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Douglas Todd: 'Trying to be a voice for the scared': China researchers under fire in B.C.

The work of independent Chinese-language researchers investigating the Chinese Communist Party's influence in Canada has prompted a high-profile complaint and a lawsuit from prominent Canadians

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“You have to remember the names.”

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That’s a key to how a woman we’re calling Xiu Ying — who asked that Postmedia not publicly identify her because she fears repercussions from the Chinese government — tries to track the ways that the People’s Republic of China is influencing Canadian society, including at the highest levels.

Douglas Todd: 'Trying to be a voice for the scared': China researchers under fire in B.C. Back to video

Raised in central China by a “peasant” family, Xiu Ying is among a small cohort of researchers striving to help the Canadian public and its leaders discover the often-stealthy techniques by which the long arm of Communist China strives to keep many of Canada’s 1.7 million ethnic Chinese people in line.

The creator of Found in Translation, which monitors Chinese-language social media in Canada and beyond, has spent the past five years studying names and publicizing complex networks of people and organizations linked, to varying degrees, to China’s Communist Party.

Her Substack column, Found in Translation, has 5,500 subscribers. A large portion of people who have signed up to it use emails that end with “gc.ca,” which indicates they work for the government of Canada. Her Found in Translation posts on X (@bluebellsforest) often gain the most traction when they’re in the Chinese language.Xiu Ying mostly keeps tabs on what’s happening on social media outlets such as WeChat, Weibo and RedNote.

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She has also contributed to the well-read digital platform Dotting the Map, which has been operated since last year by pro-democracy advocates with Canadian Friends of Hong Kong.

“Our aim is to inform the public about patterns and networks that may be relevant to understanding the influence activities of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including the United Front system, in Canada,” says the Dotting the Map site.

It has been endorsed by Charles Burton, Canada’s former ambassador to China, and Jonathan Manthorpe, a former Vancouver Sun columnist who wrote the book Claws of the Panda: Beijing’s Campaign of Influence and Intimidation in Canada.

By adopting the name Found in Translation for her Substack column, Xiu Ying makes clear her methodology hinges on discovering and translating publicly available Chinese-language information.

That requires remembering names and organizations in Canada, hundreds of them. And showing how they’re directly or incidentally associated with arms of the Chinese Communist Party, particularly the United Front. The process is called “elite capture.”

Xiu Ying is nervous about being the centre of attention for this article. Why does she do what she does?Most ethnic Chinese people in Canada, particularly those from China, feel suppressed, said Xiu Ying, who studied law in China, where she also did translation work.

“I’m trying to be a voice for the scared and silenced.”

While China is a dictatorship under President Xi Jinping, Xiu Ying said, “I thought in Canada it would be different. But the overlords of the Chinese Communists are here.”

This month the Jamestown Foundation and Canada’s Macdonald-Laurier Institute released a study stating that the “Chinese Communist Party has built a broad, multi-layered network of more than 2,000 overseas organizations across the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany.” About 500 of those organizations, says the study, are in Canada. They “constitute latent capacity that the party can mobilize to advance the party’s agenda.”

Meanwhile, Xiu Ying and colleagues at Dotting the Map are under pressure to cease and desist.

Last month Dotting the Map was criticized by Senator Yuen Pau Woo, of Vancouver, former Ontario senator Victor Oh and B.C. businessman and broadcaster James Ho through their new organization, Canadians United Against Modern Exclusion.

Their website says they’re concerned about “the abuse of rights and freedoms of Canadians because of false or exaggerated narratives driven by foreign interference hysteria, national security overreach, and fear of the ‘other.’”

The organization just published a five-page critique of Dotting the Map, saying the online platform unfairly labels individuals as “disloyal and threatening to Canada based on their ethnic origin.”

Headed by Senator Woo, Canadians United Against Modern Exclusion says it is devoted to anti-Asian hate. Some of Woo’s history with China is detailed in Dotting the Map, as is that of former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien, former Liberal immigration minister John McCallum and Dominic Barton, Canada’s one-time ambassador to China.

When Postmedia asked Woo last week if he had concerns with the way he was portrayed on Dotting the Map, he replied yes and provided the link to his organization’s online critique of the group, which is titled Dotting the Map: Modern Exclusion and the Making of the Disloyal Canadian.

A lawsuit was launched last year against Dotting the Map by Li Wang, also known as Ally Wang, who is head of B.C.’s Stop Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Advocacy Group.

Wang alleges that Dotting the Map defamed her by suggesting she is associated with the Chinese Communist Party and is “a person involved in political influence operations.”

Ivy Li, a member of Canadian Friends of Hong Kong, said Dotting the Map has hired a lawyer to “deal with” Wang’s claims.

Xiu Ying wishes the Liberals would get more serious more quickly about their 2024 promise to create a foreign agents registry.

In other countries such registries make it possible to monitor and potentially punish foreign proxies who try to meddle in domestic politics. Last month the Liberal government proposed Anton Boegman, former chief electoral officer of B.C., as its first foreign influence transparency commissioner.

In the meantime, Xiu Ying, while awaiting a registry and other means of support, has grown more cautious about what she posts on Found in Translation. “I didn’t come to Canada to have (the Chinese government) impact my life again. But they continue to suppress.”

She endorses the work of analysts like Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat who was imprisoned for almost three years in China, National Post columnist Terry Glavin, and the B.C.-based Chinese-language media outlet No. 5 Rd. News.

“Truth is important,” Xiu Ying said. Her allies, like her, are committed to the ideal in regard to exposing China’s modes of influence. “They’re aware of how complicated the network is.”

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