We Don't Have to Trade With China

There is no economic, moral or political advantage for us to do so:

Three Wuhan lab scientists who were genetically altering the Covid virus were the first to fall sick with it, a new investigation has claimed.

According to multiple US government officials interviewed as part of a lengthy inquiry by independent news outlet Public and Racket, the first people infected by the virus are allegedly Ben Hu, Ping Yu, and Yan Zhu.

They were all members of the Wuhan lab suspected to have leaked the pandemic virus and were partaking in gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) on SARS-like coronaviruses.

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The top Chinese diplomat based in Montreal was a keynote speaker at a recent event in that city opposing the establishment of a foreign agent registration act. Senators Yuen Pau Woo and Victor Oh, who also oppose a registry, attended the event as well and voiced opposition to such legislation. 

 

This Victor Oh: 

Addressing an audience in Montreal, Senator Victor Oh said he is planning to rent buses to transport up to 3,000 people to Ottawa for an upcoming demonstration against proposed legislation to create a foreign agent registry aimed at combatting foreign influence.

“We need to rent buses to [transport people] from Toronto. I plan to rent 50 buses. … Each can accommodate around 55 to 60 people, so with 50 buses, that’s 3,000 people,” Oh told his audience in Chinese at an event held at the Montreal Chinese Community United Centre (MCCUC), according to a video posted June 13 on Weixin, the Chinese version of WeChat. The video’s caption said Oh spoke “yesterday,” indicating the event was held on June 12.

The demonstration, on Parliament Hill, is scheduled for June 24, which coincides with the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923. The act is commonly known as the Chinese Exclusion Act because it resulted from an effort to stop Chinese immigration.

Shouldn't these people come of their own accord, on their on dime?

When will their bank accounts be frozen?

Will anyone hear what the dissidents have to say?:

Whatever happens moving forward—public inquiry or no public inquiry—it is highly likely that Beijing will keep doing this. To date it appears to have gotten away with it, with only one diplomat having been expelled from Canada. The regime probably thinks, correctly, that this matter will go away as the dog days of summer come around and Canadians spend their time at the cottage or on the beach. If so, why would it not keep these underhanded activities going? 

Xi Jinping and his minions are like their autocratic buddies all over the world (Russia, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc.) Criticize me and my gang and we will imprison/kill you if you are from within, or slap trade sanctions on you if you are from the outside. Furthermore, Canada’s Chinese diaspora, many of whom fled here for safety, can expect the pressure to continue. They are the ones who will suffer more so than the average Canadian. 

 

 

And why does the government allow this?

 

There are rea$on$:

 

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says Canada will halt all government-led activity at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

This comes after a Canadian citizen resigned from the financial institution, alleging it is dominated by the Chinese Communist Party.

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Cabinet yesterday said Canadian delegates will no longer attend meetings of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank but stopped short of dumping Canada’s shares in the Beijing operation. It followed complaints by a Canadian executive working for the Bank that the Communist Party “runs the joint.”

 

As long as they don't arrest repeat offenders:

Federal whistleblowers who disclosed secret memos on Chinese spy activities to media should be prosecuted, says a former chief of the public service. Mel Cappe, ex-cabinet secretary, compared whistleblowers to predators whose identities must be exposed: “That is a strange position to take when we lack the clarity of the truth here.”

China will not be happy until it runs ALL of Korea:

Seoul is standing its ground after warnings from Beijing that it is making “wrong bets” in the Sino-U.S. rivalry, but challenges remain for South Korea as it tries to balance economic ties with China while deepening its deterrence capabilities with the U.S. and Japan.

Long wary of alienating China, its biggest trading partner and a key country in any attempt to rein in nuclear-armed North Korea, the push by South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol to build closer security and economic ties with Washington and Tokyo has both surprised and concerned China, especially as Washington’s rivalry with Beijing sends that relationship into a tailspin.

Observers say Beijing is wary of what it calls a U.S.-led policy of “containment, encirclement and suppression,” a push that it claims includes bringing Seoul on board.

 

A Seoul close to Washington is a Seoul farther away from Beijing. 

Also - if South Korea is not vigilant, it could share North Korea's fate:

Myong Suk is hunched over her phone, desperately trying to make another sale. A shrewd businesswoman, she is secretly selling minuscule amounts of smuggled medicine to those who desperately need it - just enough so she can survive the day. She has already been caught once and could barely afford the bribe to stay out of prison. She cannot afford to be caught again. But at any moment there could be a knock on the door. It is not just the police she fears, it’s her neighbours. There is now almost no-one she can trust. 

This is not how it used to be. 

Myong Suk’s medicine business used to be thriving.

But on 27 January 2020 North Korea slammed shut its border in response to the pandemic, stopping not just people, but food and goods, from entering the country. Its citizens, who were already banned from leaving, have been confined to their towns. Aid workers and diplomats have packed up and left. Guards are under order to shoot anyone even approaching the border. The world’s most isolated country has become an information black hole.

Under the tyrannical rule of Kim Jong Un, North Koreans are forbidden from making contact with the outside world. With the help of the organisation Daily NK, which operates a network of sources inside the country, the BBC has been able to communicate with three ordinary people. They are eager to tell the world about the catastrophic toll the border closure has taken on their lives. They understand if the government discovers they are talking to us, they would likely be killed. To protect them, we can only reveal some of what they have told us, yet their experiences offer an exclusive snapshot of the situation unfolding inside North Korea.

“Our food situation has never been this bad,” Myong Suk tells us.

Like most women in North Korea, she is the main earner in the family. The meagre wages men earn in their compulsory state jobs are all but worthless, forcing their wives to find creative ways to make a living.

Before the border closure, Myong Suk would arrange for much-needed drugs, including antibiotics, to be smuggled across from China, which she would sell at her local market. She needed to bribe the border guards, which ate up more than half of her profits, but she accepted this as part of the game. It allowed her to live a comfortable life in her town in the north of the country, along the vast border with China. 

The responsibility to provide for her family has always caused her some stress, but now it consumes her. It has become nearly impossible to get hold of products to sell. 

Once, in desperation, she tried to smuggle the medicine herself, but was caught, and now she is monitored constantly. She has tried selling North Korean medicine instead, but even that is hard to find these days, meaning her earnings have halved.  

Now when her husband and children wake, she prepares them a breakfast of corn. Gone are the days they could eat plain rice. Her hungry neighbours have started knocking at the door asking for food, but she has to turn them away.  

“We are living on the front line of life,” she says. 

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One woman living in the capital Pyongyang told us she knew a family of three who had starved to death at home. "We knocked on their door to give them water, but nobody answered," Ji Yeon said. When the authorities went inside, they found them dead, she said. Ji Yeon's name has been changed to protect her, along with those of the others we interviewed.

A construction worker who lives near the Chinese border, whom we have called Chan Ho, told us food supplies were so low that five people in his village had already died from starvation.

"At first, I was afraid of dying from Covid, but then I began to worry about starving to death," he said.