We Don't Have to Trade With China

Yet we do.

Pourquoi?:

When Zhou Fengsuo was looking for a space in New York to display his art collection, he couldn’t believe his luck when he stumbled across 894 6th Avenue in the heart of midtown Manhattan. The numbers of the address – 8946 – were the same as the date he wanted to commemorate: 4 June 1989. It was “unbelievable”, the former student leader marvelled.

That Zhou’s collection, which opened to the public on Friday as part of the June 4th Memorial Museum, ended up in such an uncanny location is the result of a concerted, decades-long campaign by the Chinese Communist party (CCP) to eradicate any remembrance of the 1989 massacre around Tiananmen Square anywhere in the world.

Having virtually eliminated 4 June gatherings in mainland China and Hong Kong, the CCP’s efforts to suppress the memories of that event have increasingly been felt overseas.

In the early hours of 4 June 1989, troops from the People’s Liberation Army rolled into Tiananmen Square, in the heart of Beijing, to disperse thousands of peaceful protesters who had gathered for weeks to demand political reforms. Hundreds of civilians were killed. The Chinese government has never fully acknowledged the massacre.

The opening of the June 4th Memorial Museum in New York was prompted by the closure of one in Hong Kong in 2021 after the imposition of the national security law effectively criminalised 4 June commemorations. But now people who try to light a candle much further from Beijing also encounter difficulties. When plans for the New York museum were announced last year, local Chinese community groups objected to them, accusing the organisers of being divisive.

The first venue the museum’s organisers approached turned them down without giving a specific reason. “We have to be very careful at negotiating [with venues] and be very explicit about our purpose,” Zhou said. That means “making sure that the other party is fully aware of the commitment needed”.

The museum plans to operate a visitor booking system. “We cannot open the door for anyone who wants to come in because we’re really worried they [the Chinese embassy] will send somebody,” said Wang Dan, another former student leader.

Shao Jiang, an exiled 1989 protester, has been helping to organise 4 June vigils in London since 2007. When the Observer tried to reach him by telephone in the days before this month’s event – a protest outside the Chinese embassy – the call was blocked.

Shao said this often happened in the run-up to 4 June. “If I order deliveries, they can’t contact me,” he said. “It’s quite normal, living in exile. Every year I face different difficulties.”

 

You don't say:

Senators Yuen Pau Woo and Victor Oh have ramped up efforts against enacting a foreign agent registration act as the Canadian government considers the legislation to combat foreign influence.

Both senators brought up the issue again at a conference that marked the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Immigration Act, held at the Splendid China Mall in Scarborough, Ont., on Saturday, May 27.

The act, introduced on July 1, 1923, is commonly known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, as it resulted from an effort to stop Chinese immigration, stated a May 30 federal government news release recognizing “the national historic significance” of this legislation.

The event was organized by a group called the “Reflecting on the 100th Anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act Organizing Committee.” Woo and Oh were invited as keynote speakers, among several others.

Speaking to some 200 attendees, Woo urged the Chinese community to reject “modern forms of Chinese exclusion,” according to a May 28 report by Canadian Chinese Media News.

The senator has been asserting that a foreign influence registry might become “a modern form of Chinese exclusion,” as he reiterated in March in response to a tweet by Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino announcing that the government had launched public consultations on creating one.

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Today, the now-retired politician has been joined by Liberal Ken Hardie, who beat Hayer to become MP, to highlight what happened in their riding and use it to push for greater vigilance against foreign interference. It’s a rare instance of nonpartisanship at a time when opposition parties are castigating the Liberal government for inaction and urging the removal of David Johnston, Ottawa’s special rapporteur on foreign interference, and after former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole revealed he was targeted by Beijing.

 

Not that Singh cares or anything.

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This would never appear in Canada:

The Holodomor: 2–7 million dead.

The Gulag: 1.5 million dead.

The Great Leap Forward: 30 million dead.

These are just some of the grisly atrocities documented at the Victims of Communism Museum. Communism has left a trail of blood from Potsdam to Peking. The museum is dedicated to the memory of the some 100 million people who have lost their lives to this odious ideology.

The museum has been open for nearly a year, yet it has received little recognition in the mainstream press. A Washington Post story on the museum noted without irony that “this philosophy that killed tens of millions also inspired generations of activists” in America. Apparently, the museum isn’t balanced enough in its history of communism. Next to the exhibit on Stalin’s crimes they need to note the legions of left-wing labor activists it provided guidance to. That’s a sad reflection of our times: another indication that, at its philosophical foundation, the modern West struggles to contemplate and understand the wreckage that was imposed on millions of people by Marxist communist states. The reasons why are troubling and indicate that certain forms of Marxist ideology seeped into the Western mind, although not to the point that the American-led West was unable to defeat the Soviet Union.

It’s easy to think of communism as an unfortunate system afflicting poor souls in the far reaches of the earth. As British historian Arnold Toynbee sardonically put it, “History is something unpleasant that happens to other people.”

Yet history is never far from us. Substantial forms of the same spirit that animated the Bolsheviks run rampant in the West today.