What Do We Need China For?

 This China:

The idea that “Chinese people are oppressed” is laughable and patronizing, says an executive with a federally-funded foundation. The Asia Pacific Foundation of Vancouver yesterday had no comment: “China has risen.”

 

(Sidebar: not if India has anything to say about it.)

** 

A national broadcast regulator has quietly dismissed scores of complaints against a Vancouver radio host who criticized pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong. The Canada Broadcast Standards Council would not explain its decision: ‘China is an open-minded country.’

**

A Montreal high-tech firm is calling on the Trudeau government to walk away from a deal struck with a Chinese state-owned company to supply surveillance and security gear for Canada’s embassies and consulates around the world.

**

Only one in six Canadians want closer trade ties with China, says research by the Department of Foreign Affairs. Cabinet in 2016 proposed a free trade pact with the People’s Republic but dropped the idea following China’s arbitrary arrest of Canadian citizens: “Which countries do you believe Canada should be trying to tie itself to more?”

** 

Australia has also voiced concerns in recent weeks about what it sees as Chinese disinformation campaigns that seek to undermine democracies; suspended its extradition treaty with Hong Kong over China’s imposition of a draconian security law in the city; and filed a declaration with the United Nations rejecting China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea.

Of all the actions taken by Australia in recent months, though, it’s the government’s lobbying of world leaders in April for an inquiry into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic that has most enraged Beijing. The world lined up behind the move, with 137 nations co-sponsoring a resolution at the World Health Assembly for an investigation into the pandemic, which first emerged in Wuhan. Beijing also ultimately backed the resolution. An independent panel, headed by former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark and former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, will deliver an interim report in November.