The truth in Xi's 'very naive' insult to Trudeau
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, Jackson Doherty is joined by Charles Burton, a senior fellow at the McDonnell-Laurier Institute and an expert on Canadian-Chinese relations, to talk about what it was like to be a Chinese student in Canada in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Transcript
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I'm joined by Charles Burton, who is a senior fellow at the McDonnell-Laurier Institute
00:01:30.800
and an expert on Canadian-Chinese relations, which is great because China is in the news
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very much with allegations of Chinese meddling in Canadian elections and a testy exchange
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between our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, recently at
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We're going to talk about that exchange between Xi and Justin Trudeau, but I wanted to start
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You were a student at one point in China, and I was wondering if you could tell us when
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that was and what your impressions were of the country then, specifically its political
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Well, when Canada established diplomatic relations with China in 1970, there was a program agreed
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to by our Minister of External Affairs and the Chinese Premier of the State Council, Zhou
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Enlai, to exchange 10 students from each country.
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So, I was one of the 10 in my year who was sent to study in China.
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I'd already learned Chinese at Cambridge University, so I was able to, you know, fit into the program
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This was the class of 77, which actually entered university in 1978.
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It was the first class that had entered university in China after the disruption of the Cultural Revolution.
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Most of my roommates and classmates were about 30 years old, having graduated high school, you
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know, 65, 66, 67, and then getting into university in 78.
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At that time, you know, it was a very optimistic period.
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When I first got there, there were portraits of Chairman Mao and his successor, Hua Guofeng,
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above the blackboard in the classroom in about the same place in my elementary school classroom
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where we had a portrait of Her Majesty the Queen.
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But the ideological restrictions were gradually being removed, and the professors at the university
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who had been sent out to labor in the people's communes or were working in factories or in prison
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were gradually what they referred to as rehabilitated and returned to work in the university.
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So I had an opportunity to have a lot of access to very distinguished Chinese scholars
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who had, you know, become prominent before the revolution in 1949
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who had just been returned to university after 10 years of, you know, prison or hard labor hell.
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I studied the history of Chinese ancient thought in the philosophy department,
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But, you know, there was still a lot of politics there.
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You know, we still labored in the people's commune fields as part of the curriculum.
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But there was great optimism among the students about the future of China,
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the end of the policies of repressive revolution,
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and the prospect of bringing China into the global community
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as a democratic nation that had enormous potential.
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Unfortunately, by the 1980s, that dream was shattered,
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but at the time I was there, it was an extremely good time.
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And I would say that, you know, the opportunity for a Canadian
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to so fully integrate into the Chinese society and university has long passed.
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I mean, I had the same conditions pretty much as any of the domestic students.
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The Chinese authorities wouldn't allow a Canadian to get so close and so intimate
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I stayed there for four years with virtually no contact to Canada over that period
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because, you know, this is pre-internet and pre-easy long-distance telephoning
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and came back to Canada really quite transformed by the experience.
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So you've established yourself as one of the great critics of Chinese policy here in Canada.
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I was wondering if you could talk about the formation of those views.
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And how much of it was during your time working there in the diplomatic service?
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Well, you know, certainly I was very pleased to see the economic rise of China.
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You know, when I was a student there, everything was rationed, particularly food.
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I lost an awful lot of weight while I was there because the rice ration just wasn't enough.
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And I eventually had my family mail food in from Canada.
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But, you know, when I was working in the embassy, I was very much taken with the idea
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that if Chinese people became aware of how a democratic society like Canada works,
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that this is something that they would want for their country.
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So, you know, we put a lot of Canadian taxpayers' dollars, I think probably close to a billion,
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into what was called good governance, democratic development, human rights programming.
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And so on my second posting at the Canadian Embassy in Beijing,
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I was working out of the political section in the civil society program,
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which was a program to try and encourage a Chinese non-profit sector,
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you know, to encourage the establishment of parallel to, say, the Canadian Cancer Society
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or any number of organizations where citizens take responsibility for their society.
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We built a building in Beijing for preparation for a large-scale program of exchange,
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And we had a lot of other programming designed to try and bring the Canadian way over.
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And I was the Canadian, I think, most involved in the bilateral human rights dialogues,
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which went on for about, I don't know, six or seven years from the late 90s until the middle 2000s.
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And, you know, we had hoped that if senior Chinese people in positions of policymaking authority
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understood how our democratic system functions, what an independent rule of law is,
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how, you know, one has these arm's-length relationships with civil society,
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including free press function, that they would want that for China.
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You know, I think in retrospect, there was a high degree of naivete.
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I think the Chinese authorities agreed to these programs, providing Canada provided serious funding
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for infrastructural and other development that met the needs of the Chinese communist planning process.
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And in 2005, I was engaged by what was the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade,
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now known as GAC, Global Affairs Canada, to write an assessment of the dialogues.
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And I went around China trying to find out what the impact of these dialogues had been.
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And I found that really the Chinese seemed to regard human rights dialoguing as something they were doing for Canada
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so that, for example, if there was a question in the House of Commons about the arrest of, say,
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a political distant or a Catholic bishop, the appropriate minister could get up and say,
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yes, we're addressing these concerns through a confidential dialogue process that's kept confidential
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But trust us, you know, we're doing what we can to promote Canadian values in China.
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This turns out to have been, you know, pretty dissembling.
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And after my report came out, the Chinese government changed their venue for their dialogue process
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from the organization's department to the bilateral desks of their foreign ministry.
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And the international process in Brussels for nations to compare their bilateral dialogues with China was closed down.
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And I think that the last of the dialogues ended just a couple of years ago.
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The Australians had one where quite senior Australian officials were involved,
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thereby requiring their Chinese counterparts to participate.
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The Canadian dialogue was never taken that seriously by the government of Canada.
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And, you know, I think after that, I developed a degree of cynicism about the prospects for China
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to become a responsible stakeholder in global affairs and felt more and more concerned
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about what China's rise would mean for China domestically and for China's role in the world.
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And I think that, you know, I started to really, you know, start to write opinion pieces in newspapers
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and do a lot of commentary on China and evidence to various Canadian parliamentary committees.
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You know, my report on the Human Rights Dialogue was considered by the Foreign Affairs Committee.
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Their report was never released by the government, though Parliament died before it came out.
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But I think about 2006, I started to try and ring the bell of concern over China.
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And, you know, not to be immodest about it, I think a lot of what I have been writing over the past 15 years
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is standing up pretty well to the test of time today.
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And I must say I'm gratified to see that while, you know, a few years ago I might have been seen
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as an extreme element, conspiracy theoristic, you know, panicky commentator,
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I think now my views are more or less in the mainstream,
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particularly in the United States and Europe and increasingly in Canada.
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So it's good to see that there are a lot more people singing from my song sheet
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and I think articulating what I've thought for a long time better than I can myself.
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How does Canada fit into China's global strategy?
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You mentioned in a recent op-ed piece of yours that I read that Canada is China's chew toy,
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Well, I think that China does have domestic factors where the Chinese regime wants to convince people in China
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that the autocratic one-party system under the charismatic, strong man, poor life, perhaps,
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leadership of Xi Jinping is the best way for a country to be run.
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And I think that, you know, saying negative things about Canada and Canadians in the Chinese media
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is a means to try and emphasize this point, what they refer to as the confidence in the Chinese political system.
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And the idea that China would assume global hegemony in their belief that the United States
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is a power in terminal decline and the replacement of institutions of global governance like the UN
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or of, you know, intended to ensure free and fair and reciprocal trade like the WTO
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and replace them by Xi Jinping's doctrine of the community of the common destiny of mankind,
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which is really a world-run, you know, subservient,
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where all the nations of the world are subservient to China.
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China and their Belt and Road International Economic Infrastructure Program of ports and rail
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and, in fact, real roads extending between China and Eurasia and, you know, potentially North America.
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They do, there have been some speculation they could run something over the Bering Strait and all the way down.
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But, you know, this is really about a program where the belts and roads all terminate in China.
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And so China would not only be the political center of the world, it would also be the economic center of the world.
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And countries like Canada would provide the raw materials and political support for China's larger agenda,
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which Mr. Xi hopes to realize by 2049 or 2050, the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949.
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I mean, the plan is audacious and, in my view, unlikely to be realized, but, you know, that is what informs China's policy.
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And so in that context, you're not going to have, you know, equal relations between sovereign states.
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The notion of state sovereignty is subordinated to this idea of China, what they refer to as rejuvenation.
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In other words, a restoration of the traditional cosmology where the only legitimate authority in the world is the emperor, the son of heaven.
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And that civilization extends in concentric circles from the Chinese capital.
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And so, you know, other regimes are just not legitimate in the sense of having any ultimate authority,
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but simply to administer barbarians who are out of the direct administration of the central authority.
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That, you know, that was China's traditional view of itself.
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Also, perhaps not able to be verified through sound historiography, but that's the way it was written.
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And I think Xi Jinping sees himself as, you know, a new period emperor.
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He's recently said that the Chinese Communist Party has broken the cycle of dynasties.
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In other words, he's not expecting there to be any change in the political paradigm in China ever now.
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And that we should accept this reality and get used to it.
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And Canada should understand its place in the world.
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And, you know, the dynamic that you saw between Xi Jinping and our prime minister, Justin Trudeau,
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where he was treated with a high degree of disdain and perceived as by Xi,
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who muttered at the end of the interaction, naive,
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is the way that China sees the world and the way that China wants Canada to be in relation to China.
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So, you know, there are a lot of concerns there about China's intentions.
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It's not that this will be realized, but that China is attempting to make this the future reality
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and is suggesting its international programming and its interference in Canada's domestic politics accordingly.
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You know, obviously you talk about Xi's language and his apparent kind of contempt, perhaps, for Trudeau.
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And I'm not sure the degree to which it was planned, but it was recorded.
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I mean, Mr. Xi seems to have seen Trudeau somewhere between sessions heading for a coffee or something
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and come up to him for a few seconds and given him a thorough dressing down of, you know, a boss to a subordinate.
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Using language which, you know, really has a certain kind of mafia thuggish to it, particularly aspect to it.
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You know, particularly when he said, in effect, if you're not going to respect us and play according to our norms,
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then I can't really say what might happen, which is the literal translation of, you know, what he said.
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So it wasn't any kind of normal diplomatic language, but bore a resemblance to this wolf warrior diplomacy that we've seen by some Chinese ambassadors serving abroad,
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particularly the ambassador before our current one, Lu Xiaoyer, who has continued with this kind of thing in France.
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The French don't seem to take it quite as readily as the Canadians did.
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But it's the first time that I've heard Xi Jinping be so utterly rude and, you know, direct in his suggestion that if Canada doesn't get in line with China,
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woe betide us, because, you know, China will retaliate.
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And I think that it does suggest that we'll be seeing some form of Chinese retaliation if the Indo-Pacific policy that, you know, is touted to come out in a few weeks,
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it's been touted to come out in a few weeks, of course, for some time,
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actually is a policy which attempts to address China's, you know, expansionist activities in the region
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by us sending more military support to Australia, the UK and the US and the Indo-Pacific.
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And if we, in fact, start to seriously constrain China's espionage activities in Canada,
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illegal police operations designed to intimidate persons here in Canada
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and start expelling Chinese diplomats who are responsible for these Chinese Communist Party United Front Work Department activities,
00:20:09.460
which is what this kind of interference in Canada's approach to China consists in.
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If we do that, I think China will feel it has to retaliate because it not only wants to send a message of punishment to Canada,
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but also wants to indicate to other lesser countries that if they're going to seriously challenge what China's doing,
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And I think up to now, Canada has turned a blind eye to this kind of appalling behavior by the Chinese regime in our country
00:20:44.560
because there are, you know, important economic players who want Canada to maintain its market access
00:20:54.720
and preferential treatment by the Chinese regime.
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And if Canada cracks down on non-economic activities by the regime preparing for this community of the common destiny of mankind,
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So, you know, that seems to be the dynamic that's existed up until recently.
00:21:17.820
But I think now that the Americans are more or less on our case,
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you know, Secretary Blinken was in Canada in October.
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And after that, Canada agreed to engage in a strategic dialogue on Indo-Pacific policy with the United States
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and requested that we be admitted to the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity program,
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which the United States had invited 14 countries to and had fairly markedly excluded Canada from.
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So I think that, you know, our policy is changing because of increasing awareness of the dangers of Chinese malign activities in Canada,
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but also because it could impact on our alliance with the United States,
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particularly the continued viability of Canada's membership in the Five Eyes Intelligence Sharing Consortium,
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which is very important to Canada, not just with regard to countries like China, Russia and Iran,
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So, you know, it's the whole Xi-Trudeau interaction in Bali, I think, is a kind of signal event
00:22:26.180
that suggests that Canada better get its act together on China pretty soon,
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or we'll be very sorry as the balance tips away from the United States and towards China by default.
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We'll be back with more full comment in a moment.
00:22:45.200
I mean, I think those are a particularly egregious institution,
00:22:49.740
and maybe a little bit about the benign justification that China has given to them that perhaps you don't accept.
00:22:56.800
Well, I think that, you know, the Chinese say, oh, yes, we have police stations in Canada.
00:23:07.080
And it's because there are so many Chinese in Canada that have been unable to return to China
00:23:13.160
because of the COVID restrictions and need to renew their driver's licenses.
00:23:17.980
And apparently these things are supposed to provide driver's license renewal.
00:23:21.920
I must say, following the Canadian Chinese press and media and so on,
00:23:28.020
I've never heard of any advertisement saying if you need your driver's license renewed,
00:23:34.000
Chinese driver's license renewed, here's the address you can go to and get a new one.
00:23:39.880
But, you know, for a long time, China has been sending their police into Canada on false pretenses
00:23:48.860
with a view to pressuring persons in Canada to render themselves back to China to face some charges.
00:24:00.140
And, you know, this is based on the reality that there is no extradition treaty between Canada and China
00:24:13.620
China does not follow the internationally recognized rules of evidence.
00:24:19.760
China engages in pervasive use of torture and interrogation.
00:24:25.960
And China applies the death penalty to a wide range of offenses.
00:24:32.180
So we do know that, you know, in the past, particularly in one refugee hearing that I was involved in as a witness,
00:24:42.200
that the Chinese police admitted that it was true as the head of the immigration section
00:24:49.100
in the Canadian embassy in Beijing, Susan Gregson, testified at the time
00:24:53.140
that they had got a fake invitation from a Canadian firm to invite people into Canada for a purpose of trade negotiations.
00:25:08.360
And, you know, the names that were provided to our immigration authorities were the names of police officers
00:25:16.120
and the brother of the refugee claimant, Lai Shuiqiang.
00:25:21.780
The refugee claimant was Lai Changqing, a major smuggler.
00:25:27.080
You know, they came to Vancouver, spent several days with Mr. Lai,
00:25:31.920
trying to convince him to render himself back to China.
00:25:35.320
Mr. Lai refused and applied for refugee status the next day.
00:25:39.900
And these police then returned to China and subsequently Mr. Lai's brother,
00:25:46.160
who had come to Vancouver with the police, died in prison under mysterious circumstances.
00:25:53.480
And there's even a TV series in China on this fox hunt operation,
00:25:58.100
which is ostensibly to induce Chinese officials who have come to Canada
00:26:06.360
with massive assets of dubious provenance escaping factional struggle or criminal investigations in China
00:26:16.140
to get them to come back to China and to repatriate those assets.
00:26:21.100
So, you know, it's not as if the Chinese are making a secret of this
00:26:24.960
because they, you know, they describe it in a TV drama with, I don't know, about 70 episodes.
00:26:31.320
So, you know, it's really about hiding in plain sight.
00:26:36.400
And I think that surely our authorities have been aware of these police operations
00:26:47.740
And now we hear that China's setting up these, I think, 55 or so around the world,
00:26:54.140
permanent installations to convenience this operation
00:26:57.480
as opposed to, you know, them coming in ad hoc, case after case.
00:27:01.380
So, you know, it seems outrageous that Canada would not close those things down,
00:27:08.500
bring to court anybody who is behaving illegally
00:27:22.120
those Chinese diplomats in the Chinese embassy and consulates in Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal,
00:27:35.120
accredited to Canada than the diplomatic cohort of any other nation,
00:27:42.480
So, you know, they do seem to have a lot of people here,
00:27:46.640
exactly why they need so many people in our country.
00:27:49.800
You know, presumably Chinese diplomats are not functioning less efficiently
00:28:00.580
which are not compatible with their diplomatic status,
00:28:03.480
and their diplomatic status should therefore be revoked.
00:28:06.580
On the election meddling, what is the, you know, strategic aim?
00:28:12.520
Is it to just keep, you know, criticism of China at bay from Canadian politics,
00:28:19.320
Is it to try to, in some way, guide Canada's attitude toward China
00:28:28.720
Well, this has been a long-time policy of the United Front Work Department.
00:28:38.740
and they want more persons of ethnic Chinese origin
00:28:42.200
to be involved in becoming elected to democratic legislatures,
00:28:48.080
and, you know, they want to influence politicians
00:28:56.180
Now, of course, you know, there are two issues here.
00:29:04.040
and provincial legislatures and municipal governments
00:29:10.680
and so it's highly desirable that we have more people of Chinese origin
00:29:14.380
in positions of political authority in our country.
00:29:19.800
But the difficulty is that there are some politicians in Canada,
00:29:25.860
some of them of Chinese ethnic origin, some of them not,
00:29:29.260
who seem to consistently articulate the positions
00:29:47.520
for there to be a Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act
00:29:51.920
comparable to that of the Australian legislation of 2018
00:29:55.600
that requires people who are in the political process
00:30:00.180
and the policy process, if they are recipients of benefits
00:30:10.220
so that any conflict of interest that they may have
00:30:13.200
could be assessed by, you know, by Canadian people
00:30:20.640
And this has been very much opposed by certain politicians
00:30:27.660
such as, you know, what's going on in Australia
00:30:32.580
or it would violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
00:30:48.140
the more concerned I get that maybe we really do need it.
00:30:51.620
And certainly it's very hard for us currently to track this
00:31:01.920
If they become appointed to a China-related law firm
00:31:23.620
for how they handled their advice to government
00:31:28.220
while on the taxpayer's dime in positions of trust.
00:31:45.040
of Canadian politicians and senior civil servants
00:31:50.920
And certainly that's what's happened in Australia.
00:31:53.440
You know, the legislation may not be very well drafted.
00:31:56.680
The Australian government may not have allocated
00:32:01.780
But the simple existence of this kind of legislation
00:32:04.460
does seem to have led to a number of former politicians
00:32:08.480
and civil servants resigning from China-related positions
00:32:19.540
what my friend at the Royal United Services Institute
00:32:24.040
refers to as life-transforming amounts of money.
00:32:29.000
I hope that this will be something that we'll see
00:33:10.340
Australia is certainly paying a much greater cost
00:33:18.980
designed to protect Australian security and sovereignty.
00:33:27.200
amounts to only about 4% of what we sell abroad.
00:33:32.060
And it's mostly agricultural commodities and minerals
00:33:38.900
So if China engages in economic coercion against us
00:33:53.660
too dependent on the Chinese market for anything.
00:33:57.220
And we always want to diversify our trading partners.
00:34:08.860
particularly things like wine and coal, iron ore.
00:34:39.740
but which our authorities in the civil service said