Burton: Taiwan’s election results don’t ease the sense of looming tragedy

Taiwan’s election results don’t ease the sense of looming tragedy

 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-taiwans-election-results-dont-ease-the-sense-of-looming-tragedy/

China’s hostility was deepened by the fact that democratic elections were held at all. On China’s heavily censored social media, searches for “Taiwan election” yield a notice reading “According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the content of this topic is not displayed.”

But what makes Beijing even more concerned is that Taiwan’s new President Lai Ching-te, earlier in his political career, was an unabashed advocate for Taiwan making a unilateral declaration of independence. Mr. Lai toned this down in his recent campaign speeches, professing to continue his predecessor’s less confrontational line with Beijing. But a very plausible danger from this week’s election result stems from China’s conviction that, under Mr. Lai, there will be no “return of Taiwan to the embrace of the motherland” through peaceful negotiation. And China will not stand idly by if it perceives Mr. Lai as manoeuvering internationally to bring about de jure affirmation of the reality that Taiwan is de facto an independent state that is being denied sovereign national rights under international law.

Burton and Seaboyer: China's meddling in Taiwan is an alarming warning for Canada

China's meddling in Taiwan is an alarming warning for Canada  

 

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/chinas-meddling-in-taiwan-is-an-alarming-warning-for-canada/article_e48b66ba-abf0-11ee-bf98-47971997da48.html

Beijing openly wants the DPP displaced and the KMT returned to power. Last month a senior Chinese Communist Party official chaired a meeting of Chinese state and party agencies to support this end. The upshot so far: lifelike, computer-fabricated videos depicting candidates saying things they never said, or carefully edited clips of politicians saying things in unguarded moments they wish they hadn’t said.

China has also created a network of “Trojan horse” fake social media groups, purporting to support one party or another, that spew fake scandals and conspiracy theories to discredit the DPP. There is also evidence of individual citizens being tracked. For instance, if someone buys an ebook on Taiwanese politics, AI detects not only when the purchase was made but when the person is actually reading it. They are then micro-targeted with AI-generated messaging that undermines what they have just read.

Canada's turn is coming, and we must likewise tolerate no foreign interference in electing governments that guide the country on the world stage. Canada’s election outcomes should be determined by Canadians alone.

 

Institut pro politiku a společnost: Interview with Charles Burton, Canadian expert on China policy

 

Charles Burton on Bill C-34: Testimony to the Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology

 

CDN response to Chinese interference? Pathetic and ineffective. / Charles Burton, MLI in Parliament

 

The China Problem - CNAPS panel discussion featuring Charles Burton, Miles Yu at Hudson Institute

 

Burton: Canada must face the facts: China is now closed for business

 

Canada must face the facts: China is now closed for business

 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-canada-must-face-the-facts-china-is-now-closed-for-business/

 

To mute domestic disgruntlement over the economy, Mr. Xi might play the nationalism card through military engagement in the South China Sea and Taiwan as soon as 2027. As well, the regime has been reaffirming its Leninist core through renewed predominance of state-controlled enterprise over successful capitalists, to the extent that large Chinese companies have developed PR plans to respond to sudden “disappearances” of their chief executives.

Foreign businesspeople embroiled in arbitrary commercial disputes are increasingly denied exit from China until they comply with demands from Chinese state counterparts. And there are ever more controls and restrictions on security of business data, including bans on foreign businesses in China sending information to servers outside the country.

Then there are growing concerns about China’s political stability, as evidenced by the purge in 2023 of the Foreign Minister, the Minister of Defence and a range of senior military figures. This can’t be good.

Burton: China likely to escape scot-free in persecution of two Canadians

 China likely to escape scot-free in persecution of two Canadians

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/china-likely-to-escape-scot-free-in-persecution-of-two-canadians/article_644384da-7778-5830-b3a6-56483b4a07f8.html

While few specifics are known about Spavor’s claims, media reports depict a connection to Kovrig’s former job at Canada’s embassy in Beijing, and later with the International Crisis Group think tank, roles in which he would allegedly meet with people in China, engage them in his fluent Mandarin, and mine the conversations for nuggets of insight into China’s political or economic affairs.

Chinese authorities, of course, don’t like such activities. One expects that Kovrig and his superiors, both in government and the ICG, would have been well aware that this type of work would irritate Beijing, thus the danger of arbitrary detention on trumped-up charges was always there whenever he visited China without the protection of a diplomatic passport. And so it was.

One particularly troubling aspect of this sort of activity is the risk it presents to people who might unknowingly be sources for these information-gathering practices. Apparently Spavor and Kovrig routinely got together for drinks and sessions of good-humoured conversation. But friendships with diplomats imply that observations shared in a bar can end up the next morning in a report to Ottawa, and on to the Five Eyes. Was this possibility lost on Spavor? Was Kovrig perhaps not as forthcoming as he could have been about the full dimensions of their chats?