Secretary of State Antony Blinken is starting three days of talks with senior Chinese officials in Shanghai and Beijing this week with U.S.-China ties at a critical point over numerous global disputes.

The mere fact that Blinken is making the trip — shortly after a conversation between President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, a similar visit to China by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and a call between the U.S. and Chinese defense chiefs — might be seen by some as encouraging, but ties between Washington and Beijing are tense and the rifts are growing wider.

"I believe that by making the connections we made with youth around our age and around the world, we are going to be able to communicate better as the next generation, building the world up," Anna Colbaugh, an 11th-grade student at the Lincoln High School in Washington State, US, told the Global Times.

In March, Colbaugh, along with 23 other students from Lincoln High School and Steilacoom High School in Washington State, US, embarked on an 11-day visit to China. They were part of the group of Gen-Z "friendly ambassadors" invited by China under a program announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in November 2023. The program aims to invite 50,000 young Americans to China over a period of five years for exchanges and study.

As Vigneault and others testified during the first phase of Canada‘s public inquiry into foreign interference, a number of different “threat actors” attempted to meddle in Canada‘s 2019 and 2021 federal elections. The testimony focused on threat actors deployed by several countries: China, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia. However, it was the activities directed by China that were found to be the most sophisticated and well-resourced, according to summary documents of CSIS reports released during the hearings.

Published: April 2024
Written by: John Price

CSIS and other agencies in Canada have promoted the concept that “non-traditional collectors” (NTCs) of intelligence, including students and researchers with ties to China, are espionage agents.

It is a flawed, dangerous and racist concept that is being baked into research surveillance policies as well as judicial decisions

In Canada, many Chinese Canadian researchers already feel targeted by earlier CSIS-university initiatives. A recent survey undertaken by York University‘s Dr. Qiang Zha has shown that among researchers familiar with the CSIS guidelines for research, 40% felt “considerable fear and/or anxiety that they were being surveilled by the Canadian government.” 

Published: April 15, 2024
Written by: Senator Yuen Pau Woo

Dear Commissioner:

Thank you for the opportunity to make a submission in response to the April 2024 hearings. I would like to express my gratitude to the Commission for the care and diligence that has been put into the Inquiry, and for the professionalism with which your team has conducted itself.

The testimony of the last two weeks has, in my opinion, provided such clarity. We heard from the independent agencies and ad hoc groups tasked with monitoring the conduct of GE43 and GE44, namely Elections Canada, the Office of the Commissioner of Canadian Elections, the SITE Task Force, and the Panel of Five. We also heard from the constituent bodies of the SITE Task Force (RCMP, CSIS, CSE, and GAC) that are responsible for tracking, and responding to, FI outside of an election. All the above have confirmed that while there was FI during both elections, none of it rose to the level that affected the outcomes of those ballots -- both at the riding level and for the country as a whole. The testimony of the Panel of Five, which had the most direct and immediate responsibility for tracking and responding to FI during the election – in real time – concluded that the elections were “free and fair”.

One year ago, on 21 April 2023, the Special Court of Assize in Paris unjustly declared Canadian citizen Hassan Diab guilty, based on unfounded allegations and flawed intelligence that is not allowed in a Canadian court. He was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for a crime he did not commit: the 1980 bombing outside a Paris synagogue.
... Dr. Hassan Diab continues to be subjected to a prolonged and unjust ordeal created by Canada and France. The French court‘s declaration of guilt one year ago prolongs the suffering of Hassan and his family. The Canadian government must say NO to a second extradition request from France (whether already submitted or to be submitted).

Read the full media notice.

Petition in English:  https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Sign/e-4901
Pétition en français:  https://www.noscommunes.ca/petitions/fr/Petition/Sign/e-4901

The petition will close for signatures on June 10, 2024, 

Two weeks ago, family members of 18 Chinese victims of the "comfort women" system filed a lawsuit with the Shanxi Provincial High People's Court in North China, demanding an apology and compensation over the Japanese military's atrocities against civilian Chinese women during the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45). 

This is the first time that these women have filed a lawsuit in China. In Japan, there have been nearly 30 lawsuits filed, the first of which was filed nearly 32 years ago. All of the lawsuits resulted in a disappointing outcome for the victims and their families. 

Published: April 20, 2024
Written by: Amy Hawkins

Stopped at the border, interrogated on national security grounds, laptops and mobile phones checked, held for several hours, plans for future research shattered.

Many western scholars are nervous about travelling to China in the current political climate. But lately it is Chinese researchers working at US universities who are increasingly reporting interrogations – and in several cases deportations – at US airports, despite holding valid work or study visas for scientific research.

Established in 1973, the Canada-China Scholars‘ Exchange Program (CCSEP) was the result of an undertaking by then Chinese premier Zhou Enlai and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. The CCSEP is an official exchange program between the two countries designed to enhance Chinese scholars' and professionals' knowledge and understanding of Canada.

Scholarships are usually for four to 12 month periods of research in Canada, but do not involve formal enrolment at a Canadian university. The recipients are placed as visiting scholars. Successful candidates will travel to Canada before the end of February 2025 to begin their program

Published: March 19, 2024

Participants shared with Cui that students were not the only perpetrators of negative stereotypes — outdated textbooks and teacher attitudes can play a major role in reinforcing negative perceptions of Chinese people and culture in Canadian schools.

“Although Chinese is one of the largest ethnic groups in Canada and early Chinese immigrants made a significant contribution to Canada‘s nation-building, participants indicated that they learned little history about Chinese immigrants in Canada and that textbooks had negative, out-of-date and biased descriptions of China,” says Cui. “Participants also reported the silencing of Chinese student voices trying to share their real experiences of China.”

Foreign governments dramatically increased their economic penetration and influence in China during this period, and the Chinese suffered an embarrassing military defeat at the hands of Japan in a war that began in the summer 1894. Catastrophic floods of the Yellow River in the final years of the century devastated thousands of square miles and directly caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. Famine and disease followed in the wake of the floods, driving massive movements of people and leaving millions of peasants in the north of the country in conditions of extreme poverty. Amidst these overlapping crises, “1898 was a good year for the Christians,” and the missionaries added “a new threat to peasant well-being.” That year also saw the political turbulence of the Hundred Days of Reform and its aftermath, in particular the coup d‘état that made Empress Dowager Cixi the head of the Qing government.

It is within this context that the Boxer Uprising materializes. While the general circumstances surrounding the Uprising have become a familiar story to many in the United States, it is nonetheless poorly understood, our accounts shaped by Western chauvinism and the old, embarrassed desire to rationalize the brutality of the West‘s efforts to “civilize” benighted foreigners.

Dr. Wallace Chung is Canada‘s foremost collector of historic Chinese and Canadian Pacific Railway artifacts and memorabilia. Phil Lind was Canada‘s top collector of artifacts and memorabilia from the Klondike Gold Rush.
Both donated their collections to the University of B.C. UBC‘s Katherine Kalsbeek thought the collections worked well together, so made a proposal — to display them side by side in a new museum.

The new Chung/Lind Gallery will open to the public May 1 on the second floor of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at UBC.

Sadly, Lind passed away last year. But about 40 members of his family made it to the official opening of the 3,100-sq.-ft. space on April 19.