Liberal appointee Senator Yuen Pau Woo (B.C.) says he has been physically threatened over his sympathetic views on China. Woo said there was “more than a whiff of McCarthyism in the air” on Chinese issues: ‘I have protections that shield me from the worst abuses including threats of physical harm.’
Feel free to provide the inquiring public evidence of these grave threats.
It would only bolster your case.
This is China he loves:
Why are no western govts commenting on these atrocities????
— Denise Welch (@RealDeniseWelch) April 14, 2022
pic.twitter.com/Z0ZT1brVdq
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PPE-clad police in Shanghai this week pinned down and arrested residents who objected to their homes being turned into Covid quarantine centres.
The Chinese city with 26million inhabitants has now spent more than three weeks in the world's toughest lockdown in an attempt to eradicate the Omicron variant of coronavirus under the Communist regime's strict Zero Covid policy.
Chilling video shared by social media users before being taken down shows scuffles in the streets today as cops forcibly restrained those who resisted.
Dozens of buildings in the city have been converted to makeshift isolation hubs as local officials struggle to contain record infection rates.
The city reported 23,000 COVID cases on Friday, down slightly from more than 27,000 the day before.
However, the number of symptomatic cases in that tally edged up to a record 3,200, from the 2,573 reported a day earlier - and experts have warned that the Omicron variant of the virus is too infectious to be controlled with lockdowns.
And many residents of the city say they are running out of food under the rules that let two volunteers per apartment building out to shop outside each day for a maximum of two hours.
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Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop revealed much information, including Hunter’s shady business dealings in Ukraine and China, raising questions about the extent to which President Biden was involved in his son’s business activities. This ongoing scandal lifted the curtain of foreign governments’ covert influence campaigns in the United States. No government has conducted such influence campaigns more effectively than Communist China.
To understand China’s influence campaigns on foreign soil, one has to get familiar with a secretive Chinese government agency, the United Front Work Department (UFWD), or United Front. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established UFWD in the 1930s, aiming to recruit famous intellectuals, writers, teachers, students, publishers, and business leaders who were not necessarily Communists.
These recruits promoted the CCP’s agenda, influenced public opinion in favor of the CCP in territory ruled by the Nationalist Party, and helped the CCP secure the weapons, medicine, and other resources to overthrow the Nationalist-led government. Then-CCP leader Mao Zedong called the United Front a “magic weapon” for the CCP.
When Xi Jinping came to power in late 2012, he greatly expanded the UFWD and elevated the UFWD’s status by having a politburo member, Ms. Sun Chunlan, head the UFWD. Today, the UFWD’s headquarters in Beijing is located in an unmarked but heavily guarded building next to the CCP’s leadership compound. This location says the highest power in the nation directly endorses its mission and strategy.
UFWD workers are assigned to many government branches inside and outside China, including almost all Chinese embassies, which now include staff formally working with United Front. The UFWD is tasked with helping the CCP aggressively and yet covertly dictate its messages and narratives about China. UFWD’s goal is to gather information and either win over or co-opt support for the CCP. It is to attack and neutralize potential dissent and opposition inside and outside China.
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China said on Tuesday it had signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands, a move set to heighten the concerns of the United States and allies Australia and New Zealand about growing Chinese influence in a region traditionally under their sway.
The framework pact was recently signed by State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Solomon Islands Foreign Minister Jeremiah Manele, foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters at a regular briefing in Beijing.
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A Chinese firm that specializes in industrial explosives is planning to acquire a more than 10 percent stake in a Canadian lithium company for $5 million.
On April 17, China-based company Sichuan Yahua Industrial Group Co. Ltd. (Yahua Group) announced its plan to acquire 13.2 percent of Ultra Lithium Inc., a Vancouver-based lithium and gold exploration firm, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Yahua International Investment and Development Co. Ltd.
The deal signed between the two companies will also see Yahua International acquiring a 60 percent stake in a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ultra Lithium that has two lithium mining projects in Ontario, at Forgan Lake and Georgia Lake.
Due to the local geology, Yahua Group said the two projects offer high potential for the discovery of large spodumene deposits. Spodumene is an essential source of lithium used in ceramics, cellphones, and car batteries, among several uses.
The joint venture will see the construction of a lithium concentrate mining and processing plant with the capacity to produce 200,000 tons of lithium oxide a year for at least the first 10 years of operation, a capacity that could subsequently be doubled following that first phase, according to Yahua Group.
The company, based in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province in China, added that the deal will help secure its upstream resources in the lithium sector. The board of directors of the joint venture will have five members, three of whom will be nominated by Yahua International and two by Ultra Lithium.
This acquisition of a Canadian lithium-mining firm by a China-based company follows another such acquisition earlier this year, this time by a state-owned company.
Chinese state-owned enterprise Zijin Mining Group Co. Ltd. announced in January that it had completed its acquisition of Toronto-based Neo Lithium Corp.
(Sidebar: please see here.)
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