China is warning of “consequences” for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government unless it stops spreading “lies and false information” about alleged interference in Canadian affairs.
The Chinese embassy in Ottawa issued a stern statement on Friday, a day after Canada announced a public inquiry into meddling by China, Russia and other state and non-state actors in Canadian national elections in 2019 and 2021.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday he will “willingly” testify before the public inquiry into foreign election interference if he’s asked.
“Willingly and with very much enthusiasm,” Trudeau told reporters at a news conference in Singapore.
“I think it’s important for Canadians to know exactly everything this government has been doing in regards to foreign interference and to talk frankly about the challenges that we continue to face in our democracies around the world.”
Just don’t ask him about China.
The former head of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) department responsible for engaging with foreign political parties met with multiple federal cabinet ministers and the national security adviser to the prime minister during a 2018 visit to Canada. This CCP department was recently designated an “intelligence service” by a German federal intelligence agency.
The International Department of the Central Committee of the CCP, also known as the International Liaison Department (ILD), operates “de facto as an intelligence service of the People’s Republic of China and is therefore part of the Chinese intelligence apparatus,” says a “Safety Notice for Politics and Administration” in German.
Hardly anyone cares, because it all seems so far away during the summer, but the news of the week is most likely the crash of China. Real estate, currency, stock markets, technology, demographics: it all fits together, and what lies ahead for China looks like stagnation at best.
Justice Marie-Josée Hogue of the Quebec Court of Appeal will chair a public inquiry into foreign interference in Canada’s elections, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc announced Thursday.
Hogue’s first report is due Feb. 29 and her mandate will focus on alleged acts of interference by China and other states, including Russia, he said.
Former governor general David Johnston was tasked with looking into allegations that China tried to meddle in the past two federal elections. He resigned from the position in June, saying his role had become too muddled in political controversy for him to continue.
I have zero faith in this farce, it’s like asking Al Capone to investigate bootlegging.
A draft law banning speech and dressing “detrimental to the spirit of Chinese people” has sparked debate in China.
If the law comes into force, people found guilty could be fined or jailed but the proposal does not yet spell out what constitutes a violation.
Social media users and legal experts have called for more clarity to avoid excessive enforcement.
China recently released a swathe of proposed changes to its public security laws – the first reforms in decades.
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping is rapidly militarizing his country and has instructed its army to “prepare for war” and “fight and win” it. Just a few weeks ago, China expert (full disclosure: and Gatestone Senior Fellow) Gordon Chang warned:
“Chinese ruler Xi Jinping replaced the senior leadership of China’s Rocket Force, which is responsible for almost all of China’s 400 or so nuclear warheads. These personnel changes are part of what is almost certainly the most ominous development of this time. It looks like Xi is contemplating using or at least threatening to use his most destructive weapons. In other words, China is planning to go to war.
“Xi sacked Rocket Force commander, Li Yuchao, and its political commissar, Xu Zhongbo. Neither has been seen in public since. Li’s deputy, Liu Guangbin, has also disappeared, along with Zhang Zhenzhong, a former deputy. At about the same time, Wu Guohua, deputy commander of the Rocket Force, reportedly took his own life in early July.”
Xi is doubtless weighing the risk-reward ratio of launching an aggressive operation against Taiwan during US President Joe Biden’s term of office. Xi is doubtless aware that his “window of opportunity” may be closing in 18 months, accompanied by a felicitously distracting US presidential election.
Former Canadian fighter pilots face RCMP probe over training work in China
The RCMP are investigating three former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilots who are training military and civilian pilots in China, even though their employer, a South African flying academy, insists no sensitive information is being passed on to Chinese authorities.
The work the three pilots are doing in China has also come under scrutiny from Canadian security officials, who reached out to the former top guns in late August. The Department of National Defence says it referred the matter to the RCMP.
WASHINGTON—Chinese nationals, sometimes posing as tourists, have accessed military bases and other sensitive sites in the U.S. as many as 100 times in recent years, according to U.S. officials, who describe the incidents as a potential espionage threat.
The Defense Department, FBI and other agencies held a review last year to try to limit these incidents, which involve people who officials have dubbed gate-crashers because of their attempts—either by accident or intentionally—to get onto U.S. military bases and other installations without proper authorization. They range from Chinese nationals found crossing into a U.S. missile range in New Mexico to what appeared to be scuba divers swimming in murky waters near a U.S. government rocket-launch site in Florida.
The company recently removed thousands of CCP mouthpieces from its platforms.
Meta recently took “what appears to be the largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world,” off its platforms, according to the company’s quarterly Adversarial Threat Report released this week.’
The social media accounts that made up the covert influence operation — collectively dubbed “Spamouflage” — were active all over the world, including in America, major U.S. allies, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has instructed three of the founding investors of Wealth One Bank of Canada to divest their shares, and has also ordered the financial institution to comply with extraordinary national-security conditions intended to firewall its operations against the trio, who have faced federal scrutiny over alleged links to the Chinese government.
The three men, Toronto insurance executive Shenglin Xian, Vancouver property developer Morris Chen and Toronto grocery tycoon Yuangsheng Ou Yang, were told in April to sell their shares in the bank. Wealth One has also been ordered to sever all ties with the three, and to put in place stringent security measures to guard against money laundering and unauthorized sharing of sensitive information.
Laurentian elite firewall?
Are we ready for the consequences of China’s collapse?
The most salutary and enduring effect Donald Trump’s presidency had on Washington was that it put the entire town into a new attitude of realism about China. While Trump conducted a phony trade war with China — one that he concluded by begging Chairman Xi to buy more soybeans from swing states — the rest of D.C. started noticing how belligerent China was on the world stage, with its “wolf warrior” diplomacy. Legislators started to put the screws to China and its multinational corporate partners for their participation in the oppression of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region. The Biden administration kept many of the remaining anti-Chinese tariffs and then set about trying to cut China off from even participating in the future development of advanced microprocessors. Elbridge Colby became a fixture across much of Washington for his book, The Strategy of Denial, which outlined the seriousness of China’s military buildup and the limited resources the U.S. had to meet a potential threat in the Pacific theater. His book was respected if not exactly heeded, as the U.S. then recommitted itself to being the lead actor in European security.
Please remember to donate to Blazingcatfur’s fundraiser.
While Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault was in Beijing this week, ostensibly to discuss ways China and Canada can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, a new report warned China is massively expanding it use of coal to produce power.
MP Michael Chong is about to appear in a unique locale for a Canadian Opposition politician: a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington.
American lawmakers studying foreign interference by China have taken an interest in Chong’s case and invited him to testify. He has agreed to appear before the congressional-executive commission on China on Sept. 12.
Members of the commission reached out to the Ontario Conservative after reading media reports about his family being targeted by Beijing.
I hope he names the LPC as an arm of the ChiComs.
Please remember to donate to Blazingcatfur’s fundraiser
While Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault was in Beijing this week to discuss ways China and Canada can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, one of China’s major state-run media organizations wrote an editorial headlined “Western concerns about China’s coal power growth unnecessary.”
