We Don't Have to Trade With China

There is simply no reason to sell our industry, resources, labour, talent and dignity to a country responsible for the suffering of so many:

A group of MPs have called for the relocation of the 2022 Winter Olympics which are set to take place in and around Beijing, China, citing human rights concerns, National Newswatch reports.

The 13 MPs, nearly half of whom are from Quebec, warned that participating in the Olympic games in China would "amount to taking part in a sinister, self-aggrandizing spectacle staged for the benefit of a regime that is perpetrating the worst possible crimes against humanity against its own people."

 

(Sidebar: so the Tienanmen Square massacre, one-child policy and organ trafficking didn't frighten anyone off before? Interesting ...)

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Chinese police own a company that collects details of people applying for visas to Canada and numerous other countries, giving Beijing security services a direct stake in the processing of private information provided by people planning travel outside China.

Beijing Shuangxiong Foreign Service Company, which operates the Canadian visa-application centre in the Chinese capital, is owned by the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, a Globe and Mail investigation has found. And at least some of the people working inside the centre are members of the Communist Party, recruited from a school that trains the next generation of party elite.

Beijing Shuangxiong is a subcontractor for VFS Global, a company headquartered in Zurich and Dubai that holds a wide-reaching contract to provide visa-processing services around the globe for the Canadian government. VFS offices collect personal and biometric information that is then forwarded to Canadian immigration officials for decisions on who shall be granted visas.

 

 

Why, it's like the Chinese don't want their government telling them what they can or cannot talk about: 

A rare uncensored app that had attracted Chinese internet users to freely discuss taboo topics, including the mass detention of Uighurs, democracy protests in Hong Kong and the concept of Taiwanese independence appeared to have been blocked on Monday night.

Authoritarian China deploys a vast and sophisticated surveillance state to scrub the internet of dissent and prevent citizens from accessing international social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in what is often known as the “Great Firewall.”

But the Clubhouse app had for a brief while side-stepped the censors and drawn crowds of Chinese internet users — but appeared to quickly fall foul of the censors.

The American invite-only audio app allows users to listen and participate in loosely moderated live conversations in digital “rooms.”

 

 

Interesting:

With all the bubbling frenzy recently around GameStop Corp., it’s time to step back and look at how the broader market is doing. It turns out, there’s froth elsewhere, too. Look no further than the Chinese companies listed in the U.S.

Of the 100 largest China-based firms by market cap, the mid-tier has already rallied a whopping 43% this year, far outpacing the top and bottom third, data compiled by Smartkarma’s Douglas Kim shows. The biggest winners tend to be thematic. For instance, Futu Holdings Ltd., an e-brokerage that enables Chinese citizens to trade U.S. stocks, soared over 150% to a $15.8 billion market cap, as investors bet the notorious day traders in the People’s Republic would join the retail rebellion too. Daqo New Energy Corp., a solar panel maker, more than doubled in price to an $8 billion market value.

One reason for this outperformance could be the rise of the “Reddit army,” noted Kim. Retail investors are not powerful enough to move the needle on mega-caps such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., but they may just be the price setters in a smaller arena.

 

 

It's almost like Canada: 

The more than 31.2 million doses administered since its official start date of Dec. 15 put it second only to the U.S., with its nearly 35 million shots. Yet for a population of 1.4 billion, China has delivered a little more than two doses for every 100 people, compared to three in the European Union, 10 in the U.S. and nearly 60 in Israel, according to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker.