Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Richard Fadden could very soon find himself out of a job, after a parliamentary committee last week said he was responsible for fostering “a climate of suspicion.”
Fadden’s troubles began when he alleged during an interview in June last year that federal and municipal politics were the object of foreign interference and that Chinese embassy and consulate officials had helped fund protests against the Canadian government.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than Chinese officials and the parliamentary opposition accused Fadden of lying.
Not only had Fadden created suspicion, the committee concluded, he had also “plant[ed] doubt about the integrity” of elected officials and Chinese-Canadians.
If opposition lawmakers have their way, Fadden will be fired “for doing his job,” which is to alert government officials and the public about threats to national security.
Although every Canadian knows that Chinese espionage has long been a problem, targeting not only the high-tech sector, but also government agencies and minority groups such as Taiwanese and Falun Gong practitioners, it has become worryingly taboo to talk about the darker side of Canada’s engagement with China.
The problem is Beijing’s growing economic influence, for which Canada serves as a warning. There is a long tradition of Canadian leaders making a fortune in China after their political careers end, oftentimes using the contacts they made while in office. China has also invested billions of dollars in Canadian natural resources and telecoms, creating fortunes for several of those involved. Such contacts have created numerous opportunities for Chinese officials to seek to influence policy decisions in Canada.
Fadden now runs the risk of joining the ranks of lower-ranking government officials who, having the courage to shed light on this unholy alliance, have been repaid with the abrupt termination of their careers in government.
Not only is he threatening to uncover senior government officials who may have betrayed their country, he also risked undermining (or so his detractors argue) close relations between Ottawa and Beijing.
Intelligence agencies should never be told by their political masters not to investigate a potential threat or discouraged from disclosing it at an appropriate venue when that threat has been confirmed.
Whether decisionmakers act on the intelligence provided to them is their prerogative, but intelligence officials should not be put in the position of having to choose between telling the truth and career advancement, however inconvenient it may be to the political system as a whole.
This should serve as a lesson for Taiwan, where under President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) a similar tendency to downplay the threat from China so as to maintain “good” relations has weighed down intelligence officials.
Taiwan’s National Security Bureau Director Tsai Der-sheng (蔡得勝) has often been a lone voice pointing to the continued Chinese threat and there are signs that his statements are unwelcome in certain circles. Indeed, he has on several occasions been accused of “playing up” and “politicizing” intelligence to influence, for example, Washington on arms sales.
The closer cross-strait relations become and the more reliant Taiwan becomes on China economically, the more the Presidential Office, the National Security Council and corporations will exert pressure on intelligence agencies to moderate their comments on the China threat.
This is dangerous, because when dealing with China, a “climate of suspicion” is exactly what is needed.
Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Forward Forum in Taipei, former Singaporean minister for foreign affairs George Yeo (楊榮文) proposed a “Chinese commonwealth” as a potential framework for political integration between Taiwan and China. Yeo said the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait is unsustainable and that Taiwan should not be “a piece on the chessboard” in a geopolitical game between China and the US. Yeo’s remark is nothing but an ill-intentioned political maneuver that is made by all pro-China politicians in Singapore. Since when does a Southeast Asian nation have the right to stick its nose in where it is not wanted
As China’s economy was meant to drive global economic growth this year, its dramatic slowdown is sounding alarm bells across the world, with economists and experts criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for his unwillingness or inability to respond to the nation’s myriad mounting crises. The Wall Street Journal reported that investors have been calling on Beijing to take bolder steps to boost output — especially by promoting consumer spending — but Xi has deep-rooted philosophical objections to Western-style consumption-driven growth, seeing it as wasteful and at odds with his goal of making China a world-leading industrial and technological powerhouse, and
More Taiwanese semiconductor companies, from chip designers to suppliers of equipment and raw materials, are feeling the pinch due to increasing competition from their Chinese peers, who are betting all their resources on developing mature chipmaking technologies in a push for self-sufficiency, as their access to advanced nodes has been affected by US tech curbs. A lack of chip manufacturing technology such as extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) would ensure that Chinese companies — Huawei Technology Co in particular — lag behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co by five to six years, some analysts have said.
For Xi Jinping (習近平) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the military conquest of Taiwan is an absolute requirement for the CCP’s much more fantastic ambition: control over our solar system. Controlling Taiwan will allow the CCP to dominate the First Island Chain and to better neutralize the Philippines, decreasing the threat to the most important People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Strategic Support Force (SSF) space base, the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island. Satellite and manned space launches from the Jiuquan and Xichang Satellite Launch Centers regularly pass close to Taiwan, which is also a very serious threat to the PLA,
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