Canada needs to engage with China, say people who financially benefit from from China:
Canada must continue to engage with China despite its ongoing concerns about the country's human rights record at home — and new evidence of its efforts to coerce dissidents living abroad to return.
That's the message from two Canadians with extensive experience working inside China. They spoke to CBC's The House in an interview airing Saturday about the challenge of balancing the need for security with economic interests when dealing with a superpower that doesn't share Canada's democratic values.
"I think that as Canadians, we need to fight for what we think is right, but also fight for our own position in things," said Sarah Kutulakos, executive director of the Canada-China Business Council.
Relations between the two countries remain tense — even after China's release of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, two Canadians whose arrests were widely seen as acts of retaliation for Canada's detention of Chinese business executive Meng Wangzhou on a U.S. extradition warrant.
Also:
“The former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service(CSIS) has calling on the Liberal government to scrutinize the recent takeover of a Nunavut[Canadian] goldmine by a Chinese state-owned company.”
TMAC is among an increasing number of Canadian companies being bought up by state-owned Chinese corporations. In March 2020, the Trudeau government permitted Continental Gold to be purchased by China’s state-controlled Zijin Mining for $1.3 billion dollars.
Richard Fadden, head of CSIS from 2009-2013, told the Globe and Mail that the federal government should “keep Canada’s national security interests in mind when examining the purchase.”
“I think gold is pretty important for the world economy. China has enough of a grip on the world economy as it is, given its capital assets, so I would include gold.”
Justin Trudeau doesn’t agree. Away from public knowledge, our prime minister approved a sell-off of all Canadian gold reserves. Nearly all was purchased by China. Establishment media has barely blinked an eye.
What's a bit of corruption here and there?
And - no foreign body should buy that which is Canadian:
The Trudeau government’s latest confounding abdication of common sense stands out for being particularly egregious. Ottawa has allowed a Chinese state-owned company, Zijin Mining, to bid on a Canadian-owned lithium mining operation, Neo Lithium Corp. The government has done this while abandoning the national security review that accompanies such purchases. The Liberals claim this is a non-issue as Neo Lithium’s operation is not in Canada, even though the headquarters is based here. But this just speaks to their narrow-minded naiveté about the threat posed by China.
Surely the Trudeau government knows that critical minerals like lithium are crucial to addressing the climate crisis. It is therefore absurd that we are allowing China to capture an even greater presence over resources critical to the green transition. A major polluter and unwilling climate partner, it defies logic that Ottawa would further cede control to China over global climate efforts by allowing it to solidify dominance over this sector.
No, Justin doesn't know and nor does he care.
Remember, Lithuania - YOU are the honey-badger:
Lithuanian officials, seeking to defuse a row with China, are discussing whether to ask their Taiwanese counterparts to modify the Chinese translation of the name of Taiwan's de-facto embassy in Vilnius, two sources told Reuters.
The self-ruled island that China views as part of its territory has other offices in Europe and the United States but they use the name of the city Taipei, avoiding reference to the island itself.
The row erupted after the Baltic state allowed the opening of the Taiwanese Representation office in Vilnius.
China has downgraded its diplomatic relationship with Lithuania and pressed multinationals to sever ties with the country or face exclusion from its market.
That is an unusually harsh move that has dragged companies into a political dispute and placed Beijing on a collision course with the European Union.
Modifying the Chinese version of the representation name to refer to "Taiwanese people" rather than to Taiwan, was last week proposed by Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis to President Gitanas Nauseda as a way to reduce the tensions with China, sources said.
The change, which would bring the name in line with those used in Lithuanian and English, would need Taiwan's agreement.
The President's office refused to comment. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not reply to a request for comment.
It is not possible for any single gesture by Lithuania to change China's attitude, said Linas Kojala, who heads the Vilnius Eastern European Studies Centre think-tank.
"The government probably wants to emphasise that the office represents not Taiwan as a political entity, but the Taiwanese people with whom Lithuania wants to establish cultural, economic and other relationships," he said.
For those who think that Ukraine is a small matter indeed, remember that China and Russia are awfully chummy and that can't be good for us or the people they corrupt and try to destroy:
Archbishop Shevchuk’s comments draw attention to the danger facing the Church when it becomes compromised by an authoritarian regime. The UGCC survived Soviet persecution. The Russian Orthodox Church is still healing the memories of its control by the Soviet regime, and is even now working out how close it ought to be to the regime of Vladimir Putin. Ukraine, as it was 75 years ago, is the flashpoint.
The lesson from Ukraine is that the underground Church loses its liberty, but the “official” Church loses its integrity and thus its credibility. The story of the Moscow Patriarchate under Soviet communism is complex; it was not part of the state apparatus as the Patriotic Association is in China. Thus the lessons learned during the Soviet period apply all the more to the Patriotic Association in China.
Now that the Patriotic Association is promoting “Sinicization” for the Church in Hong Kong, those lessons are facing the Church there. The secret “provisional agreement” between the Holy See and China, which grants the CCP a role in the appointment of bishops, does not apply to Hong Kong. Nevertheless, the delay in appointing a new bishop for Hong Kong was in part due to objections from Beijing over the Holy See’s candidate.
As pressure is brought to bear upon the last remnants of Catholic freedom in China, the Holy See’s challenge is to ensure that the witness of the underground Church is what will be remembered in the decades ahead, and not the complicity of the Patriotic Association. The Holy See, should it cooperate too closely with the CCP, risks the same humiliation visited upon the Russian Orthodox Church by Stalin in 1946.
Communism tends to breed selfishness:
Early in January, China’s state news agency Xinhua posted a video reminding young Chinese men born in the year 2000 that they were eligible to get married. “Post 00s have reached legal marriage age,” it declared.
The hashtag swiftly popped up in the top-searched list of Weibo hot topics, but many read it as the government’s attempt to put pressure on them. “Who dares to get married these days? Don’t we need to make money?” one questioned. “Stop nagging me!” said another.
Watching the little emperor generation collide with old-world values and communism's demographic desperation is something to behold.
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