MP Han Dong’s wife is working for an IT company that aims to "tell China's story well"

One more form of China’s extraterritorial reach in Canada, especially in its cyberspace and the Chinese community.

Liberal MP Han Dong (董晗鹏)’s wife, Sophia Qiao (乔桥), is an executive at a Chinese IT company that is well-known for its draconian censorship and dystopian propaganda, according to multiple sources in the Chinese and English-speaking community. 

Promoting the censorship and propaganda machine of a hostile country in Canada is not illegal, but in a time when the P.R.China’s spy balloons hovering in our sky, monitor buoys floating in our Arctic ocean, secret police stations operating in our neighbourhoods, surveillance apps running on our phones and election interference unfolding in our Parliament, do we still need one more form of China’s extraterritorial reach in Canada's cyberspace and the Chinese Canadian population?

The answer from Canadian politicians is “Yes”. In fact, they are so happy to welcome it that they sent video messages in a swarm to that Chinese website to boost its business. These politicians included MP Han Dong and PM Justin Trudeau.  

Sophia “Sophie” Qiao (乔桥), a former political staffer and now an executive at a Chinese tech giant

MP Han Dong (2nd from right in the front row) and wife Sophia (1st from right in the front row) at an event. Image source: Internet.

Sophia “Sophie” Qiao (乔桥) is the wife of Han Dong for more than 20 years.

Qiao used to work as an assistant to Ontario Liberal MPP Soo Wong (黄素梅) around 2013. 

Before Dong was elected a Liberal MPP in 2014, he also spent many years at the Ontario provincial government assisting several MPPs. Dong once functioned as the campaign manager for Soo Wong.

Image source: iQIYI’s Facebook page.

Around mid-2020, Qiao started to work as the marketing director for iQIYI North America Ltd (爱奇艺北美), the North American branch of iQIYI (爱奇艺), a Chinese website that provides online video streaming services.

A disclosure summary posted on the Canadian Parliament’s website in July 2022 shows Han Dong’s spouse received employment income from iQIYI North America Ltd. in the past 12 months and will continue to receive employment income from iQIYI North America Ltd. in the next 12 months.

Canadian politicians earnestly promote iQIYI’s business in Canada 

As for the censorship environment at iQIYI and its parent company, and how iQIYI’s CEO pledged to tell China’s story well, we will explore in detail in the next section. 

Here we just list a couple of iQIYI’s events where Canadian politicians gladly participated in.   

In February 2021, iQIYI North America celebrated its first Chinese New Year with generous support from Canadian politicians and local community leaders. They recorded congratulatory video clips for the website, which you can still watch on iQIYI’s site today. Some of them specifically mentioned the name of iQIYI. 

Many of the politicians were Liberal MPs, including PM Justin Trudeau Qiao’s husband MP Han Dong, small business minister Mary Ng (伍凤仪), MP Jean Yip (叶嘉丽), MP Shaun Chen (陈圣源), public safety minister Marco Mendicino (马守诺).  

Jean Yip sent new year wishes to iQIYI’s consumers, and Han Dong specially thanked iQIYI for boosting the economy and employment in Canada.  

iQIYI North America’s office is located at 120 Adelaide Street West, Suite 1420 Toronto ON M5H 1T1, in the riding of Spadina-Fort York, whose MP is Kevin Vuong (王启荣). But Vuong was not at the event. What’s more, the internet record suggests Vuong and iQIYI have no interactions at all. 

Kevin Vuong ran in the 2021 election on the Liberal slate but after the media reported a dropped sex assault charge against him, the Liberal Party kicked him out of the party. Vuong was later successfully elected to the Parliament but sits as an independent.   

Also at iQIYI’s new year virtual party were then-B.C. Premier John Horgan (贺谨), then-Toronto mayor John Tory (庄德利) and Markham mayor Frank Scarpitti (薛家平). People from the business sector also joined the virtual party including Sarah Kutulakos 高诗如 (Sarah Kutulakos), executive director of the Canada China Business Council; and Sun Nianbei (孙念北), general manager of China Construction Bank Toronto Branch. 

This is not the only occasion that politicians appeared at iQIYI’s business event. When iQIYI signed a cooperation agreement with CIK Telecom in December 2020, Markham city councilor Alan Ho (何胡景) attended the function. Small business minister Mary Ng and Markham mayor Frank Scarpitti sent congratulatory letters.

A brief introduction to the censorship environment at iQIYI and its parent company Baidu (百度)

iQIYI is one of China’s largest video streaming websites. Unlike TikTok, which provides short video services, iQIYI focuses on long-form video content such as movies, TV shows, anime, and so on. 

iQIYI was founded by China's tech giant Baidu (百度) in 2010. It is headquartered in Beijing and Shanghai, with several overseas offices and 101.4 million paid subscribers around the globe. In June 2020, iQIYI launched its North American office in downtown Toronto.  

Although often dubbed as ‘China’s Netflix’, iQIYI has much less freedom in terms of content than its American rival because of the severe censorship in China, as well as the iQIYI’s willing compliance and its active facilitating the information control environment.