Beijing influencing Canada’s Chinese media: ex-editor

VANCOUVER, B.C. — At most Canadian news organizations, the opinion column would have barely raised an eyebrow.

Jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo had just died of liver cancer while held in custody by Beijing, seven years after he won the Nobel peace prize.

Victor Ho, then editor in chief of the Vancouver edition of Sing Tao, the most popular Chinese-language newspaper in Canada, wrote that Liu’s persecution violated universal values of decency and human rights.

But some of Ho’s co-workers were taken aback.

“My colleagues treated it like it was very dangerous,” he recalled about that 2017 column. “They fear so-called political consequences, like ‘You cannot go back to Hong Kong, you cannot go back to China.’ And maybe the psychological threat from the huge government influence, huge government shadows here from China … To me, this is really sad.”

In fact, the commentary was at odds with the newspaper’s usual coverage of Chinese affairs, material that is supplied by Sing Tao headquarters in Hong Kong and is consistently pro-Beijing.

And the editor says the paper’s slant is typical of most Chinese ethnic news outlets in Canada, whose reporting on the region can seem under the sway of an authoritarian regime continents away.

Ho says that approach stems largely from the biases of owners eager to please the People’s Republic for business reasons, not direct pressure from Beijing. But they’ll dutifully report on events at local Chinese consulates where journalists are fed a diet of snack food and state “propaganda,” he says.

“Beijing has become the mainstream now in Chinese newspapers or magazine here,” he said. “I cannot find a real independent and non-partisan newspaper here reporting Chinese affairs. I cannot find one for you.”