Zero-Covid China asks: Is World Cup on another planet?

Chinese state media have given huge attention to the World Cup this week, but the matches are fuelling frustrations that people in the country are being left out of the celebrations.

On top of China’s men’s national team not qualifying for the event, scenes of maskless celebrations and raucous gatherings in Qatar have irritated viewers, who have been discouraged from gathering to watch the games.

Many have used the World Cup to complain online about China’s existing strategies. The country maintains a zero-Covid policy, where entire communities are locked down over single cases of the virus, in order to prevent it from spreading.

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Senators alarmed over potential Chinese drone spy threat

Hundreds of Chinese-manufactured drones have been detected in restricted airspace over Washington, D.C., in recent months, a trend that national security agencies fear could become a new means for foreign espionage.

The recreational drones made by Chinese company DJI, which are designed with “geofencing” restrictions to keep them out of sensitive locations, are being manipulated by users with simple workarounds to fly over no-go zones around the nation’s capital.

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Trudeau says he hasn’t been briefed on election interference from Beijing, but what might that mean?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s claim over the weekend that he does “not have any information,” nor has he “been briefed on any federal candidates receiving any money from China,” raises a few deeply troubling possibilities.

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Elections Canada chief not aware of Chinese election interference allegations

Canada’s top elections officer says he wasn’t aware of allegations of Chinese interference in the 2019 election prior to seeing reports about it on the news.

Testifying before the standing committee on procedure and house affairs on Tuesday, Elections Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault told committee members he wasn’t aware of the allegations — made last month in a report by Global News — until reading about it.

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GUNTER: Trudeau’s denial on China’s interference simply ludicrous

Just who does Prime Minister Justin Trudeau imagine is going to believe him?

On Sunday, during a stop in Tunisia to attend the Francophonie summit, our prime minister insisted to Global News that he had no idea who the 11 candidates were who received money and support from China’s Communist government during the 2019 federal election.

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Latin America: ‘China’s Backyard’

China is deepening its involvement in Latin America and the Caribbean, as Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Ma Zhaoxu made clear last year at a summit between China and Latin American and Caribbean states.

The summit resulted in a joint action plan that will not only tighten economic cooperation between China and Latin America and the Caribbean in various fields such as agriculture, food, science, technology, industry, infrastructure, aviation, energy and tourism, but also deepen China’s influence in the region through cooperation in education, research and sports. The action plan directly mentions, for instance, that Latin American and Caribbean members of the forum “support China in hosting the Beijing 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games” that took place in March.

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Liberals stick to script amid hard questions over what PM knew about Chinese election interference

Renewed questions about what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau knew about alleged Chinese interference in the 2019 federal election had Liberal cabinet ministers sticking to their prepared notes during question period on Monday.

A few queries into question period, Bloc Québécois MP Alain Therrien challenged the prime minister’s assertion on Sunday that he hadn’t been briefed on the revelations.

Those comments counter ones made by sources to Global News last month that Trudeau was informed in January that as many as eleven Liberal candidates received funding by the Chinese government.

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Xi Dresses Down Trudeau

When you get a tongue-lashing from your boss.

Canada is heavily infiltrated by China, aided by a longtime partnership between the Chinese leadership and Justin Trudeau. See more HERE.

During the G20 meetings, Trudeau, who has been referenced as “little potato” by China, was openly reprimanded by China’s leader Xi Jinping…

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Canada’s China Class At Work: Pension Funds Invested In Communist China’s Slave State

Could your pension plan be funding human-rights abuses in China?

At least three federal and six provincial pension funds in Canada are investing in Chinese companies complicit in human rights abuses in Xinjiang, a new report alleges.

Pension funds in a number of western countries have also invested in companies involved in a Chinese government labour-transfer program accused of subjecting the country’s Uyghur minority to forced labour or internment, according to the report by U.K.-based human rights organization Hong Kong Watch, in collaboration with Prof. Laura Murphy at Sheffield Hallam University.

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Trudeau says no intelligence briefing happened on Chinese interference in election

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he has never been briefed that any candidates in a Canadian election were influenced by financing from the Chinese government.

A Global News report earlier this month cited unnamed sources who claimed Trudeau was briefed last January that China was trying to interfere in Canadian politics, including by funding at least 11 candidates in the 2019 federal election.

My guess is CSIS likely doesn’t trust Trudeau or the Liberal Party.

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Canada needs to take a harder line on ‘evil authoritarian regimes’ like China: senator

Following claims that Chinese agents interfered in recent Canadian elections and stole industry secrets from Hydro-Québec, Conservative Sen. Leo Housakos is calling on the Canadian government to take a much harder line against China — a country he describes as “an evil authoritarian regime.”

Housakos has introduced a bill, S-237, that would establish a foreign influence registry in Canada — a system that would compel agents working on behalf of a foreign government to either register their interactions with public officials in Canada or face criminal penalties.

Under this proposed law, any foreign-backed agent who fails to declare any interaction with a “public office holder” — like a cabinet minister, an MP, a senator or a senior government official — could be charged with a crime and face hefty fines and up to two years in jail.

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Trudeau Tries to Play Catch-Up on China’s Interference, but Is Chasing His Own Tail

Canada is in the global spotlight, again. A reporter at the G20 meeting in Bali captured Chinese leader Xi Jinping threatening Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over leaks of an earlier meeting between the two, in which Trudeau reportedly confronted Xi with intelligence leaks to the media about China’s election interference.

Yes, there was a leak about a leak.

Diversity is killing us.

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The coming conflict with China

The smiles at the G20 cannot mask the deep tensions between East and West.

The G20 heads of state met in Bali this week, with geopolitical instability swirling around them and tensions raised between West and East. The missile that landed on Polish soil on Tuesday almost derailed proceedings. For one thing, it led Chinese president Xi Jinping to stand up Rishi Sunak, supposedly because of last-minute ‘movements to schedules’. But at least Joe Biden’s three-hour meeting with Xi passed without incident. And the relief of the delegates and the media was palpable.

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China hits back at FBI claim of unauthorized ‘police stations’ in US

China has contested claims it was operating unauthorized “police stations” on US soil, calling the sites volunteer-run, after the FBI director said he was “very concerned” about unauthorized stations that have been linked to Beijing’s influence operations.

Safeguard Defenders, a Europe-based human rights organization, published a report in September revealing the presence of dozens of Chinese police “service stations” in major cities around the world, including New York.

The FBI director, Christopher Wray, told a Senate hearing on Thursday that it was “outrageous” that the Chinese government would attempt to set up a police presence in the United States, saying it “violates sovereignty and circumvents standard judicial and law enforcement cooperation processes”.

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