Guide helps ID candidates who may be linked to Beijing

New online voters’ guide probes Beijing’s ‘infiltration’

Fenella Sung and her colleagues believe Canadians should be thinking China when they cast their ballots this federal election — but insist that has little to do with foreign policy.

The Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are already so embedded in Canadian society, they argue, it’s very much a domestic issue.

To that end, Sung’s group, Canadian Friends of Hong Kong, launched an online guide for voters Thursday, to help them identify candidates who may be too closely allied with Beijing and raise the topic’s profile with the public and politicians.

The website offers a primer on how China has allegedly tried to influence Canadian society, from its use of the party’s United Front Work Department to the Beijing-run Confucius Institutes located in Canadian colleges and school boards.

And it provides an array of questions to ask candidates. Those include whether they favour keeping the Chinese company Huawei out of 5G telecommunications networks, and their position on forcing international students from “non-democratic” countries to undergo crash courses on Canadian values.

“We thought people might think Canada-China relations are too remote: ‘We worry about health care, we worry about affordable day care,’ ” said Sung. “But they fail to see the infiltration of the CCP in Canada is not Canada-China relations, it affects very much all of our daily lives here in Canada. Because they have already become a part of us.”

The issue of China’s attempts to mould opinion in Canada has slowly come to the fore since the arrest last December of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou on an extradition request from the U.S., and Beijing’s furious response.

Meanwhile, academics have tracked a major expansion of the United Front and its overseas influence under Chinese President Xi Jinping.

That activity has already become a major political issue in New Zealand and Australia, which has instituted a number of laws to combat Beijing’s influence.

Sung said China has long made incursions into Canada, from its influence over some Chinese-Canadian community groups to establishing the Confucius Institutes and quietly cultivating politicians.

Chinese businesses — both state-owned and private firms with connections to the Communist Party — have also invested widely in the Canadian economy, she noted.

The website — “Ask politicians about CCP” — stresses that the People’s Republic — a state founded by the Chinese Communist Party 70 years ago — should not be conflated with Chinese Canadians, who started arriving in this country 250 years ago and have roots in various different countries.

Sung said voters could use the website to pose questions at all-candidates meetings, or quiz candidates individually.

Some of the suggested queries — such as whether a candidate feels Canada is too small to confront a power such as China — explore political attitudes.

Others gauge support for new ideas on changing the relationship with Beijing.

They include whether Canada should follow Australia’s example and pass legislation designed to expose and outlaw inappropriate foreign influence, and closely monitor foreign involvement in university research.

Another asks if Canada ought to institute a national day to commemorate 1989’s Tiananmen Square massacre, as politicians move toward marking the Nanjing massacre by Japanese troops in the Second World War.

Voters are also encouraged to ask candidates if they would support sanctions under Canada’s Magnitsky law against Chinese officials tied to human-rights abuses, or would favour expanding trade with Taiwan “whenever and wherever possible.”

“We’re trying to make it as public as possible,” Sung said about the China-influence issue. “We’re hoping to empower voters and individual candidates.”