What Is It That We Need China For?

 This China:

A COVID-19 vaccine-development partnership between Canada and a Chinese firm has been abandoned, ending clinical trials that were to be conducted by a Dalhousie University research lab.

The National Research Council of Canada said Thursday the CanSino Biologics vaccine intended for phase one clinical trials has not been approved by Chinese customs for shipment to Canada.

 They're blowing smoke. They never had it.

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Way to stick it to them, Franky:

Canada’s foreign minister raised the arbitrary detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in a meeting with his Chinese counterpart this week, but did not warn the Chinese of new sanctions or consequences for the ongoing imprisonment of the two men.

“I told him that arbitrary detention was certainly not conducive to relations between states ever but certainly now,” Foreign minister François-Philippe Champagne said of his meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.

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Voters blocks aren't made. They are born:

The number of women coming to Canada to give birth, which automatically bestows citizenship on the baby, is expanding much faster in British Columbia than the rest of the country.

Richmond Hospital is the centre of the trend, often called “birth tourism.” New data released this week shows one out of four births in the past year at the hospital in the Vancouver suburb, which features many illicit “birth hotels” advertising their services in Asia, were to foreign nationals.

 

Not that Canadian citizenship even matters anymore.

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The new Vietnamese boat people:

The Chinese Coast Guard has intercepted and arrested at least ten people reportedly trying to flee from Hong Kong to Taiwan during a crackdown on the city’s pro-democracy movement. 

The authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong announced the arrests on social media, revealing that the boat had been stopped by coast guard officials on Sunday. 

Local media in Hong Kong, citing unidentified sources, said the passengers were planning to apply for political asylum in Taiwan, a democratically-ruled island some 440 miles from the former British colony. 

The South China Morning Post identified one of those on the vessel as Andy Li, who was arrested earlier this month under a sweeping and controversial national security law imposed by Beijing on Hong Kong in June, and which can mete out life sentences for subversion.

 

Refugees of a different sort but their circumstances are familiar.