever uttered so much as a cautionary word about China.

Champagne is a protegé of former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, which in itself is straight away a bad sign. Chrétien’s lasting foreign-policy legacy was his role in helping Beijing re-establish relations with western democracies in the years following the Tiananmen massacres of 1989. Chrétien has busied himself in the corporate consulting business in China, and giving governments terrible advice about China, ever since he left public office 15 years ago.

Last week, the Globe and Mail’s Steven Chase came upon a 2017 interview Champagne gave to the China Global Television Network, a Communist Party propaganda platform. Champagne’s flattery of the Beijing regime was as preposterously gushing as it was objectively absurd: “In a world of uncertainty, of unpredictability, of questioning about the rules that have been established to govern our trading relationship, Canada and, I would say, China, stand out as [a] beacon of stability, predictability, a rule-based system, a very inclusive society.”

Rounding things off was last week’s elevation of Mary Ng to the post of minister of international trade. It’s a file that’s just tacked onto her previous cabinet portfolio—small business and export promotion. Hired as an appointments secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office after the 2015 federal election, Ng was a political unknown until only two years ago, when she was elected MP in Markham-Thornhill, the riding held by John McCallum.

Freeland brought McCallum’s mercifully-brief diplomatic assignment to an end in January after he publicly contradicted her strict rule-of-law insistence in the Meng Wanzhou case. He’s since gone on to the lucrative corporate consultation racket in China—a pattern with these people. Last July, McCallum admitted to the South China Morning Post that he’d been counselling his former contacts in China’s foreign ministry about how Beijing should conduct itself to better assure the favourable outcome of a Liberal victory in Canada’s upcoming federal election campaign...

As for Mary Ng, there are two highlights in her strangely meteoric rise to the international trade ministry. The first was the controversy shrouding her connections to pro-Beijing activists in Ontario’s Chinese-Canadian community, including her associations with Michael Chan, the former Ontario cabinet minister who has gone hoarse-voiced lately from parroting Beijing’s propaganda lies about the Hong Kong democracy movement. The second was that time in July when she posted a photograph of herself with Senator Peter Harder, formerly of the Canada-China Business Council, hamming it up in a Beijing ice cream parlour.

Not exactly a good look, as they say, for a government that claims to be so closely focused on the entombment of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in some Beijing dungeon...

David Mulroney, the former Canadian ambassador to Beijing, told the CBC on Sunday that China is “the greatest threat to human freedom on the planet,” and that while Canada has managed to stand up to Russia, to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, “China gets a pass.”

That is an unimpeachable fact.

So while Canada accelerates its business-class rapprochements with Xi Jinping’s tyranny, the task of confronting the greatest threat to freedom on the planet has fallen to teenagers choking on tear gas in the streets of Hong Kong, fighting on almost entirely alone, with bows and arrows.
https://www.macleans.ca/politics/worldpolitics/ottawa-goes-meek-and-gentle-with-beijing/

Mark
Ottawa
 
Read the whole story--this is bloody awful, will our gov't have the guts to say anything serious? Thank goodness for a few very good and assiduous reporters in our media--with video:

B.C. politician breaks silence: China detained me, is interfering ‘in our democracy’

A veteran Chinese-Canadian politician is coming forward to reveal that upon landing at the Shanghai airport in November 2015, Chinese authorities improperly detained him, separated him from his wife for eight hours, confiscated and searched his B.C. government phone and accused him of “endangering national security” before cancelling his visa and ordering him to fly back to Canada.

And since his detention, he said, China’s interference in Canadian society has increased in myriad ways, including aggressive attempts to influence our political system and elected leaders, control Chinese-Canadian immigrants, and silence all criticism of Beijing’s policies.

Richard Lee, the B.C. Liberal MLA for Burnaby from 2001 to 2017, provided Global News with a letter outlining his allegations, sent on Jan. 1, 2019, to then-foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Lee’s letter says he had planned to go public with his story after returning to Vancouver from Shanghai, but decided not to “in consideration of the potential damage to the relationship between China and Canada.”

...since 2015, Lee claims he has seen increasing interference in Canada’s political system by China’s government, including private warnings from consular officials that Canadian politicians refrain from speaking out on issues that might anger China.

And after China jailed Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor on vague national security grounds in late 2018, Lee says he felt reminded of the injustice in his own case...
https://globalnews.ca/news/6228973/b-c-politician-richard-lee-china-detained-interfering-democracy/

Mark
Ottawa
 
All you can do  is spend your money on any label that doesn't say made in China.  It is a little thing but at least it helps me not to be hypocritical.  Heck, even our flags say made in China
 
Australians being forced to wake up to Red China menace--note piece on Ireland at end:

Suddenly, the Chinese Threat to Australia Seems Very Real
After a businessman said Chinese agents sought to implant him in Parliament, that revelation and other espionage cases have finally signaled the end of a “let’s get rich together” era.

CANBERRA, Australia — A Chinese defector to Australia who detailed political interference by Beijing. A businessman found dead after telling the authorities about a Chinese plot to install him in Parliament. Suspicious men following critics of Beijing in major Australian cities.

For a country that just wants calm commerce with China — the propellant behind 28 years of steady growth — the revelations of the past week have delivered a jolt.

Fears of Chinese interference once seemed to hover indistinctly over Australia. Now, Beijing’s political ambitions, and the espionage operations that further them, suddenly feel local, concrete and ever-present.

“It’s become the inescapable issue,” said Hugh White, a former intelligence official who teaches strategic studies at the Australian National University. “We’ve underestimated how quickly China’s power has grown along with its ambition to use that power.”
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American officials often describe Australia as a test case, the ally close enough to Beijing to see what could be coming for others.

In public and in private, they’ve pushed Australia’s leaders to confront China more directly — pressure that may only grow after President Trump signed legislation to impose sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials over human rights abuses in Hong Kong.

Even as it confronts the specter of brazen espionage, Australia’s government has yet to draw clear boundaries for an autocratic giant that is both an economic partner and a threat to freedom, a conundrum faced by many countries, but more acutely by Australia.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison continues to insist that Australia need not choose between China and the United States. A new foreign interference law has barely been enforced, and secrecy is so ingrained that even lawmakers and experts lack the in-depth information they need.

As a result, the country’s intelligence agencies have raised alarms about China in ways that most Australian politicians avoid. The agencies have never been flush with expertise on China, including Chinese speakers, yet they are now in charge of disentangling complex claims of nefarious deeds, all vigorously denied by China...[read on]
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/28/world/australia/china-spying-wang-liqiang-nick-zhao.html

Meanwhile CCP is scaring overseas Chinese in Ireland and terrifying the few Uyghurs there:

China has ‘a lot of spies’ in Ireland, activists claim
CHINESE POLITICAL ACTIVISTS LIVING IN IRELAND CLAIM THAT OTHER CHINESE PEOPLE HERE ARE ‘KEEPING AN EYE ON EVERYONE’ FOR SIGNS OF DISLOYALTY TO THE COMMUNIST PARTY

It’s not often that prospective interviewees turn up at The Irish Times wearing face masks and reflector sunglasses, with black baseball hats pulled low over their foreheads. But that’s what happened when three supporters of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong agreed to be interviewed. All living in Dublin, two are from Hong Kong and the other from the Chinese mainland.

“They are killing people,” a woman from Hong Kong says soon after the interview began. “That is what is happening now. The Hong Kong government, and the police, they are really killing people.”

Each of the interviewees is concerned about the potential consequences should it become known that they had spoken with the Irish media. One has already had the experience of losing her job with a Chinese employer in Dublin after her image attending a protest here was posted on Chinese social media.

Over the past fortnight, The Irish Times has been speaking with people from the Tibetan and Hong Kong communities about living in Ireland while being careful not to come to the attention of the Beijing authorities. No one from the small Irish community of Uighur Turkic Muslims, from the northwestern province of Xinjiang, would agree to be interviewed...[lots more]
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/china-has-a-lot-of-spies-in-ireland-activists-claim-1.4097005

Mark
Ottawa


Mark
Ottawa
 
Maclean's Magazine has published numerous articlea about Chinese influence in Canada and the Canadian government's lack of response. I did a quick search on "Startpage" using "macleans trudeau and china" and got a solid 2 1/2 pages of hits with articles outlining the problem.

The issue isn't just the government, Canadians as a whole seem uninterested in the issue (these articles are not hidden in academic journals or behind paywalls) so there is little call for the government to do anything about it. I suspect that the real wake up call will be when the issue is far to deeply entrenched to deal with, we already see Chinese officials apparently coordinating Chinese students in Canadian universities to make counter protests against supporters of the pro democracy protests in Hong Kong. Who knows what else is going on in the background?

Unless and until the public engages in the issue, there will likely be no response by the current government, and probably not buy any future government as well.
 
Thucydides said:
Maclean's Magazine has published numerous articlea about Chinese influence in Canada and the Canadian government's lack of response. I did a quick search on "Startpage" using "macleans trudeau and china" and got a solid 2 1/2 pages of hits with articles outlining the problem ... these articles are not hidden in academic journals or behind paywalls ...
I wonder how different things would be if some people weren't so adamant about wanting the public to not trust MSM like Maclean's? ;)  #FakeNewsBoughtMediaUntilYouAgreeWithIt
 
Now here's something where Justin Trudeau could show that great Canadian "leadership" that the world, in some Canadians' minds, apparently craves--fat chance:

Opinion: The U.S. should boycott Beijing’s 2022 Winter Olympics

The evidence of abuses in the Chinese region of Xinjiang has been mounting over the past year. Testimony from former detainees, satellite imagery and publicly available local government documentation have all pointed to the building of concentration camps, the detention of a million or more Uighurs and other Muslim minorities and rampant abuses against the detained, including torture and sexual violence. Conditions outside the camps are not much better, with a security apparatus that is oppressive and omnipresent.

The recent leak of the Xinjiang Papers — more than 400 pages of internal Chinese government documents — provide proof that China’s leaders are directly responsible for the abuses in Xinjiang. President Xi Jinping undoubtedly set the direction for that policy, with disastrous consequences for China’s Muslims.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Xinjiang Papers showed China’s intent to “effectively erase” the Uighur people. These are strong words and raise the question of whether China’s leaders have genocidal intent. Some reported abuses in Xinjiang — including forced sterilizations and the separation of children from their families — could, indeed, constitute genocide.

The question is what to do about this. The State Department has worked to publicize the plight of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang and has placed visa restrictions on culpable individuals. The Commerce Department has issued a list of Chinese companies complicit in the abuses, barring Americans from doing business with them. The publication of the Xinjiang Papers should encourage the Treasury Department to impose sanctions on senior leaders, including Chen Quanguo, the Xinjiang party boss.

But more must be done. If the United States and other nations are to be successful in convincing China to moderate its policies in Xinjiang, they should target Xi directly. Fortunately, the international community has good leverage to use against him: Beijing will host the 2022 Olympic Winter Games.

The International Olympic Committee should revisit its decision to award the Games to Beijing in light of the overwhelming evidence of Chinese crimes against the people in Xinjiang. Unfortunately, the IOC has shown that it’s incapable of standing up for human rights. That means that the United States and other concerned countries must act.

The Trump administration, with congressional support, should begin working now to build an international coalition that will call on the IOC to move or cancel the Games unless China closes the camps and ends abuses in Xinjiang.

If the IOC refuses to play ball, which is likely, the coalition should be prepared to threaten a boycott of the 2022 Olympics and to hold parallel “Freedom Games” if Beijing does not rapidly alter course. If the Trump administration fails to act, Congress could call on the U.S. Olympic Committee to announce its own boycott. If the committee refuses, Congress should look into revoking its federal charter.

It would be nice to separate sports from politics, but China uses international sport to advance its political interests. Just as Hu Jintao employed the 2008 Summer Games to signal China’s “arrival” on the world stage, Xi will use the 2022 Games to signal to his own people that his “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”is well underway. The 2022 Olympics will be a grand propaganda spectacle in which participating countries will play supporting roles.

A cancellation, relocation or boycott of the Games would mark a significant international and domestic embarrassment for Xi. News of the reasons behind such a development would certainly make its way past China’s Great Firewall. Using the Olympics as leverage could be quite effective because doing so would challenge Xi’s leadership.

If the U.S. fails to find international partners, Washington should be prepared for a solitary boycott. To participate in the Beijing 2022 Games despite the atrocities being committed against the Uighurs would be to acquiesce to those abuses. By standing up for human rights principles, the U.S. could inspire others to follow our lead while showing abusers that, when it comes to defending human rights, America is no paper tiger.

Michael Mazza is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior non-resident fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-11-29/boycott-beijing-2022-olympics-uighurs-camps

Mark
Ottawa
 
Sure, not directly related to China:

ASIO takes lead as spy agencies are put on war footing

An elite intelligence taskforce led by ASIO, the Australian Signals Directorate and Defence intelligence will be created to put the country on a virtual war footing to combat national security threats from an unprecedented level of foreign interference and espionage.

The move will see the role of ASIO expand for the first time to share classified intelligence with Australian Federal Police on foreign interference. The pooling of intelligence — through security investigations conducted by ASIO and criminal investigations under the AFP — will help determine whether charges are laid against foreign targets or whether they are quietly thrown out of the country.

The taskforce will also bring in aerial and satellite intelligence-gathering used by the Defence Department’s Australian Geo­spatial-Intelligence Organisation, as well as drawing on Austrac’s ­financial intelligence capabilities.

The formation of the unit, which will begin with initial new funding of almost $90m, comes amid the Chinese spy scandal involving claims by defector Wang Liqiang that he was a Chinese spy. The validity of Mr Wang’s claims have been questioned as ASIO seeks to confirm his story while confirming that it is also investigating claims China sought to install an agent in Australia’s federal parliament.

The government said the creation of the taskforce was not ­related to the recent claims of Chinese interference and that it had been in development for months. It was, however, signed off by cabinet last week.

Scott Morrison confirmed the establishment of the Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce, saying it would elevate the intelligence agencies’ abilities to detect and disrupt foreign interference attempts and bring prosecutions under criminal espionage offences passed last year.

“Our No 1 priority is to keep Australians safe,” the Prime Minister said. “Our security and intelligence agencies have been clear that the threat from foreign interference has never been greater.

“This taskforce is our next step to combat those threats as they evolve and to identify and disrupt the very people who want to undermine our democracy and way of life. My government is constantly monitoring and reviewing the threats our country faces so our agencies have the right tools at their disposal.”..
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/asio-takes-lead-as-spy-agencies-are-put-onwar-footing/news-story/85ca619855e98408a03689fbc8be012f

Mark
Ottawa

 
MarkOttawa said:
Sure, not directly related to China:

Mark
Ottawa

Story not behind paywall:

Spies called in to oversee taskforce amid heightened foreign interference threat
Australia's domestic spy agency ASIO will lead a new taskforce aimed at strengthening Australia's response to the threat of foreign interference.

Key points:

    The Government will spend almost $88 million to crack down on foreign interference
    It comes amid warnings foreign interference poses a greater threat than terrorism
    A spy-lead taskforce will oversee Australia's efforts to counter foreign efforts

The Federal Government plans to spend almost $88 million to establish a new Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce.

The taskforce will expand the resources of the National Counter Foreign Interference Coordinator — which sits within the Home Affair Department — to help "disrupt and deter anyone attempting to undermine our national interests".

"This threat has been evolving and we have been staying ahead of it by building that capability now over many years, and most recently this initiative, which improves the collaboration, ensures that the tools they have are world-class and they can work together to identify, disrupt and prosecute," Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

The taskforce will be led by a senior Australian Security Intelligence Organisation officer, and include investigators from the Australian Federal Police and staff from a range of security agencies.

The Government intends for it to increase intelligence collection, assessment, law enforcement capabilities and collaboration and decision-making between agencies to result in more disruptions of possible interference.

It comes amid heightened national security concerns raised by allegations of Chinese espionage, influence over political parties and multiple cyber attacks on universities and federal agencies.

Shortly before retiring earlier this year, outgoing ASIO director-general Duncan Lewis said foreign interference presented a greater threat than terrorism.

The taskforce comes a week after it was revealed Chinese man Wang Liqiang was seeking political asylum in Australia after going public with allegations about Chinese spying.

The Government has dismissed suggestions the taskforce was in response to that case, and insisted it had been under development for months.

It also comes amid suggestions China was grooming Bo "Nick" Zhao to be a Chinese spy inside Australia's Parliament.

He was found dead in a Melbourne motel room in March after reportedly approaching ASIO.

"On the advice that I've received, I don't have any concern in relation to issues domestically... in relation to this particular matter," Mr Dutton told reporters in Canberra on Monday.

"I think the [ASIO] director-general, though, will have something further to say in due course, and I'll let that investigation run its course...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-02/asio-to-lead-foreign-interference-taskforce/11756060

Of course this is all related to China. Will Justin Trudeau and our compradors ever wake up and smell the Maotai?

Mark
Ottawa
 

Attachments

Meng bemoans her sorry state, yet waxes philosophically on the opportunities it gives her for personal reflection and self-improvement. One wonders what Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor might say about their situations as they semi-rot in jail in China, not in a mansion with lots of freedom of movement and other liberties.

Funny old world. Know your enemies and stand fast. Got that, Justin and the Compradors?

Mark
Ottawa
 
And now the Globe and Mail, which has been hard on the China case for quite a few years, lets loose with both barrels:

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

The one silver lining in the extradition case against Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, now entering its second year, is that Beijing’s behaviour has awakened Canadians – including senior members of the Trudeau government – to the nature of China’s Communist Party regime. Many in Ottawa and the business community had talked themselves into believing fantasies about the hard men who run Beijing. Some imagined that, although China might play rough with other countries, Canada would somehow be entitled to special treatment.

Instead, Beijing has spent the last year giving Canada a special education in how it sees our not-at-all special relationship.

We should be thankful for the lessons. The Trudeau government, and the entire political and business establishment, must study them carefully. It may allow this country to finally get over its China delusions.

China, and the Communist regime that runs it, are not going anywhere. We will have to deal with them, hopefully on peaceful and respectful terms, for a long time to come. But the starting point for the relationship has to be Canada being honest with itself about who we are dealing with.

When Canada followed the rules of its extradition treaty with its closest ally, Beijing had no hesitation in taking two of our citizens hostage – there is no other way to describe what happened to Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig – with the price of ransom being Ms. Meng’s release.

All the decades’ worth of treacly odes to Dr. Norman Bethune, Mao’s pet Canadian; all the gratitude Canada supposed it was owed for early recognition of the Communist regime; all the alleged reverence for Trudeau père that allegedly would carry over to Trudeau fils – all turned out to be worth exactly nothing.

Totalitarian dictatorships are not sentimental. That’s not something Canada should have had to learn.

The two Michaels are of course still locked up, and there is no sign of their release. Yet despite the importance of their condition, the long-term goal of Canada’s China foreign policy is bigger than securing the safe return of two innocents.

Canada of course has to continue to demand their release. But it is essential that Ottawa understand that our prisoners in Beijing are also levers that can be used to pressure Canada into going silent on other matters – human rights, the rule of law, Chinese spying, Hong Kong, and a long list of worries that Washington and other Western governments have – in favour of focusing on what China wants, and how it wants Canada to behave so as to avoid being subjected to future hostage-takings.

Canada has never had a relationship like this. The Soviet Union was a superpower, but it was also a clear adversary. We joined the world’s most important military alliance to oppose it, and it was part of a separate economic system, with which we had almost no trade. The lines between the two worlds were thick and bright.

China, in contrast, is part of all of the formerly “Western” or “developed” world’s main institutions. It is our second-most important economic relationship, after the United States. And China is an economic success story; its growth over the past four decades has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

Yet China is also run by a regime that operates rather similar to how the Trump administration would if it were unfettered by such basic constraints as elections, independent judges, free speech or the rule of law [A STUPID BUT SADLY NECESSARY SOP TO MAINTAIN CREDIBILITY WITH CERTAIN CANADIANS].

While there was a time when its party dictatorship appeared to be moving closer to democratic norms, with the Communist Party dispensing with cults of personality and loosening party control, under Xi Jinping that trend is aggressively reversing. It is now clear that Beijing joined the international community’s institutions without sharing the international community’s practices and values.

To survive in this new world, Canada needs allies and alliances. Beijing has become expert at playing divide-and-conquer, punishing those who don’t do as they’re told and rewarding those that go along to get along. And too many, including Canada, have too often been too ready to go along.

From Sussex Drive to Bay Street, a lot of people would like nothing better than for the past year’s nastiness to be forgotten. But that would mean forgetting all the valuable lessons learned.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-beijings-harshness-is-forcing-canada-to-rethink-its-china-delusions/

Mark
Ottawa
 
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