Canada can’t convict “Chinese spies” because they aren’t spies, just targets for political gain

Written by: William Ging Wee Dere

“They use these lies, … , but what kind of legal basis do they have to prove China has committed genocide? That doesn’t make sense.” These are the words of Bill Yee, a retired, well-respected Chinese Canadian judge and member of the Chinese-Canadian Advisory Committee of the Provincial government of British Columbia. Once Yee said those words on a Toronto Chinese language radio station in March, 2021, the knives came out. He was denounced by anti-China forces such as the pro-British colonial Alliance Canada Hong Kong, which accused Yee of being a pawn for the Communist Party of China, and demanded that he be dismissed from the BC advisory committee

The unsubstantiated accusations levied against Yee are not an isolated incident. Currently, there is an organized and concerted effort of military/national security institutions and analysts emerging across Canada seeking to demonize the People’s Republic of China and Canadians who may be sympathetic to a multipolar world. They range from “security experts” within the Royal Military College in Kingston, Montreal’s Concordia University, and the McDonald-Laurier Institute (which takes funding from the Taiwan area government, and Latvian government) etc. with the mainstream media acting as their mouthpieces. Drawing from the experience of the old Cold War against the Soviet Union, the present day “experts” on national security are using the same tried and true tactics of the by-gone era to instill fear and loathing among the Canadian public against anyone suspected of having sympathies towards the People’s Republic of China.

A recent piece in iPolitics by right-wing academic Julian Spencer-Churchill of Concordia University invokes trumped-up national security fears to vilify Chinese Canadians as enemy aliens. The article begins with this paragraph, “Why Can’t Canada Convict Any Chinese Spies? There's even fear that China has infiltrated different levels of government, allowing it to influence Canadian public opinion, public policy, and elections. The most recent Canadian failure to convict alleged Chinese agents is undermining American confidence that Canada won’t be a sanctuary for foreign spies.”

Spencer-Churchill uncritically refers to a joint CSIS/RCMP counter-espionage report called Sidewinder as supposed proof of China’s influence and collaboration with the Chinese diaspora in Canada. This report from 1997 could be referenced as the text-book for law enforcement in the practice of racial-profiling and looking for reds under every bed. An entire case study can be made into the racist Sinophobic intent of this report.

The Report links investment immigrants from Hong Kong - to the “Triad” organized crime syndicates - to the Chinese Intelligence Services (ChIS). Quotes from the Report: “A certain number of very rich Hong Kong Chinese business people (tycoons) who are known to have been cooperating with the Chinese Government for years. … ChIS make very active use of their access to Canadian industries through exchanges of specialists and students, and also set up shell companies to pursue their acquisition of economic and technological intelligence.” The Report goes on to stereotype Chinese cultural relations, “Central points and essential for the understanding of the problem are the cultural singularities that characterize the Chinese as the concepts of "debt of honour", "duties", "Hou Tai or backers" and "Guanxi or connections. … By using these alliances, the Chinese government is trying to gain influence on Canadian politics by maximizing their presence over some of the country's economic levers.”

To give it a sense of cultural authenticity, the Sidewinder Report quotes from Sun Tze’s Art of War and makes this allegation, “The triads, the tycoons and the ChIS have learned the quick way to gain influence is to provide finance to the main political parties. Most of the companies identified in this research have contributed, sometimes several tens of thousands of dollars, to the two traditional political parties, that is, the Liberal and the Progressive-Conservative Parties. … China remains one of the greatest ongoing threats to Canada's national security and Canadian industry.”

Spencer-Churchill bemoans in his article that “Canada has been a target of Chinese espionage for decades” but the courts have never convicted anyone of stealing secrets in Canada for China. Instead of conceding that there is no evidence, the writer puts the blame on the incompetence of the RCMP/CSIS by saying that they “are poorly equipped to deal with industrial espionage” or that “political sensitivities” are interfering with the performance of their duties to catch Chinese spies.

CSIS/RCMP incompetence or not, many Chinese Canadians are feeling the brunt of the McCarthyite witch hunt. The usual players (Charles Burton, David Vigneault, Richard Fadden, McDonald-Laurier Institute, etc.) have been doing the rounds among the political class, the media, and academia to repeat their echo chamber-like claims that serve to instill fear among the Canadian public on the dangers of China (CPC), Chinese institutions (Confucius Institute), Chinese technology (Huawei) and by extension Chinese-Canadians in the diaspora.

Fear of “the other” used to terrorize minority populations through Canadian History

Instilling fear of the “other,” external spies or internal agents of foreign governments or ideologies, has been a familiar refrain of an insecure government throughout Canadian history. Before Confederation, there were the Fenians, a secret society working to free Ireland from British colonialism. At the time of the North-West Rebellion, led by Louis Riel and the Métis as well as the Plains Indigenous peoples, the North-West Mounted Police acted as the intelligence and security force of the Dominion government to suppress the rebellion in 1885 for the interest of the Hudson’s Bay Company and European settlers. The litany of security and intelligence activities continue in the run-up to WWI, when Canada persecuted the subversively pacifist Doukhobors. At the same time Ukrainian immigrants were interned by Canada for the duration of the First Great War, because they were deemed a security risk.

Governing through a psychology of fear, the Canadian government adopted the Sinophobic “Yellow Peril” metaphor inculcated by Great Britain as the racist justification for the Opium Wars to colonize China. As a weak and subjugated country, China could do nothing when Canada imposed the Head Tax and Exclusion Act on Chinese immigrants from 1885 to 1947. State repression was used once again during WWII when the government seized the property of Japanese Canadians and interned them for the duration of the war. Italian and German immigrants were also interned. Canada’s national security law, the War Measures Act was used, as it would be again in 1970 against people in Quebec.

State repression against minorities in Canada under the guise of national security is all too frequent throughout Canadian history. In order to manufacture consent and to frighten an unsuspecting public, security apparatuses like CSIS (Canadian Security and Intelligence Service) and CSE (Communications Security Establishment) feed reports of espionage and national security to the government, politicians, mainstream and not so mainstream media for dissemination. The danger of an uncontrollable intelligence network is their ability to fabricate “intelligence” to steer foreign policy. In recent history, false intelligence has led to devastating wars; examples include the use of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident to justify US aggression in Vietnam; the lie of Weapons of Mass Destruction to justify US invasion of Iraq; along with numerous other national security excuses for the US to invade Panama, Grenada, and so on.

Today, the Western security and intelligence establishment, and in Canada through CSIS, CSE and the Five-Eyes, have identified the supposed new security threat in the form of the People’s Republic of China, and including all those who voice sympathy, or have relations with that country. As Aidan Jonah wrote in The Canada Files, Canada, under pressure from the Five Eyes intelligence network, cancelled a joint winter training exercise with China’s People’s Liberation Army in 2019. It doesn’t take a giant leap of faith to link the security/intelligence establishment to the military-industrial complex. The political economy of the Cold War is directly linked to the need to prepare for a hot war as the security, military, and industrial sectors work together to benefit each other and to pressure the various western governments to act accordingly.

Unsubstantiated “United Front” Accusations Threaten Democracy for All

An immediate danger to Canadian democracy is the attack on Chinese Canadian (CC) public opinion and freedom of political expression. If a CC political figure, academic or activist raises an opposing view to the dominant narrative related to Chinese policies, whether on the Olympics, Xinjiang, Hong Kong or Taiwan, that person is labelled a stooge of the Communist Party of China or their mind is captured by the United Front Department of the CPC.

The United Front is a strategy and tactic developed by the CPC and Mao Zedong during the anti-Japanese War to unite all Chinese forces, including the Kuomintang, to fight the Japanese occupation. The international united front was built to fight fascism during WWII, as theorized by Bulgarian Communist Georgi Dimitroff and applied by the Comintern. It was applied again to build international solidarity with the national liberation struggles of Third World countries against colonialism and imperialism in the 20th century.

The CPC openly calls upon patriotic overseas Chinese to support the modernization of the then impoverished country during the opening up period under Deng Xiaoping to build a prosperous society to alleviate poverty and for “common prosperity.” It is not a devious scheme to influence Canadian politics as the anti-China elements claim. There is no formal de facto, organized United Front activity of the Chinese government in Canada. It is against Chinese state policy to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. This fear mongering is like saying that there is an international communist conspiracy to take over the world. After the Liberation of China, many overseas Chinese trained abroad returned to China to help rebuild a devastated country as part of a united effort. Progressive Chinese claim adherence to the informal political united front and not to allow the pro-imperialists to use the term to intimidate and divide them.

For activists in solidarity work, the united front is a political concept to unite all those that can be united for a certain purpose, e.g., to abolish apartheid in South Africa; to defeat US aggression in Vietnam; to oppose the Cold War to maintain peace. People from all walks of life can be drawn into a united front, for example, millions of people were engaged to denounce the US invasion of Iraq. These people came from the full spectrum of society, leftists, clergy, trade unionists, students, women’s groups, pacifists and so on came together to work for peace. Today, we form a united front to oppose the Cold War against China and for a multipolar world order of equality, justice and peace. A Canada-China group for peace and friendship would be part of the international united front for peace and friendship with China.

The unsubstantiated allegations of a CPC-led united front, in recent years have attacked the democratic rights of Chinese-Canadians under the pretext they were being influenced by the Chinese government. Some of the examples of this, within the realm of Canadian politics, are listed below:

In electoral politics, Richard Fadden, in 2010, as then head of CSIS, in a drive-by shooting style of innuendos claimed that Chinese Canadian politicians including cabinet ministers and elected municipal officials in BC are under the influence a “foreign government”, i.e. China. No evidence against the unnamed politicians was ever produced but the damage was done.

In June 2021, Senator Yuen Pau Woo led the opposition to Leo Housakos’ resolution in the Senate to denounce China for committing “genocide” against the Uyghurs. Unlike the House of Commons, the Senate rejected the declaration by 33 to 29. In retaliation, National Endowment for Democracy funded group Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project claimed that “Mr. Yuen Pau Woo has been acting as a spokesperson for China rather than for Canada.” URAP promised to retaliate against Pau Woo by campaigning for his expulsion from the Senate. Of course, this actually existing foreign interference is welcomed by Canadian political elites.

In the federal election of September 2021, former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu, was defeated. Chiu falsely attributed his defeat, repeated by the media, to CPC united front influence into Canadian politics. This is a dangerous allegation that anyone who opposes right-wing politicians is under the influence of China.

In addition to the above, ordinary Chinese-Canadians are also under the watchful eye of the national security establishment aided by the media and more treacherously by other members of the Chinese Canadian community who are under the influence of the anti-China narrative. The 1997 Sidewinder project seems to be still in play for the RCMP/CSIS as they go after Chinese Canadians in the scientific and academic fields. Some examples of the attack on ordinary Chinese Canadians include:

Qing Quentin Huang is a naval engineer and was a subcontractor to the Canadian frigate program when he was charged by CSIS in 2013 for stealing trade secrets for China. For eight long years Mr. Huang stood alone, except for his lawyers, to fight the allegations. No human rights advocates, no civil libertarians came to his defense. When CSIS refused to disclose evidence against him, the case was stayed and then finally, the criminal charges were dropped in December, 2021. This was a blatant misuse of the court system by national security forces purely based on ideology. It was not the only one involving people of Chinese descent.
Yentai Gan, an agricultural scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, was charged by the national security branch of the RCMP for fraud and breach of trust for his alleged ties to a Chinese university in November, 2019. The case is cloaked in secrecy as the RCMP has not disclosed any evidence. In a similar case in the US, Harvard professor, Charles Lieber was found guilty at about the same time for his ties with a Chinese university.
The US Justice Department “China Initiative” has also targeted a McGill University scientist, Chinese Canadian Ishiang Shih, who was indicted for sending computer chips to China. Shih is subjected to extradition to the US to face the charges. The “China Initiative” program casts a wide net in the fine tradition of McCarthyism. Over 90% of those investigated are of Chinese descent. The fear for Canadian democracy and justice is that CSIS and the RCMP are taking lessons from the Americans to round up Chinese Canadians.
The last example of the CSIS round-up is Dr. Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng, who were fired from the Winnipeg National Microbiology Lab in July 2019. Dr. Qiu was instrumental in finding a treatment for Ebola. Dr. Qiu and her husband were escorted from the Lab under advice from CSIS. Having lost their employment in Canada, both returned to China.

If the anti-China Neo-McCarthyites get their way in Canada, the civil liberties of not just Chinese Canadians are at stake, but the civil liberties for all Canadians are. The atmosphere in Canada is getting treacherous for progressive dissent. There are constant calls to push through legislation mandating the registration of supposed “foreign agents” including journalists similar to laws existing in Australia and the US. All anti-imperialists and progressives in Canada should be aware of this looming danger. The Cold War against China is part of the preparation for a wider crackdown on dissent. If the state is coming for Chinese Canadians today, then all Canadians are affected. It is high time for Canadians to stand united for our democratic rights.

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William Ging Wee Dere is the author of the award-winning “Being Chinese in Canada, The Struggle for Identity, Redress and Belonging.” (Douglas & McIntyre, 2019). He was a political organizer and a leading activist in the 2-decade movement for redress of the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act.

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