B.C. politicians keep cozying up to China for money despite Canada’s tougher Indo-Pacific Strategy and risk warnings
No one said anything about the sweeping protests in China.
A week ago, Canada launched its long-awaited Indo-Pacific Strategy which some experts say takes a tougher stance on China. The strategy emphasizes Canada’s security interests and value-based corporations in that region. It warns Canadians of the risks of doing business with China due to China’s increasing disruption of the rule-based international order.
At the same time, a massive wave of social uproar erupted all over China as a result of China’s cruel Covid lockdown, irrational economic policies and brutal social suppression. Shortly after the outbreak of the protests, China’s police ramped up the arrest, surveillance, harassment, and torture of the protesters, according to media reports.
In the face of unprecedented social unrest and a quickly deteriorating human rights situation in China, what did the B.C. political class do? They threw a grand party to celebrate and strengthen business relations with China.
As reported by the Chinese-language website Dawa News, the “2022 BC-Guangdong Economic and Trade Summit" was successfully held on December 1, 2022. The summit was organized simultaneously in Vancouver, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, where participants communicated via an online conferencing app.
The summit was hosted by the Canton Chamber of Commerce Canada and was supported by the B.C. Ministry of Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation, and China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Guangdong Committee. More than 200 people attended the summit, including multiple Canadian politicians such as B.C. MLAs George Chow 周炯华, Michael Lee 李耀华, and former MP Alice Wong 黄陈小萍.
China’s Consul-General in Vancouver Yang Shu 杨舒, gave a speech at the Vancouver venue of the meeting and stood in the centre of their group photos.
In his speech, Consul-General Yang lectured the Canadian guests about the significance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s 20th national congress which pointed the direction for China’s bright future and claimed China's prosperous development will provide more new opportunities for countries around the world, including Canada.
Yang especially explained how president Xi Jinping is helping the world during a turbulent and recessive time. As reported by the Wechat channel of the Chinese Consulate-General in Vancouver,
“Consul-General Yang pointed out that in the era of a rising tide of anti-globalization, unilateralism, protectionism and the sluggish recovery of the world economy, President Xi Jinping, in his speech at the opening ceremony of the 5th China International Import Expo, profoundly explained the importance of "openness" to global economic development: openness is an important driving force for the progress of human civilization. It is the only way for the world to prosper. We need to open up to relieve the difficulties of development, open up to converge the power of cooperation, open up to gather the momentum of innovation, open up to seek the benefits of sharing, promote economic globalization to move forward, enhance the development momentum of all countries so that the fruits of development will benefit more and more equitably to all peoples.”
Lixu Fang 方利旭, a Chinese government official, called on Canadians to enhance business with Guangdong province, a region in southeastern China surrounding Hong Kong. Fang encouraged Canadians to participate in the upcoming investment promotion conference for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area 粤港澳大湾区.
The Greater Bay Area, which strategically surrounds Hong Kong with a cluster of mainland Chinese cities, is an important project for President Xi Jinping as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It plays a crucial role in the prosperity and stability of that area after the enactment of the National Security Law.
Sarah Kutulakos 高诗如, Executive Director & COO of the Canada China Business Council ( CCBC), delivered a video speech to celebrate the grand event.
On the same day of the summit, the CCBC’s WeChat channel published a post to mourn the death of Jiang Zemin, a former leader of the CCP, who witnessed China's rapid economic rise and enabled its party-state capitalism to corrupt the world. Jiang was also the mastermind behind the CCP’s mass persecution of millions of members of a religious group since the 1990s.
In late October, the CCBC specially held a meeting to study the spirit of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s 20th congress and invited China’s Consulate-General for a keynote speech. In the meantime, Kutulakos published a commentary in Business in Vancouver claiming “Canada’s prosperity depends on it engaging with as many countries as possible, including (and especially) China, ” which was immediately translated into Chinese and posted on China’s mouthpiece website the Global Times, with the headlined twisted to “Canada’s prosperity depends on it engaging with China”.
Hua Qiang 华强, president of the Bank of China Vancouver Branch, was among the guests at the summit meeting. Catherine Yuen 袁黄洁玲, principal consultant of the Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office (HKETO) in western Canada, was present at the meeting as well. In October 2022, Hong Kong Watch published a report calling for Canada and other western countries to close HKETOs as these offices have become the CCP’s overseas arms after Hong Kong lost its free market and democracy.
A number of Chinese Canadian community leaders attended the meeting, including Helen Qian 钱华, board director of the Chinese Benevolent Association of Vancouver (CBA); Xiaomei Xue 薛晓梅, executive chair of the Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations (CACA); Tse Pak Heng 谢伯衡, founding president of the Hong Kong Canadians on Hong Kong Situation Association; and William Ma 马威廉, president of the Mah Society of Canada.
CBA and CACA are well-known pro-Beijing organizations, that openly supported the Hong Kong police’s crackdown on the HK protests in 2019 and Beijing’s draconian National Security Law in HK in 2020.
Hong Kong Canadians on the Hong Kong Situation Association and Mah Society of Canada are not well-known, but they were both on the list of a joint statement issued by 200+ Chinese Canadian organizations in 2019 that condemned the HK protests and the 300+ organizationgs that supported the National Security Law in 2020. Tse Pak Heng himself also expressed his support for Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong on multiple occasions.
According to reports on the Dawa News, the WeChat channel of China’s Consulate-General in Vancouver, and other Chinese-language media, there was no discussion about the sweeping protests in China since last week, or the massive protests in Hong Kong since 2019. The slogan of the 2022 BC-Guangdong Economic and Trade Summit is “Creating a beautiful future together in the post-epidemic era”.
Great research and writing. Thank you for doggedly continuing on. In an age where traditional journalism is vanishing, my hope is that your work becomes a critical primary source for historians and authors who can further highlight this blatant corruption.
Really appreciate the coverage you bring, which is relatively impossible to find elsewhere. Sam Cooper from Global News is probably your closest mainstream-media counterpart.
What I can never get over with these issues is this: Imagine the outright backlash & condemnation there would be if, equally, ethnic-European (White) Canadians made such a bold & clearly obvious push for stronger & absolute continental-European relations (& elsewhere across The West), simply because of ethnic ties? Why does every single ethnic group, besides Europeans, get a pass on ethnic self-interest…??