Part 6: How China Undermines Democracy
Jack-ass
In 2010, Canada’s top spy, Richard Fadden, made a shocking pronouncement, “We're in fact a bit worried in a couple of provinces that there's some political figures who have developed quite an attachment to foreign countries.”
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service head went on, "The individual becomes in a position to make decisions that affect the country or the province or a municipality. All of a sudden, decisions aren't taken on the basis of the public good, but on the basis of another country's preoccupations."
The foreign country was China. This set off a shit-storm in flaccid Canada.
You would think the furor was to immediately investigate which politicians were under China’s sway. In fact, the shit-storm was about Fadden and his “racist” comments.
Whenever you hear our failed elite and their brain-dead media holler “racist,” it’s a tactic designed to smear the speaker, and stop discussion that leads to how they’ve enriched themselves at their country’s expense.
Which is just what happened. Within days Fadden apologized, and the controversy subsided, and the elite went back to business with Beijing. Privately, however, the country’s top spy stood by the work of his agents. Just weeks later, CSIS took the extraordinary step of sending a senior official to talk to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty about one of his Liberal Party’s cabinet ministers, Michael Chan.
Chan’s work was much admired by McGuinty
CSIS told McGuinty that Chan, then Minister of Tourism, had developed too close a relationship with China’s consulate in Toronto, and was acting as an agent of China first and foremost. CSIS’s suspicions were based on at least five specific concerns about Chan’s conduct between 2008 and 2010.
It should have been no surprise. Chan once told a reporter, "Strictly speaking, I’m Canadian. But I have been always paying attention to the root of my culture. I am much concerned with Chinese affairs.”
Last year, he denounced pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong as the work of foreign actors intent on undermining the People’s Republic.
Was McGuinty concerned in the least that a member of his cabinet might be prioritizing a foreign country’s business over his voters’ business? No. He dismissed CSIS’ concerns and Chan remained in cabinet.
There Chan and others like him influence the Canadian government to make decisions that would be mind-boggling to anyone who doesn’t understand these corrupt politicians are getting paid by someone other than the Canadian taxpayer:
Chinese state-owned-enterprises have been allowed to take over companies in Canada’s vital oil sector — and acquire their state-of-art extraction techniques.
China's Hytera Communications was allowed to acquire Vancouver-based Norsat International which makes satellite communications systems used for national security and defense purposes.
Hong Kong-based O-Net Communications bought Montreal's ITF Technologies. ITF makes fibre-laser technology for communications and industry which can be used in direct-energy weapons like lasers.
Beijing-based Nuctech was awarded the contract to supply X-ray equipment for 170 Canadian embassies and consulates around the world. The X-rays will be connected to embassy networks, meaning hard-drives will be accessible, and data downloadable. That’s right. The government of Canada has willingly given China, a country notorious for spying, access to its most sensitive diplomatic locations.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
It all would have remained under water, had in 2018 Canada not been forced to honor its treaty obligations, and arrest at American request one of Huawei’s top executives, Meng Wanzhou. Meng is wanted by the Americans for conspiracy, bank fraud, obstruction of justice, money laundering and violating U.S. sanctions against Iran. China retaliated by arresting two Canadians on obviously false charges of spying.
Since Canada’s bobble-headed voters have now been slapped in the face by Chinese aggression, the country’s fetid elite and media now suddenly pretend to care about the warnings of CSIS about the influence of China in Canadian politics rather than the Director’s “racism.”
However, one person who remains unconcerned is Canada’s preening Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Beloved by the globalist elite for his attacks on his country’s oil industry, Trudeau is the son of a former Canadian Prime Minister.
Pierre Trudeau was a devoted Marxist who in the 1970s at the height of the Cold War “opened relations” with both communist China and Cuba. His son has followed in his footsteps abroad, and will line his pockets accordingly. Trudeau counts among his good friends Alibaba’s Jack Ma — who puts the family of his political friends on his payroll (more below).
Worried about what it might find and embroiled in other scandals, Trudeau just shut down a parliamentary inquiry looking into how China is undermining Canada’s democracy by targeting elite politicians and businesspersons with “sweetheart” business deals and economic inducements. In this so-called “elite capture” strategy China’s Communist Party wins support for its foreign policy.
The committee revealed what its politician members already knew: China uses something called the United Front — a vast network of political, business and media operatives directed from Beijing. United Front groups are disguised with dull and prosaic names, but their real purpose is to infiltrate nations across the world to influence business, politics, policy and education, and report directly back to Beijing.
The CCP considers ethnic Chinese everywhere to ultimately be Chinese subjects, regardless of their citizenship, and seeks to treat them as resources to assist in ‘the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’ whether they like it or not.”
In Australia, the United Front was even further along in its work. China owns an airport in Western Australia, nine million hectares of Australian land, and the Port of Darwin, a key strategic asset. That land is 3 percent of the country’s total. It may not seem like a lot, but much of it is arid Australia’s most valuable farm land. Chinese investors own 732 gigalitres or 1.89 per cent of Australian water - an amount more than Sydney Harbour which holds 500 gigalitres. China has also bought US $150 billion in Australian companies.
Dastaryi: China’s bag man in the Australian Labour Party
As in Canada, Australia’s intelligence agency ASIO has warned governments of the growing dominance of United Front for years. And as in Canada, they were ignored.
Until Labor Party Senator Sam Dastyari was caught tipping Chinese billionaire Huang Xiangmo that he was under Australian government surveillance. Huang was targeted by the Australian Taxation Office, and his permanent residency was revoked by the Immigration Department.
Dastaryi, an immigrant from Iran, also parroted Chinese talking points on the South China Sea, in contradiction of Australian and Labour Party policy. He also pressured the deputy Labor leader, Tanya Plibersek, who was then the foreign affairs spokeswoman, not to meet a pro-democracy Chinese activist during a Hong Kong trip.
These are very bold maneuvers from a junior politician elected to a relatively minor position. Perhaps that’s because Dastaryi was making sure China’s cash got to the seniors in his party, and thought the money bought him that right.
One of Huang’s donations of $100,000 to the New South Wales Labor Party, which was dropped off at its office in an Aldi bag, is now the subject of an Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry.
Huang built significant influence with political figures from both sides of the spectrum, having met with former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd.
Rudd has become Australia’s first (former) prime minister to openly consort with the ruling Communist Party’s United Front Work Department (UFWD). From Crikey Australia:
China is all in the family for Rudd
“Rudd, who was PM from 2007-2009 and again in 2012, spoke in the Communist Party’s UFWD’s Central Institute of Socialism in November 2017. In October 2018, he was greeted as a “rock star” according to a report in the AFR at the United Front-sponsored Australia-China Future Forum.
But it was his appearance this year with the leadership of the UFWD body Australia China Economics, Trade and Culture Association (ACETCA) that set China watchers abuzz. At an ACETCA event in Fujian, China, in June he was seen with Lin Yi, chair of Shenglong (Aqualand) and permanent honorary chair of ACETCA.
The connection with ACETCA is now very much a Rudd family business. Rudd’s youngest son Marcus is a principal at advisory firm Tam and Rudd Consulting. His business partner Ian Tam is a prominent United Front identity in Australia and vice-chairman of ACETCA.
Crikey understands Tam is the driving force behind the group. At the First International Grasslands Spring Festival Evening on Sydney Harbour, Tam was noted as the “representative of former Australian PM Kevin Rudd.”
Rudd himself is the head of New York-based Asia Society Policy Institute, which has a laser focus on China. His daughter Jessica, an author, is a lifestyle ambassador for Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group, a conglomerate closely connected to the CPP.
She sells Australian products into China via her Jessica’s Suitcase website, which is on the Alibaba platform. Her husband Albert Tse, who was working at Macquarie Group in Beijing less than a decade ago as an investment banker, now has his own own private equity firm, Wattle Hill Capital, that has the backing of several wealthy Chinese families.
Rudd was also made chair of the Chinese North International University Alliance international advisory board in March 2019, and last month was elected chairman of the China-backed Global Sharing Economy Forum.
Rudd said it was “kind of crazy to overreact and to get into reds under the bed land, to get into yellow peril land” regarding warnings from Australian security chiefs about Chinese influence. It’s hard to fathom a former prime minister describing credible information about the Chinese government trying install operatives in Australian Parliament as an “overreaction.”
Rudd also started repeating a Communist Party propaganda line, claiming that under President Xi Jinping there had been more freedom of religion in China. In fact, under Xi, religious diversity is being repressed with an aggression not seen since the time of Mao Zedong. As well, Rudd has barely issued a murmur of the incarceration of 1.2 million Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang gulags.”
Then there is another former Labour Prime Minister, Paul Keating.
In 2019, Keating said Australia’s security agencies were full of “nutters” who’d become too paranoid about China, and added the agencies need a “clean out.” Keating raged on, adding they were feeding leaks to “pious”, “do-gooder” journalists sabotaging Australia’s good relations with China.
What’s not do-badding in Keating’s mind is him sitting on the board of the China Development Bank, a state owned entity of a malicious country with clear intent to infiltrate Australia and undermine its democracy while creating an authoritarian empire with itself at the center.
Who’s the man in this photo?
Unlike American politicians, those in other Western democracies can’t get paid in office for the work they do for China. So, like Rudd and Keating, they get paid for favors once they leave office.
I know for a fact that a former top Canadian cabinet minister with a senior portfolio in international affairs gets paid to write strategy papers by a multi-billionaire with deep connections to Beijing. I don’t know whether this former minister has written word one of advice. But I do know he helped his billionaire patron with huge deals in Canada in sensitive that sectors that should not have gone ahead as they are not in Canada’s national interest. If this billionaire is not technically part of United Front, it’s only because his work is so aligned with Beijing’s goals, no formalization is necessary.
Again, give China its due. It can only get away with this if our elites are for sale. And like cheap prostitutes, they’re happy to service China — at the expense of our democracy.
The failed media are a lower form of life than cheap prostitutes. Remember, this report started with the Canadian press smearing the head of their country’s spy service as “racist” for sounding the alarm about Canadian politicians selling out to China. The media’s "useful idiots" and the companies that own them are our final chapters.