Juno News - Pro-Beijing media received Canadian bailouts during pandemic (ft. Jonathan Manthorpe)

00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Rupa Subramanya show. I am Rupa Subramanya. If you've been

00:00:23.480 following the news, you know that the big story in Canada these days is about the allegations

00:00:29.440 of election interference in Canada by the communist regime in China. It is suspected

00:00:34.820 from the allegations leaked from a CSIS report that the Chinese communists were trying to defeat

00:00:40.620 candidates here in Canada hostile to their regime and support candidates who are pro-Beijing.

00:00:47.200 We also suspect, based on this leaked information, that the communist regime in Beijing prefers

00:00:53.060 Justin Trudeau as prime minister over the alternatives. Now, rather than coming clean

00:00:58.620 and allowing an independent inquiry into this issue, Trudeau appointed an old family friend,

00:01:05.760 former Governor General David Johnston, to be a so-called special rapporteur. And until Tuesday

00:01:12.040 of this past week, the liberals were filibustering in the House of Commons to prevent the Prime

00:01:17.600 Minister's Chief of Staff, Katie Telford, from testifying. At the time of recording this podcast,

00:01:23.660 it appears that Trudeau has finally backed down, facing the prospect that the NDP might finally

00:01:30.340 get a spine and vote with the Tories. Let's see how all of this plays out in the coming days and

00:01:36.720 weeks. But if we know anything about the Trudeau liberals, we're not likely to learn very much

00:01:43.400 about what may or may not have happened. But there's another big part of the story of foreign

00:01:48.720 interference in Canada that has received much less attention in the legacy media. I wrote about this

00:01:55.600 in my recent National Post column. The elephant in the room is that the Chinese communist regime

00:02:01.320 doesn't just try to meddle in Canadian elections. They also have an outsized influence on major Chinese

00:02:07.860 language media houses that operate in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere. Now, of course, this is not

00:02:13.920 unique to China. Many countries try to influence their diasporas, everything from their embassies

00:02:20.140 to sponsoring cultural events, to trying to get favorable press coverage. But as always, the Chinese 1.00

00:02:26.380 authorities take things to a different level. The two main Chinese dailies, the two main Chinese

00:02:32.240 language media platforms in Canada, which are linked to the Chinese-speaking diaspora, are Mingpao

00:02:38.040 and Tsingtao Daily. They're both widely seen as being extremely pro-Beijing in their coverage.

00:02:43.860 Recently, Tsingtao's chairman, back in Hong Kong, was named as a deputy director of a special committee

00:02:50.120 of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, an important advisory

00:02:56.280 body to the Chinese Communist Party. Both these publications have a big presence in the U.S. and Canada.

00:03:02.740 And what's more, they've both received emergency bailout funding from the Trudeau government

00:03:07.520 at the start of the pandemic. Canadian journalist Jonathan Manthorpe came up with some disturbing

00:03:12.220 information on how China influences public life in Canada, and especially tries to influence

00:03:18.640 the diaspora through all channels, including business, academia, media, and pretty much everything.

00:03:25.440 He documents this in his 2019 book, Claws of the Panda. It's my pleasure to have Jonathan on the show

00:03:32.360 today. So Jonathan, it's great to have you here on the show. When I was researching my National Post column

00:03:40.040 on Chinese interference in Canada's elections, I came across your important book from 2019,

00:03:46.520 Claws of the Panda. Could you tell our viewers what motivated you to write the book, and what were the main

00:03:54.500 findings? What were the main things you discovered through your research?

00:03:58.580 It actually goes back a long way. I started out as a political reporter for the Globe and Mail

00:04:06.120 in the 1960s. And early in the 1970s, I came across the first indications of the Chinese Communist Party

00:04:16.920 establishing agents of influence in Canada. And I then, I became a foreign correspondent in the late

00:04:27.100 70s, first in Europe, then in Africa, and then in the early 1990s in Asia, based in Hong Kong. And so my focus

00:04:37.020 obviously was on China a great deal at that time. And that was a time very soon after the Tiananmen Square

00:04:44.500 massacre, when countries that had put sanctions on the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Republic of

00:04:53.780 China were beginning to sort of circle around to see about re-establishing relations. And Canada was in

00:04:59.880 the forefront of that. And by this time, of course, I've got a lot of background on Canada-China relations,

00:05:07.220 going back to the 1930s and 40s, when Canadian missionaries were very significant in China,

00:05:13.300 particularly in the east and in Sichuan province, in around Chengdu. So I got a whole load of background for me.

00:05:25.060 Fast forward to the end of the handover of Hong Kong, I came back to Canada, to Vancouver.

00:05:33.700 And of course, there was a whole community of old friends and colleagues from Hong Kong living there at that time.

00:05:41.020 And I learned very early on from friends in the Hong Kong Canadian community, that they found that the

00:05:51.580 Chinese Communist Party had more or less at that time taken over effective control or editorial influence,

00:06:00.700 let's put it that way, pretty well all the Chinese language media in Canada. And then if one looked a

00:06:07.900 little further, they'd also done the same in the United amongst the Chinese language media in the

00:06:13.420 United States and in Australia. So this was clearly a long term effort by the Chinese Communist Party to

00:06:22.060 exert influence over overseas Chinese or people they considered Chinese. And this began to fit into a

00:06:32.380 a picture for a picture for me. And in the, around probably 2015, I saw that I'd got a story of

00:06:44.220 broad based efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to exert influence in Canada, and it went through

00:06:52.220 politics, politics, business, academia. I have to say, I was very concerned about writing this story. I was

00:07:01.660 very hesitant to do it because I feared that it might excite a backlash against the Canadians of Chinese

00:07:09.500 heritage, of whom there are about one and a half million, something like that. So I was very reluctant and I

00:07:15.980 talked with various friends of mine of Chinese heritage and Asian heritage more broadly. And they all said to

00:07:27.180 me, look, Jonathan, you really have to do it because the rest of Canada really has to understand that we are

00:07:34.380 under pressure from the Chinese Communist Party every day in every aspect of our lives. But I needed to find a

00:07:42.940 way of doing it that didn't, well, two things. I mean, one, I didn't want to excite any sort of reaction against

00:07:53.580 Canadians of Chinese heritage, but also I didn't want to be accused of racism, which is often the way that

00:08:02.780 the Chinese Communist Party reacts to criticism of any sort. So I tried to find a formula and I think I

00:08:09.820 found the formula that worked. We were very lucky with the publishing of the book that it came out

00:08:18.300 around the same time as the beginning of the Huawei affair, came out at the time when Meng Wanzhou was

00:08:25.100 detained on a US Justice Department warrant. And of course, the immediate reaction of the Chinese Communist 0.97

00:08:34.060 Party was to take hostages. You know, here was a country or a regime, which we have been told by our

00:08:42.700 political leaders and by the Chinese Communist Party itself has special friendship with Canada, special

00:08:47.980 relationship with Canada, going back to Norman Bethune, and then the Diefenbaker government sending

00:08:55.580 food and so forth during the Great Leap Forward, the famine of the Great Leap Forward. And yet, you know, the first reaction when a

00:09:04.060 a red princess was detained on a on a legitimate warrant was to take hostages. And I think this showed

00:09:12.460 Canadians more clearly than ever I could in the book, that we didn't share any civic values with

00:09:20.220 with the Chinese Communist Party. And that this whole relation, so-called relationship, was built

00:09:27.740 on play. But when there was a problem, there was no basis for a discussion based on common values,

00:09:40.380 there weren't there. So I think it was a very, very significant moment. I, of course, was, I mean,

00:09:46.780 in a selfish way. I was pleased because the Huawei affair underlined everything that I'd said in

00:09:58.220 the book and found in the book. So to that extent, I was pleased. But I mean, I was horrified, of course,

00:10:05.180 by what was done to the two Michaels and the way that all played out.

00:10:08.780 Yeah, of course. And I mean, talk about timing, right? Your book is, you know, it publishes

00:10:17.100 just around that time. And, and yeah, and, and, and, you know, I read it, and it's so incredibly

00:10:24.380 relevant. My next question to you is, you know, how deep are China's claws in Canadian public life?

00:10:32.220 Well, I think we found that they're pretty deep. I, my hope and expectation from the Huawei affair

00:10:41.180 was that it would have a pretty immediate effect on our decision makers, and, and say them more

00:10:51.820 clearly than ever I could, or any of us could, working in journalism or writing. But look, this is

00:10:58.940 that the Chinese Communist Party is not a friend of Canada. And yet we've seen in the last two or

00:11:05.180 three years, we've seen dithering and sort of reaching and trying to come up with a policy which

00:11:11.980 still has an Asia policy, which still has China or the People's Republic of China very close to the

00:11:19.340 center of it. Even the new Asia policy, which has been announced a few weeks ago, which does

00:11:27.980 in theory put emphasis on Canada looking for like-minded countries with which to form relationships in

00:11:36.300 Asia, which is a huge, is what we need. There's no real money behind it. All the words are fine,

00:11:45.100 but it needs a lot more investment to secure that objective. So while the new policy sounds good,

00:11:56.940 I don't see that it's got the backing that it needs to work. And I'm afraid that we're still going to find

00:12:03.660 ourselves that the People's Republic of China is going to very quickly remain the core of our

00:12:13.260 relationship with Asia, which is silly, because one, it's not nearly as economically important to us as

00:12:21.500 we've been told. The British economics magazine, The Economist, which is a very fine weekly magazine,

00:12:31.420 one of the finest news magazines in the world, they recently did a rating of the importance of exports

00:12:40.220 to China for national economies. Canada was 47th on the list. Now China is not that important to us.

00:12:51.580 You may remember that soon after the Huawei affair started, one of the things that

00:12:56.940 China did in retaliation was to ban the importation of Canadian pork. I got a call from a radio station

00:13:07.500 in Saskatchewan, which produces a lot of pork and that's a lot of pork to China. They wanted to talk

00:13:14.140 about this. And so I did some research before talking to them. And they said, well, you know,

00:13:21.020 China is our main export market for pork. It is in weight. In weight, we sell more pork to China than

00:13:30.060 anywhere else. But in value, in the dollars, we sell more to Japan. And I think that there are a lot of

00:13:38.620 instances of our trade relationship with China, where they've been put in the best possible light.

00:13:45.100 And actually, when you look at them, they are not that great. And the bottom line also is

00:13:51.020 that we import from China at least twice as much as we export. Mostly manufactured goods,

00:13:59.100 of course, stuff, a lot of it's stuff we used to produce ourselves. So the trade relationship with

00:14:04.780 China is, I would say, very problematic. And of course, I mean, let's not forget, 1.00

00:14:11.020 and this is something that I've pointed out in some of my columns for the National Post that,

00:14:15.900 I believe, to the tune of some $56 billion of Canadian pension money is invested in Chinese

00:14:23.420 companies. And that's a big sum of money. And, you know, if the trade relationship is not that

00:14:31.420 significant, why are Canadian officials, why is the Canadian government, why is the Canadian

00:14:37.580 political establishment so afraid of China? Well, afraid, beholden, I think it's perhaps a better word.

00:14:47.260 Well, I think all you have to do is look at the membership of the Canada-China Business Council.

00:14:52.860 I mean, that is the hub of Chinese Communist Party influencing Canada.

00:14:59.180 The first members of the Canada-China Business Council were all the aristocracy of Canadian 1.00

00:15:09.660 business and industry. It was also, of course, at that time run essentially by the Power Corporation.

00:15:19.100 The Power Corporation remains hugely influential in the Canada-China Business Council. And as I

00:15:26.700 point out in my book, you know, we've had about two or three generations of Canadian Prime Ministers

00:15:32.620 who have one way or another economic or other links to the Power Corporation. So that's where the,

00:15:40.700 that's where the major, major influence is. You know, the companies in the Canada-China Business Council

00:15:48.940 are the ones who give donations to the political parties for elections. And this isn't just a, you know,

00:15:54.300 liberal, this is liberal and conservative party. This is a, this is, is not a partisan issue. The,

00:16:01.100 the Chinese Communist Party is, will, will, will lap up any, any, any agents of influence it can get

00:16:09.580 in all major parties. But that's, that's the core of, of the Communist Party's influence is through

00:16:18.060 Canadian business. And Canadian businesses influence on political parties. And indeed,

00:16:24.780 on universities now, so. Yeah. Now, every country exerts some kind of soft,

00:16:31.180 soft power. For example, India does it through various things, including Bollywood. Is there something

00:16:37.580 not so benign in the way the Beijing regime tries to influence the way Canadians think about China? And

00:16:45.260 what is the ultimate objective really here? Yeah. The ultimate objective is really,

00:16:52.060 I think it's four or five fold, but it's principally to ensure that decision makers in Canada do not

00:17:03.020 drive Canada in directions that the, that are against Beijing's interests. Beijing wants,

00:17:15.740 access to our resources. It wants access to our markets. It wants access to our technology. It wants

00:17:23.420 access to Canadians of, of, of Chinese heritage, because it considers them to be, to be Chinese,

00:17:33.660 even though they may be many generations away from that. And most of the vast, vast, vast majority

00:17:41.180 are Canadians and want to be Canadians. That's why they're here and not in China. And, and of course, 0.69

00:17:49.020 it also wants to ensure that, and this is an important one, it wants to ensure that Canada

00:17:54.620 does not go against Beijing on the international stage, particularly over things like Tibet, about

00:18:02.940 Xinjiang province, about the South China Sea, and these days, very importantly, about Taiwan.

00:18:09.820 And it's been very successful in that. It has. But, you know, the doubt, the, the, the deplorable side,

00:18:18.300 the side which we really angers me and which I think is, is, it is, it is almost obscene that our

00:18:25.500 political leaders have not addressed is the pressure that Beijing exerts on Canadians of Chinese heritage.

00:18:34.940 The intimidation, the kidnapping and detention of relatives in China in order to put pressure

00:18:42.140 on Canadians not to get involved in politics of one sort or another. The pressure that is exerted

00:18:51.260 on communities here through things like planting members from the United Front Work Department,

00:18:59.660 which is Beijing's main political warfare organization. And that's what they call it

00:19:05.020 themselves, a political warfare organization, planting them in Canadian Chinese organizations.

00:19:12.780 As we've already heard, I mean, I mentioned it in the book, although more detail has come out since

00:19:19.020 about running candidates or backing or working against candidates in elections. This is all to try to

00:19:28.940 ensure that Canada does not oppose Beijing's interest once or one way or another. But, but I, I mean, I, the, the

00:19:42.060 Canadian Security Intelligence Service has been warning, warning, warning our political leaders since the 1990s

00:19:49.660 that I know of, and if I know of it was probably going on before that, about the activities by the Chinese

00:19:58.140 Communist Party through the United Front here in Canada and they have done really seriously nothing

00:20:05.820 about it. There were, there were many, many ways our political leaders could have directed both CSIS to

00:20:15.900 gather information and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or other police organizations where appropriate

00:20:21.740 to prosecute or to produce evidence that would allow for the, the extradition or the, or the expulsion

00:20:31.580 of, of diplomats. That really hasn't been done. CSIS has had to go out on its own hook quite a lot to,

00:20:38.940 to try to warn people. And they, a few years ago, they warned universities and colleges that the Confucius

00:20:45.500 Institutes, which were paid for by Xi, were, were, were espionage out there. That hadn't come from the

00:20:52.780 government. It had to come from CSIS themselves. And they, they, and they've had to be quite activist

00:20:58.940 because at every step, the political leaders have been unwilling to, to, to do what's necessary.

00:21:05.660 I, you know, I was, I was struck in particular, how coverage in these two Chinese dailies,

00:21:11.260 Ming, Ming Pao and Tsing Tao. And you mentioned this in your book were modified to be not critical

00:21:17.500 of the Beijing regime. In some cases, going so far as to doctor the original content, the original

00:21:23.420 content appearing in the Toronto star, a tour star until last year owned a part of Tsing Tao. Do you

00:21:31.740 think that this strategy works? For example, a member of the Chinese diaspora could get their news from

00:21:38.620 a non-Chinese source or media houses like Tsing Tao and Ming Pao geared mostly towards unilingual Chinese

00:21:47.660 diaspora in Canada, who don't really have access to news in the English language. In other words,

00:21:53.100 I'm trying to figure out who, who the target here is. Who's, who's it? Yeah. Who's the target here?

00:21:58.940 No, that's a very good question, Rupert, and it's an important one. The target,

00:22:04.220 immigration from, to Canada, from greater China changed, has changed dramatically over the last 20,

00:22:10.460 30 years. Through the 1980s, 1990s, most of the people coming to Canada from that part of the world

00:22:17.500 came from Hong Kong. So they came usually speaking some English. They also, because we're both, if you

00:22:25.660 like, come from British colonial heritage, the institutions are familiar. The way things work was familiar.

00:22:33.980 And, and most Hong Kongers who came here were fitted pretty easily into Canadian life. Most of it was 0.99

00:22:42.220 familiar. The last 20, 30 years, most of the immigration has come from mainland China. And the

00:22:48.540 people who come here from, from, from the mainland are not as familiar with the institutions or how things

00:22:55.180 work here. They're not, they're not familiar with the freedoms and the liberties that they have here.

00:23:01.820 And many of them have still prefer to get their news and information in the Chinese language.

00:23:09.980 And it's, it is these people who come from mainland China that, that the media, the Chinese media is

00:23:19.500 aimed at. Now, fairly soon after I published Clause of the Panda, I, I got a message,

00:23:26.220 or several messages saying, look, Jonathan, do you have plans for a Chinese language edition?

00:23:34.860 Because we think that this would be really valuable for, for people coming from mainland China who get

00:23:44.620 their information in the Chinese language. It would help them to understand Canada and, and their lives

00:23:53.340 here. So we did, we have published a edition in Chinese. In fact, there's also an edition in Korean,

00:23:58.860 and there's one coming up in Japanese as well. So you're absolutely right, Ruben. The, the, the, the

00:24:04.940 question of who the target is for the infiltration of the media is very important. And it is, in my view,

00:24:11.580 mostly aimed at people who have relatively recent immigrants from mainland and who still prefer to get

00:24:19.020 their daily information in, in Chinese. Yeah. You know, I was struck by the fact that

00:24:24.780 Tsingtao in the US was forced to declare itself as a foreign agent in 2021. Now, this was not a Trump

00:24:32.140 thing, but it, it happened under Joe Biden. And that means the Department of Justice thought that

00:24:39.100 they were trying to interfere in American political life. We've had no, nothing similar in Canada.

00:24:45.820 There's been really nothing here in Canada that questions Tsingtao's agenda. If anything, Tsingtao

00:24:53.260 and Mingpao were recipients of federal emergency bailout funds along with other media houses at

00:25:00.220 the start of the pandemic. Does this seem strange that there wasn't any scrutiny about as to who was

00:25:07.900 getting this money? Why didn't we have a similar reaction here from the Canadian government? How is it

00:25:14.060 that, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I, when I was writing this article, I, you know, I was looking at responses

00:25:19.580 here in Canada to Tsingtao being forced to register as a foreign agent. And there was

00:25:24.460 really no news at all. And I'm, I was really struck by that. What do you think is going on here?

00:25:30.220 Well, I think it's, it's, it's, it's falls into the pattern of, uh, political leaders not wanting to

00:25:39.580 rock the boat in this whole area. Um, you mentioned Tsingtao. I mean, I think in the, in the book, I, uh,

00:25:45.580 uh, did I put it in, uh, no, maybe I didn't, um, the, uh, the Vancouver Sun, and I was my, I had a,

00:25:54.060 I was working for Southern Muse, but I was, I had a desk at Vancouver Sun. Um, they, uh, in around 20,

00:26:01.420 uh, 2012, 2011, 2012, I wanted to introduce the Chinese edition, uh, called Tai Yang Bao. Um, and they didn't

00:26:10.780 talk to me at all for some reason, but, uh, they went out and they talked to the Chinese consulate,

00:26:16.860 um, and the Chinese consulate said, oh, we'll provide you with, um, with some translators. We

00:26:22.060 can recommend translators for you, um, which they did. Uh, and, um, uh, so this, uh, this issue of

00:26:29.340 the Vancouver Sun called Tai Yang Bao started, uh, appearing. It was a purely online, uh, developed quite

00:26:35.500 a large audience in mainland China, uh, but then, um, the story started, uh, uh, or I get started

00:26:42.780 getting calls, uh, from friends of mine that actually my columns in particular and columns about,

00:26:50.300 uh, the PRC and what was happening in Asia, uh, were, um, were not appearing in Tai Yang Bao in the

00:26:57.740 same form that they appeared in the Vancouver Sun. Um. You do mention this in your book, actually.

00:27:03.100 Yeah, I did mention it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a similar situation to, to Sing Tao, and, um, I, I got

00:27:10.300 friends to, to monitor it. We put a report to, together, and, um, uh, the editors of the Sun fired

00:27:17.500 all the translators, um, and Tai Yang Bao was blocked in Beijing the same day. So, uh, you know, this is a,

00:27:25.660 this is a whole pattern, but I'm afraid, yeah, uh, Canadian authorities generally

00:27:32.620 just haven't responded to this stuff in the way that they should.

00:27:36.220 Yeah, it's extraordinary because you do mention in your book that Sing Tao's troubles began in the

00:27:41.420 late 1980s, I think, when, when they, they, you know, the company was going through a financial,

00:27:47.500 uh, uh, uh, encountered some financial hardship and the communist, uh, party, the, the, the regime

00:27:55.900 stepped in to help them. And so since then they've been beholden to them. And you'd think that,

00:28:00.300 you know, the late 1980s, you think, you know, there would have been more questions asked.

00:28:06.300 Perhaps it was a different time in, in Canada-China relations. You know, China was seen as this, uh,

00:28:12.860 you know, it had a growing economy, uh, fastest growing economy and all of that stuff. And, um,

00:28:18.380 and, you know, you, you know, it was a different time diplomatically, uh, for, for, for both countries.

00:28:25.180 Uh, but still, you, you'd still want to be, um, be, be careful, tread carefully when it comes to

00:28:31.740 China. And I'm just, uh, really surprised that nobody even, uh, questioned, um, you know, as

00:28:38.300 recently as 2021, um, Hey, what about this publication that is being, that, that's been

00:28:44.300 forced to register as a foreign agent. Meanwhile, it's being owned by the, uh, the parent company of

00:28:49.740 the Toronto star and no questions asked. It's, uh, it's incredible. Um, you know, Jonathan, you say,

00:28:56.460 you said earlier, it's always important to distinguish between, uh, make a clear distinction

00:29:01.020 between the communist regime in China and the Chinese people, uh, who, and for example,

00:29:07.260 there was a lot of, uh, a lot of anti-Chinese bigotry, uh, on view, uh, during COVID because,

00:29:13.820 you know, that's where the virus originated. Do you think there's a danger, um, here, um, uh,

00:29:21.020 in light of recent, uh, revelations that we might tip, tip into a form or form of McCarthyism

00:29:27.820 in Canada where Chinese Canadians are essentially being asked to prove

00:29:30.860 their loyalty to Canada, um, and being held to a different standard, a higher standard

00:29:36.140 than immigrants from other countries? Yeah. No, I do. I think, uh, Rupa, I think this

00:29:41.020 is a really serious danger. And, uh, I mean, what appalls me, I think at the moment

00:29:47.740 is that this doesn't seem to have, have this notion doesn't seem to really have taken hold

00:29:55.100 as the federal government is considering how to respond to all the stories about election meddling.

00:30:01.900 Um, you know, maybe, um, maybe Mr. Johnson, um, the former governor general, as he

00:30:11.820 prepares a report on how this should be addressed, maybe, hopefully, he will, he will take that into

00:30:17.980 consideration. But I think that this is a very dangerous moment, uh, for exactly those reasons that

00:30:24.700 there is the possibility of McCarthyism of one sort or another rearing its head if this thing isn't done

00:30:31.820 in a, in a, in a, in a very sensible, thoughtful, careful way. Um, uh, so I, I, uh, I, I'm, I'm anxious

00:30:43.020 about it and, uh, I, I, uh, I wish I was more confident that it was going to be dealt with, um, in a, in a,

00:30:52.380 in a more straightforward way because I still see lurking behind all this, um, the desire amongst, um,

00:31:01.500 political business and academic establishment, a desire to somehow maintain this, this so-called

00:31:10.060 engaged relationship with the Chinese Communist Party. And I, I don't think that we can do that

00:31:16.460 very sensibly. And you talked about the 1980s, um, you know, the, the signs were clear then

00:31:23.180 that we were not dealing with a regime that had any intention of reform or of, uh, uh, accepting

00:31:32.940 Canadian values or Western values or, or, um, uh, human rights values of any sort. They made it very,

00:31:40.460 very plain after at Tiananmen Square and afterwards that this was not going to happen, that the, uh,

00:31:46.780 the Chinese Communist Party was not going to reform, that it was not going to accept anything which might,

00:31:52.860 um, uh, diminish or remove it from power. And while that is the case, I would argue that we can only

00:32:02.380 have a fairly simple transactional relationship with them. Um, and I would, I would argue that we

00:32:09.420 should leave it at that, uh, and, um, maybe things will change there, but, uh, but to, uh, to fool

00:32:17.420 ourselves into thinking that we can somehow be agent of reform in China, which is what's been going on

00:32:23.420 here for since the 1930s is nonsense. We, we are, we are not going to do that or we should just recognize

00:32:31.340 it and, uh, and get on with, uh, developing our relationship with, with countries with whom we do

00:32:37.260 share values. Now, apart from the media, you also refer to Chinese influence in, uh, other spheres,

00:32:44.220 such as, such as business and academia. Um, are there some interesting examples, uh, of these that you

00:32:50.860 want to share that, uh, doesn't get as much attention in, uh, in, in, in the media or in the commentary

00:32:57.180 space? Well, I mean, the, the business, the business one is fascinating because, uh, what it shows is

00:33:05.820 almost total failure of, um, Canadian business to make any, uh, mark in China itself. They have,

00:33:14.860 uh, when I was traveling in China, uh, a lot in the, uh, in the early and mid 1990s, there were all

00:33:22.700 sorts of Canadian companies scurrying around trying to establish outposts in, in China.

00:33:30.700 With one or two exceptions, they all failed, but what they all found was they went, they set up,

00:33:37.260 they brought their proprietary, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, or their intellectual property of one sort or another,

00:33:46.060 and, um, that was very quickly stolen or, or one way or another, and, uh, they were, they were then, uh,

00:33:55.500 eased out the door. There are hardly any Canadian companies operating in China now. Um, if you, if you

00:34:03.260 look at something like the, um, Asia Pacific Foundation, which keeps, uh, records on all these

00:34:09.020 things, they've been unable to point, uh, at any serious Canadian business involvement inside China.

00:34:17.420 Essentially, we're, we're selling them still natural resources and agricultural and other natural

00:34:23.660 resources. Um, and, uh, we have, um, uh, and we of course have, have welcomed, uh, uh,

00:34:33.420 investment here, but, uh, any serious, uh, investment by, by, by Canada in, in terms of setting up Canadian

00:34:43.660 businesses in China, uh, has failed. The other, in academia, it's, um, well, there are two or three

00:34:52.860 things here. One, of course, if you look at the early, uh, um, academic exchanges with, uh, uh, with

00:35:01.100 the People's Republic of China starting in the 1970s and continuing right up now, um, their students

00:35:08.700 have put a huge emphasis on our technical faculties and, um, uh, and, uh, uh, getting, getting into, uh,

00:35:19.420 our, uh, our, uh, scientific, uh, faculties and learning from there and picking up Canadian 0.77

00:35:26.300 technologies. They've also found, of course, that, that Canada was a very, uh, useful, um, backdoor

00:35:33.900 into getting, uh, American technology, uh, mostly of a military nature. Um, so they, they put a huge

00:35:41.420 amount of emphasis on that. The Canadians have gone to, uh, study in China, have mostly gone to study

00:35:47.340 language and culture and nothing much else. Um, so their, their emphasis on, on, uh, on getting people

00:35:56.300 into Canadian universities has been huge. Uh, there also, of course, have been many, um, uh, still,

00:36:04.220 many Canadian, uh, Chinese students coming to Canadian universities and the Confucius Institutes

00:36:10.140 were part of the management of those people and, um, keeping an eye on them and trying to make sure that

00:36:16.140 they didn't, um, uh, absorb any, uh, uh, political influences from Canada, which they might take

00:36:24.060 back to China. There were, the Confucius Institutes kept files on them all, um, and, uh, uh, Chinese

00:36:30.940 students could be whipped back to, uh, to China at a moment's notice if, for example, they got involved

00:36:36.300 in, uh, political discussions or demonstrations on, or, or religion as well. So, um, uh, the, uh, the,

00:36:45.260 the, the, and there, uh, there are also spies, um, put in amongst the, the Chinese students to keep 0.91

00:36:52.780 an eye on them, uh, and to report back to the nearest consulate or whatever. So, it's a pretty unhealthy

00:36:58.140 situation for, for Chinese students here, uh, but mostly, uh, the aim has been to acquire Canadian technology.

00:37:06.140 Uh, now on, on balance, I mean, it's been about four years since your book came out. Are you on balance,

00:37:14.860 are you more or less worried now about, uh, the Chinese regime's intervention in Canadian life?

00:37:21.980 Yeah, I would like to have seen far more activity, uh, by the, the, the, the Canadian government,

00:37:28.380 um, uh, against, uh, against what's happening here, uh, and particularly to protect Canadian citizens

00:37:35.340 against the, uh, uh, the depredations and the, the intimidation by, uh, by agents of, uh, of the Chinese

00:37:43.100 Communist Party. I'm, it appalls me that that hasn't happened. Um, I, I just don't under, I don't

00:37:49.340 understand how you can allow a foreign power, uh, to intimidate, uh, and threaten Canadian citizens 0.88

00:37:58.780 and not take some action against it. But we've seen, you know, nothing of, of substance, nothing.

00:38:04.380 Hmm. Hmm. Well, Jonathan, unfortunately we'll have to leave it there, but I really appreciate

00:38:10.940 you coming on the show and I encourage everybody to pick up a copy of your book and, uh, and, uh,

00:38:17.660 and read it and, uh, and hopefully you'll be back on the show sometime soon.

00:38:23.340 Thank you, Rupert. Nice to talk to you.

00:38:24.860 Rupert. Thank you. Thank you, Jonathan.

Juno News - March 22, 2023

Pro-Beijing media received Canadian bailouts during pandemic (ft. Jonathan Manthorpe)

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