Number of Chinese Nationals Spikes at the Border

December is not quite over, and as Catherine noted earlier today, 250,000 illegal aliens have crossed the border this month — more than the number of people who stormed the beaches on D-Day. She also raised a point that has been stated again and again: there is no way of telling who these people are and, for that matter, why they are here. There is no doubt that a number of those entering the country are fleeing poverty and crime or who want their shot at the American Dream. (Incidentally, good luck to them. Most Americans are not even sure they can get a shot at the American Dream.)

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World’s Most Dangerous Combination: China and Russia

Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy knows how to end the greatest threat to American national security. That threat would be the combination of the world’s two most dangerous states: China and Russia.

“I would freeze the current lines of control,” the candidate told Fox News’s Jesse Watters during his prime time show, referring to the battlefields in Ukraine. “I would further make a hard commitment that NATO will not admit Ukraine to NATO. That’s enough to get Putin to do the deal.”

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Foreign Interference Inquiry Officially A Farce After “Justice” Rejects Full Standing For Conservatives

Commissioner rejects Conservatives’ appeal for full standing at foreign interference inquiry

Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, who heads Canada’s public inquiry into foreign interference by China and other states, on Friday rejected an appeal by the Conservative Party for full standing during the fact-finding phase of the probe.

Hearings will begin Jan. 29, the commission announced Friday.

The Conservative Party was only granted intervenor standing during the first phase looking into foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections, meaning it can present evidence and suggest witnesses but will not have the power to cross-examine witnesses or gain access to evidence presented outside of the hearings.

The Liberals need to lose every seat they hold and then we kick Quebec out of Canada.

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Venezuela is essential for China’s ambitions

Beijing has pushed Latin America away from the United States in ways that the Soviet Union never could

Venezuela has become a headache for Washington. Just after the Biden administration engineered a rapprochement strategy, Nicolás Maduro did more than just double down on not following through his promises of democratization: he is now pushing to annex neighboring Guyana. These developments, though, should have been anticipated, as Venezuela becomes a crucial part of China’s geopolitical strategy.

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Ottawa’s EV Mandate Results in Grants to China at Cost of Domestic Producers: Auto Association Head

Ottawa’s $5,000 EV consumer incentive is fuelling the import of Chinese-made Teslas to Canada and lining the pockets of a firm with no manufacturing presence in the country at the expense of companies that invest domestically, says a proponent of Canada’s automotive industry.

“The federal government is about to launch an EV market scheme that grants companies making cars in China and Vietnam with millions of dollars in credits,” said Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association president Flavio Volpe in a social media post.

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Canadian Senator promised to support members in CCP’s United Front: Audio Tapes

In a private briefing in May 2020, Senator Yuen Pau Woo promised to shield members of Beijing’s “United Front” from critical scrutiny in Canada for taking pro-China stances on controversial issues such as the treatment of Uyghurs.

Woo’s pledges of support for United Front organizations are captured in recordings of his meeting with Canada Committee 100 Society, a Vancouver group with ties to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

Read the thread.

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China’s “Unrestricted Warfare” Against the US

China is fully engaged in a multi-front war against the United States. This “unrestricted warfare” against America has several dimensions: technological, space, military, political, economic, digital, psychological, informational and diplomatic. In fact, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) openly declared a “people’s war” against the US in a May 14, 2019 edition of the People’s Daily.

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This Means Cyber War: Chinese Hackers Target Critical U.S. Infrastructure

2023 will go down in history as the year that China’s state-sponsored hackers advanced their ability to wage cyber warfare against the U.S.

Chinese hackers used to focus on stealing America’s commercial secrets and personnel information (see examples here and here). But this year, Chinese hackers have expanded their reach by collecting intelligence on U.S. government agencies and breaching systems of infrastructures with strategic value.

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OpenAI suspends ByteDance’s account after it allegedly used GPT to build rival AI product: report

OpenAI has suspended the account of TikTok parent ByteDance following a report that the China-owned firm was “secretly” using its “GPT” AI technology to build its own rival chatbot service.

ByteDance, whose ties to the Chinese government have prompted intense federal scrutiny of TikTok’s operations in the US, has reportedly relied on OpenAI’s application programming interface, or API, “during nearly every phase of development” of its AI product, The Verge reported, citing internal company documents.

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Tasha Kheiriddin: Another sham inquiry into foreign interference

Is Judge Marie-Josée Hogue the new David Johnston? The Quebec Court of Appeals judge was appointed in early September to head the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions, months after “special rapporteur” Johnston had concluded that an inquiry wasn’t necessary.

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China’s Xi goes full Stalin with purge

Something is rotten in the imperial court of Chairman Xi Jinping.

While the world is distracted by war in the Middle East and Ukraine, a Stalin-like purge is sweeping through China’s ultra-secretive political system, with profound implications for the global economy and even the prospects for peace in the region.

The signals emanating from Beijing are unmistakable, even as China’s security services have ramped up repression to totalitarian levels, making it almost impossible to know what is really happening inside the country.

h/t Mauser

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Conservatives say credibility of foreign interference probe undermined by denying them full standing in first phase

The Official Opposition is criticizing the judge running the public inquiry into foreign interference for not granting the Conservative Party full standing in the first phase of this probe, a decision that means they cannot ask questions of witnesses or gain access to any secret evidence gathered.

The first part of the foreign interference inquiry will examine foreign interference by states such as China in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. The second phase will examine what reforms are necessary to fight foreign interference.

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Forest City: Inside Malaysia’s Chinese-built ‘ghost city’

“I managed to escape this place,” Nazmi Hanafiah laughs, slightly nervously.

A year ago, the 30-year-old IT engineer moved to Forest City, a sprawling Chinese-built housing complex in Johor, on the tip of southern Malaysia. He rented a one-bedroom flat in a tower block overlooking the sea.

After six months, he’d had enough. He didn’t want to continue living in what he calls “a ghost town”.

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He Won Election to Canada’s Parliament. Did China Help?

A Canadian rapporteur said there was “well-grounded suspicion” that Han Dong, a member of Parliament from Toronto, may have benefited from support from the Chinese Consulate.

The newcomer landed in a district of northern Toronto and announced his bid for Canada’s Parliament. Though few knew him, an important factor helped offset his lack of name recognition — the backing of prominent local Chinese-Canadians.

“I’m very happy that I feel very well supported, surrounded by friends,” the candidate, Han Dong, said at a news conference.

But a government-appointed special rapporteur said there was “well-grounded suspicion” Mr. Dong also had help from a hidden source as he vied for the Liberal Party’s nomination: the Chinese Consulate.

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Montreal-area ‘Chinese police stations’ threaten to sue RCMP for $2.5 million

Two Chinese community centres in the Montreal area are threatening to launch a $2.5 million lawsuit against the RCMP after being accused by the police force of hosting “alleged Chinese police stations.”

The RCMP confirmed in March(opens in a new tab) it had opened an investigation into the Service à la Famille Chinoise du Grand Montréal, in Montreal’s Chinatown, and the Centre Sino-Québec de la Rive-Sud, in Brossard, on the South Shore of Montreal.

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