Canada muses while China’s trolls work furiously to get Trump elected
Charles Burton's Blog
Principled realism
Saturday, April 20, 2024
Burton: Canada muses while China’s trolls work furiously to get Trump elected
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Burton and Seaboyer: We need to stop China from buying influence in Canada. Here's how our laws need to change right now
Burton and Seaboyer: We need to stop China from buying influence in Canada. Here's how our laws need to change right now
When Chinese investors acquire foreign companies, they're opening a door for spying. In every Canadian business bought by Chinese money, Beijing establishes a Chinese Communist Party committee — operating in Canada. With every acquisition, the reach of Chinese intelligence services expands. Those Chinese "police stations" operating in Canada were just the tip of the iceberg.
Beijing's intelligence services harvest the data of Canadians to feed AI-enabled apps that precisely guide barely detectable Chinese influence campaigns in Canada.
When Chinese investors acquire foreign companies, they're opening a door for spying. In every Canadian business bought by Chinese money, Beijing establishes a Chinese Communist Party committee — operating in Canada. With every acquisition, the reach of Chinese intelligence services expands. Those Chinese "police stations" operating in Canada were just the tip of the iceberg.
Beijing's intelligence services harvest the data of Canadians to feed AI-enabled apps that precisely guide barely detectable Chinese influence campaigns in Canada.
With complex technologies constantly evolving, one way of protecting Canadians from sophisticated foreign influence is to stop authoritarian undemocratic regimes from corporate acquisitions in Canada.
C-34, for instance, currently includes a classified (read: secret) review process that allows discretionary rulings by cabinet ministers. Regardless of which party is in government at any given time, this step is clearly vulnerable to foreign persuasion and interference. Canadians need open, transparent processes in determining which investments are accepted and which are denied or have strict conditions attached.
With complex technologies constantly evolving, one way of protecting Canadians from sophisticated foreign influence is to stop authoritarian undemocratic regimes from corporate acquisitions in Canada.
C-34, for instance, currently includes a classified (read: secret) review process that allows discretionary rulings by cabinet ministers. Regardless of which party is in government at any given time, this step is clearly vulnerable to foreign persuasion and interference. Canadians need open, transparent processes in determining which investments are accepted and which are denied or have strict conditions attached.
Monday, February 26, 2024
Canada and other U.S. allies tensely envision Trump 2.0: Charles Burton in the Toronto Star
Canada and other U.S. allies tensely envision Trump 2.0: Charles Burton in the Toronto Star
If he regains the presidency, Trump’s plan to make America great again includes 10 per cent tariffs on all imports. Canada — America’s third-largest supplier — wouldn’t be getting a bye.
Replacing reciprocal free trade with a protectionist wall would inflict pain in all directions, including for American consumers, who end up paying more for many goods. For Canada’s export-driven economy, the fallout could mean unemployment for thousands of households, devalued stock markets (including the nest eggs of millions of retirees), and internal regional infighting that makes the 2022 truckers’ convoy look like a high school debate.
Concerns about Trump go beyond fiscal. With the world’s second-largest land mass but a small tax base (just over one-tenth the population of the U.S.) Canada cannot realistically defend its massive territory without the collaborative assurance of a united NATO. Losing America’s resources and leadership would be devastating to the alliance’s ability to defend its member nations.
Friday, January 19, 2024
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
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.
Monday, January 08, 2024
Burton and Seaboyer: China's meddling in Taiwan is an alarming warning for Canada
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.
Friday, January 05, 2024
Burton: Canada must face the facts: China is now closed for business
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
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?
Monday, October 30, 2023
Burton: Sapped of both hard and soft power, Canada needs action to keep up in a dangerous world
Sapped of both hard and soft power, Canada needs action to keep up in a dangerous world
Speaking to an international crowd of leaders, ministers and other representatives who had gathered earlier this month in Beijing for a forum that marked 10 years of China’s Belt and Road Initiative global infrastructure program, Chinese leader Xi Jinping declared that “changes of the world, of our times, and of historical significance are unfolding like never before.”
Quite right. Will the Russian invasion of Ukraine be resolved without war with NATO? Will armed conflict in the Middle East, fomented by Iran, spiral into a regional war? Would China open a third front by invading Taiwan? If the atrocious provocations to war by Iran, Russia and China develop simultaneously on three fronts – setting off a world war in Asia, the Middle East and Indo-Pacific – where will Canada stand?