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Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread

GR66 said:
More Chinese aggression against the Philippines in the South China Sea:

China Attacks Philippine Ship, Injures Crew in Latest Escalation of South China Sea Standoff - USNI News

Chinese ships blasted water cannons at ships on Manila’s latest resupply mission to the South China Sea outpost on Second Thomas Shoal today, resulting in an unspecified number of injuries and heavy damage onboard one of the Philippine vessels. The resupply mission was publicly revealed by the...
news.usni.org news.usni.org
Click to expand...
We need to sell them an old icebreaker that can bulldoze it's way through.
 
www.theglobeandmail.com

Opinion: On foreign interference, Canada has been a sitting duck

Institutionally and otherwise, the country has become vulnerable to foreign entities’ efforts to project their will
www.theglobeandmail.com www.theglobeandmail.com

On foreign interference, Canada has been a sitting duck.​

ANDREW COYNE
PUBLISHED YESTERDAY.
The opening day of the second round of public hearings of the Foreign Interference Commission – and the first to get at the meat of the issue – was about as heart-rending as might be imagined.

Foreign interference, as we have been learning, takes many forms: not just the election meddling that was the proximate cause of the inquiry, but propaganda and disinformation, spying and – the subject of Wednesday’s hearing – intimidation.

Representatives of the various diaspora communities most affected – Chinese, Russian, Iranian, Indian – testified of the threats, violence and other coercive tactics to which they have been subjected by agents of their respective countries of origin, including threats against family members still there.

More to the point, they testified of the indifference and inaction that greeted them when they sought the protection of Canadian authorities: the police officers who told them there was nothing they could do, the political parties who refused to take up their cause, the governments that appeared to actively collude in their repression – from the City of Ottawa banning protests outside the Chinese embassy to the federal Immigration department granting residency permits to former high-ranking officials in the Iranian regime.

Indeed, the inquiry itself – so long delayed, so reluctantly conceded – was in danger of becoming a part of this depressing litany, after Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue granted full “party” standing to two political figures suspected of ties to the Chinese government, including the right to cross-examine witnesses, while confining the Conservative Party, identified in intelligence reports as one of the principal victims of Chinese interference, to “intervener” status. The damage was mitigated by subsequent decisions partially reversing these, but the commission will have a lingering trust deficit to overcome.

No doubt the inquiry will tell us more about the astonishing scope and scale of these foreign powers’ efforts to project their will in Canada. We’ve already learned a great deal from news reports: everything from Russian disinformation campaigns to China’s infiltration of a top-security infectious disease laboratory to India’s alleged involvement in the murder of a Sikh activist.

The commission, for its part, will have enough work on its hands just tracking, as its formal name describes it, Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions, notably in the last two elections. Leaked intelligence reports have suggested China, in particular, took a hand in promoting candidates, mostly Liberal, considered friendly to Chinese interests, while spreading misinformation about candidates, mostly Conservative, considered hostile.
Most serious of all are reports that China succeeded in securing nominations for particular candidates, or in planting agents as staffers close to others. India, too, is alleged to have clandestinely provided funding, along with China, to a candidate in the last Conservative leadership race, through the bulk purchase of party memberships.

Canada is hardly alone in being a target of these efforts. Every day seems to turn up another example of Chinese infiltration or Russian disinformation or Indian intimidation campaigns in one Western country or another. The difference would appear to lie in the response. In other countries, arrests have been made, charges have been filed. In other countries, laws have been passed, such as the foreign agent registries that are now established parts of the counter-intelligence efforts of the United States, Australia and (soon) Britain.

In Canada, by contrast, the Trudeau government has only belatedly even acknowledged it as a problem. Perhaps it is too much to expect that we could spot every foreign spy or intercept every attempt to interfere in our elections. But we do seem to have left ourselves peculiarly open to such efforts. If the notorious incuriosity of Justin Trudeau and his ministers about Chinese interference is part of the problem, so is an institutional vulnerability that long predates them.

In no other democratic country, for example, are nomination and leadership races quite such free-for-alls as in Canada, so entirely lacking in regulatory supervision, so transparently purchasable – including by foreign actors. Couple that with the many safe ridings across much of the country – more than half of all federal ridings (182 to be exact) have returned an MP from the same party in at least six of the last seven elections – and it is easy to see how a foreign power might infiltrate Parliament. One stacked nomination meeting and you’re in.

That’s but one example of the many loopholes in our electoral laws and campaign finance regulations that might be exploited by hostile powers. The election integrity watchdog Democracy Watch has identified many others, along with suggesting a list of witnesses for the inquiry and the questions they might be asked.

To these add those basics: What’s the problem? How did it happen? What was done about it? Who knew what when? And why didn’t they do more?
Click to expand...
 
So the task force the Feds set up to detect foreign interference on our elections reported internally on interference attempts by Beijing, but did not report this to the parties. When the CPC reported suspected interference on the ground, their concerns were dismissed by this same task force. WTF?

www.theglobeandmail.com

Political parties kept in dark about Chinese foreign interference in 2019 and 2021 elections

Senior bureaucrats on election security task force failed to disclose threats from China
www.theglobeandmail.com www.theglobeandmail.com

Political parties kept in dark about Chinese foreign interference in 2019 and 2021 elections​

ROBERT FIFE OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF
STEVEN CHASE SENIOR PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER
OTTAWA

The group of senior bureaucrats responsible for detecting threats to the 2021 federal election failed to share explicit intelligence about Chinese state interference that was aimed at electing sympathetic MPs and targeting Conservative candidates, the public inquiry into foreign meddling heard Tuesday.
Documents tabled at the commission on foreign interference show that the Security and Intelligence Threat to Elections Task Force, known as SITE and comprised of senior civil servants, had classified intelligence that outlined sophisticated Chinese state influence operations in Canadian democracy.
A July, 2021, SITE document, written before the election was called on Aug. 15, said the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “is highly capable, motivated, and acts in a sophisticated, pervasive manner in carrying out foreign interference operations … to further party state interests.”


The document, titled “SITE briefing to secret cleared federal political parties,” went on to say China “covertly directs financial and voting support for favourable candidates” who are viewed as pro-China or do not “openly oppose viewpoints important to the PRC.” The vote was held on Sept. 20, with the Liberals returning with another minority government.
This information was never shared with the senior representatives of the Liberal, Conservative and New Democratic parties who received national-security clearances to be briefed on foreign interference in the 2021 election.
“I don’t recall getting this document,” said Walied Soliman, chair of Norton Rose Fulbright law firm and co-chair of the Conservative Party’s 2021 campaign. “I think any political party would have been alarmed by that statement and would have at the very least been engaged and asked a lot of questions to try to develop some sort of strategy to at least institutionalize the monitoring of that.”

​


Liberal Party national director Azam Ishmael and former NDP party director Anne McGrath, now principal secretary to Leader Jagmeet Singh, also said they don’t recall ever seeing the document.

The SITE document also noted that there was foreign interference, largely from China, in certain ridings during the 2019 election.
“If there was any sense that there was going to be activity by the People’s Republic of China against Parliament and certain MPs and interference in certain ridings, it would have been useful to know that,” Ms. McGrath said.
Mr. Ishmael said the briefings provided by SITE, which included Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers, were not particularly informative or “actionable.” He characterized the meetings as “cybersecurity 101.”

Another SITE document written later in the campaign explained how China and its proxies were targeting Conservative candidates over the party’s election platform that took an anti-Beijing stand. Party leader Erin O’Toole had called for a foreign-agent registry, tough action against forced labour of Uyghurs in China, a ban on Huawei Technologies gear and the withdrawal of Canada from the Asian Development Bank.


Again, this information was never shared with the three party representatives, the inquiry heard.
“If there is a specific or a potential of specific threat … we would have institutionalized at some level of monitoring of what was going on,” Mr. Soliman said.
Halfway through the election, Mr. Soliman said the party started “getting information on a few targeted ridings where there seemed to be campaigns of misinformation that appeared to be advanced by actors that the local campaigns couldn’t identify.”
He told campaign activists to get back to work, believing that SITE would have warned him if there were serious Chinese state operations against the Conservatives. “If there was something serious that was happening someone would let us know,” he said.


A few days after the election, Mr. Soliman said they gathered as much information as they could about what had happened in a number of ridings. They wrote to SITE that they believed Chinese foreign interference played a role in the defeat of Conservatives in 13 ridings.
On Monday night, Mr. Soliman was shown an October, 2021, SITE document that dismissed the Conservative complaints, claiming the Conservatives were unhappy that officials would not declare “there was organized and covert” foreign interference that had cost them the election.
“Rarely do I get upset,” Mr. Soliman said after reading the document. “At no time did Erin O’Toole or any member of his team try to make a Trumpian assertion that the election was lost to the Conservatives by election interference.”
It was only in 2023 that the Conservatives finally learned that China had interfered in the campaign from top secret and secret documents obtained by The Globe and Mail.
“My principal complaint is that two years after the election, I learned from a news story through The Globe and Mail that information … was inconsistent with what we were told at that time,” Mr. Soliman said. “So yes, was I frustrated? Absolutely.”


The Globe and Mail wrote 17 articles about foreign interference last year, mostly based on debriefings from national-security sources and leaked top secret and secret documents from CSIS. The documents illustrated how an orchestrated Chinese state machine was operating in Canada with two primary aims: to ensure that a minority Liberal government was returned in 2021, and that certain Conservative candidates identified by China were defeated.
The intelligence reports showed that Beijing employed disinformation campaigns and proxies connected to Chinese-Canadian organizations in Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area.
Click to expand...
 
RangerRay said:
So the task force the Feds set up to detect foreign interference on our elections reported internally on interference attempts by Beijing, but did not report this to the parties. When the CPC reported suspected interference on the ground, their concerns were dismissed by this same task force. WTF?

www.theglobeandmail.com

Political parties kept in dark about Chinese foreign interference in 2019 and 2021 elections

Senior bureaucrats on election security task force failed to disclose threats from China
www.theglobeandmail.com www.theglobeandmail.com
Click to expand...
I think we all know why we aren't being told anything. This was set up years ago when the Chretien regime was in place.
 
QV said:
How does one not recall that exactly? This answer guarantees he said it. Han Dong, a member of the current GoC, was a party to the jailing of Canadian citizens in a foreign country.
Click to expand...
so why have no treason charges been laid
 
Han Dong's activities don't meet the elements of offence for Treason in Canada. I'm guessing he is coached how to skirt legal trouble by his handlers.
 
QV said:
Han Dong's activities don't meet the elements of offence for Treason in Canada. I'm guessing he is coached how to skirt legal trouble by his handlers.
Click to expand...
I just hope that he and his ilk are thrown out of office come election time.
 
For those more knowledgeable about legal matters, is treason a harder offence to prove in Canada than, say, in the U.S.or U.K.?
 
JLB50 said:
For those more knowledgeable about legal matters, is treason a harder offence to prove in Canada than, say, in the U.S.or U.K.?
Click to expand...
Well here is what the Criminal Code defines as High Treason and Treason.

Essentially... short of regicide, attempted regicide, assisting and enemy we are at war with, using or advocating force to overthrow the government, sharing scientific or military information that could harm the safety of Canada, or assisting a person in any of the above.... its not Treason.

It could fall into the realm of Sedition, but that would take a lot of legal wrangling to prove.

The Elections Act and Security of Information Act would have more detail on those who assist with foreign interference in an election, however, from my cursory glances, not as harshly punished as Treason or Sedition.
 
JLB50 said:
For those more knowledgeable about legal matters, is treason a harder offence to prove in Canada than, say, in the U.S.or U.K.?
Click to expand...
Well here is what the Criminal Code defines as High Treason and Treason.

Essentially... short of regicide, attempted regicide, assisting an enemy we are at war with, using or advocating force to overthrow the government, sharing scientific or military information that could harm the safety of Canada, or assisting a person in any of the above.... its not Treason.

It could fall into the realm of Sedition, but that would take a lot of legal wrangling to prove.

The Elections Act and Security of Information Act would have more detail on those who assist with foreign interference in an election, however, from my cursory glances, not as harshly punished as Treason or Sedition
 
This fucking guy.

Han Dong says international students voted en masse in his 2019 Liberal nomination​

Independent MP Han Dong said he was suddenly reminded by his wife days before his testimony at the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference that a bus of international students, likely of Chinese descent, had voted in his nomination contest for Toronto’s Don Valley North riding in 2019.
Click to expand...

He did know about any buses.
Then he remembered his wife hired a bus
Then he remembered maybe it was two buses.
He doesn't remember who hired the third bus.
And he can’t recall telling China’s envoy to delay two Michaels’ release.

🙄

Don't forget all the coverage of this guy was due to racism.

The Media’s Coverage Of Alleged Chinese Interference Is Racist​

 
The Trudeau government knew it was happening but assessed they would benefit from it, so did nothing. That is who we have running the country right now. I don't know how many people truly think about that.

Some people balk at my posts about election malfeasance in the US - the purest of pure processes in all history apparently. While up in Canada we have this going on with the sitting government and a largely compliant media early in the revelations obfuscating, delaying, or watering down the implications. But thanks to some real Canadians in CSIS, the cat is out of the bag and people have dug into it and some media are loudly broadcasting it.

Our PM allowed election interference and malfeasance, and got caught out. It is antithetic to democracy and freedom.
 
From yesterday’s testimony.

www.theglobeandmail.com

Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole says China foreign interference cost party multiple seats in 2021 election

MPs targeted by China tell inquiry that government officials failed to share intelligence on Beijing’s influence activities
www.theglobeandmail.com www.theglobeandmail.com

Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole says China foreign interference cost party multiple seats in 2021 election​

ROBERT FIFE OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF
STEVEN CHASE SENIOR PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER
OTTAWA
PUBLISHED YESTERDAY



Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole told Canada’s foreign-interference inquiry his party was targeted by a deluge of misinformation orchestrated by China and its proxies that led to the defeat of up to nine candidates in the 2021 election.
The Foreign Interference Commission heard Wednesday from Mr. O’Toole, two sitting MPs and a defeated parliamentarian who said senior government officials responsible for the integrity of the 2021 election campaign failed to share intelligence on Beijing’s meddling.
In testimony before the inquiry, Mr. O’Toole stressed that he does not believe that Chinese interference changed the outcome of the vote that produced a Liberal minority.


But he said voters in certain ridings were affected by this meddling and government officials in charge of election integrity knew about it but never issued a warning to the public or the political parties.

Commission counsel showed Mr. O’Toole documents from the Security and Intelligence Threats Election Task Force, known as SITE and comprised of senior civil servants, that outlined Beijing-directed efforts to spread disinformation against the Conservatives over the party’s hawkish campaign platform against China.
“We were not informed of that,” he said.
Even when his campaign raised the disinformation campaign with SITE, it was played down, he said. “Clearly, they knew some of the instances we were reporting were actually occurring but that was never confirmed to us in the campaign or after.”

A Sept. 13 SITE document noted that WeChat, the Chinese-language, social-media app, was sharing the narrative that Mr. O’Toole “almost wants to break diplomatic relations” and some Chinese media commentary stated that “Chinese Canadians are scared of the Conservative platform.”
“These issues were always downplayed when we raised them with SITE,” Mr. O’Toole said.
He said he would have liked to see SITE issue a public warning and he had even thought about doing it himself, but feared it would be used as an anti-China wedge issue in the campaign.
“We now know that there was evidence of misinformation but there was no notice, no warning given,” he said. “A notice would have been useful to people who were being targeted because these sites with algorithms controlled by foreign governments, those are the people who are vulnerable and at risk.”

A document tabled with the inquiry showed that in the week before the 2021 election, a unit with the Department of Global Affairs assigned to detect foreign state-sponsored disinformation, observed “what may be a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) information operation that aims to discourage Canadians of Chinese heritage from voting for the Conservative Party of Canada.” There is no indication that Mr. O’Toole was informed of this.
Mr. O’Toole said he made the seat-projection losses based on Conservative Party modelling that showed his party should have won about 127 seats but ended up with 119. The party lost the vote largely on the issue of vaccine mandates, he said, but argued that foreign interference cost them between five to nine seats, “where we had large numbers of people not voting.”
“For people in those seats, if they were undergoing intimidation or suppression measures, their democratic rights were trampled on by foreign actors. Certainly it was serious,” he said. “I think a lot of people didn’t vote because they were intimidated.”
Mr. O’Toole said he believed the party was targeted by Beijing because of its platform, which called for a foreign-agent registry, a ban on Huawei Technologies in domestic telecoms, withdrawal from the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and included criticism of Chinese repression of Muslim Uyghurs and support for the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement.


In the aftermath of the election, SITE produced a document in December, 2021, that said the “People’s Republic of China sought to clandestinely and deceptively influence Canada’s 2021 election.” The same document talked about social-media attacks on Mr. O’Toole and former Vancouver-area MP Kenny Chiu, who was defeated in that campaign.
Mr. O’Toole said none of the information was shared with him even after the party provided SITE with detailed accounts of what it alleged were foreign-influence operations in 13 ridings.
“These conclusions so quickly after the election show that some people within intelligence and in government knew what we were raising were valid and real issues,” he said.
Mr. O’Toole said it was only last year when The Globe and Mail published articles, based on classified Canadian Security Intelligence Service documents and national-security officials, that he became aware of the extent of Chinese intervention in the 2021 campaign.
After The Globe revealed last May that Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong was targeted by China in the 2021 election, CSIS informed Mr. O’Toole and NDP MP Jenny Kwan that they also had been part of the Chinese interference operations.


The former leader said the election results probably led to his ouster as Conservative Party leader. Had he won 127 seats, he probably could have survived, but having won two fewer seats than predecessor Andrew Scheer doomed him, he said.
Mr. Chong told the inquiry CSIS never told him he was being targeted by China during the 2021 election campaign. The spy service only told him after The Globe reported in May that a Chinese diplomat had been gathering information on him and his family in Hong Kong. The Chinese diplomat, Zhao Wei, was expelled after The Globe’s report.
Mr. Chong said he believed China was upset with him for two motions that Parliament passed: one calling for the Huawei ban and another declaring that Beijing was committing genocide against its Muslim Uyghur minority.
“I never knew at that juncture nor did I during the last election that I was actually clandestinely, corrosively and corruptly being targeted by the government of the PRC here on Canadian soil,” he said. “Had I known I would have gone on high alert during that election.”
Ms. Kwan told the inquiry that after she criticized Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong, she noticed a “seismic shift” in her relationship with what she called the “big five” Chinese community groups in Vancouver. She was not invited to cultural events in her riding and community leaders began to shun her.


“What was glaringly obvious was that I myself, as a Chinese Canadian who is in the riding, was not invited” to events, she said. She testified that she believed it was the result of the Chinese consulate’s attempt to punish her outspokenness.
Ms. Kwan said many of her constituents “have this fear in their hearts” when they speak to her, worrying that the Chinese consulate and their proxies would punish them or their families if they support the Vancouver East MP. She told the inquiry that during the 2021 election campaign, constituents, donors and supporters told her they were fearful about voting for her because she had previously protested in front of the Chinese consulate.
Ms. Kwan also recounted her complaint to Canada’s election watchdog about what she describes as a free lunch by community leader Fred Kwok in support of her Liberal opponent during the 2021 campaign. Mr. Kwok used WeChat to offer free food to anyone who came and the language used in the invitation was pro-Beijing, she said.
Ms. Kwan said she went to CSIS to see if this was a foreign-interference operation but never heard back from the spy agency.
Last week, Commissioner of Canada Elections Caroline Simard, who investigates electoral wrongdoing, said the Liberal candidate’s campaign agent paid a $500 fine for not declaring the event as an election expense.
In his testimony, former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu, a critic of Beijing, said foreign interference by China was a significant factor in his 2021 election loss in the riding of Steveston-Richmond East. Chinese-language social media labelled him a “race traitor” and white supremacist supporter, he said, and posts circulating on Chinese-language social media said he was anti-China.
Mr. Chiu said his treatment by Chinese-language media was different from their treatment of his Liberal Party opponent. For example, he said, during the 2021 campaign, his opponent had an in-studio interview and profile on Vancouver Chinese radio. Mr. Chiu was never profiled, even though one of the co-founders of the station knew him and had his personal contact information.
He said community organizations such as the Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations and the Canadian Community Service Association also shunned him.
Mr. Chiu said he no longer received invitations for meetings with them or their leaders. People who previously supported him refused to take his calls, did not respond to his messages and would not meet with him.
The commission presented documents that show even Chinese-language media in the Greater Toronto Area were attacking Mr. Chiu as anti-Chinese.
“I was exposed and the government doesn’t seem to care and now through the commission, I learned they knew all about it. It was almost like I was drowning and they were watching,” Mr. Chiu told the inquiry.
Click to expand...
 
Jarnhamar said:
This fucking guy.

Han Dong says international students voted en masse in his 2019 Liberal nomination​



He did know about any buses.
Then he remembered his wife hired a bus
Then he remembered maybe it was two buses.
He doesn't remember who hired the third bus.
And he can’t recall telling China’s envoy to delay two Michaels’ release.

🙄

Don't forget all the coverage of this guy was due to racism.

The Media’s Coverage Of Alleged Chinese Interference Is Racist​

Click to expand...
We could do a Dr Seuss book

"Bus and Bus"?
 
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