EDMONTON—It could take the form of a guaranteed business deal, a lavish gift, or a young seductive woman at a bar. The end goal is always the same for the Chinese communist regime—to gain influence over Western politicians, says Rob Anders, Member of Parliament for Calgary West.
“The reach is deep, and it’s very unfortunate.”
Anders says the extent of the regime’s influence goes even beyond what Richard Fadden, head of CSIS, Canada’s intelligence agency, said in comments on CBC in June or his televised appearance before a parliamentary committee earlier this month.
“I would argue that I’ve seen things happen on a federal level as well in our own government. And so I think there’s a lot more than he has even mentioned,” he says.
“I think that Mr. Fadden only gingerly scratched the surface. I feel for him that he was dragged before an investigative committee with parliament, to have to explain, and I think that this situation is far worse that what he let on.”
Last month, Fadden said in an interview with CBC television that some Canadian officials are under the influence of foreign regimes, alluding to China as the most aggressive country in the effort to gain influence. He said that many of those being manipulated by Beijing were not even aware they were acting on the regime’s interests due to the long-term nature of their relationship with Chinese agents of influence.
Anders says he has seen aspects of that occur.
“What will happen is MPs are given five-star treatment when they go to China, and they’re being introduced to young people who speak immaculate English … and given the impression that China wants to be just like Canada,” he explains.
“They get approached by people who offer them business deals that frankly are too good to be true, because these are deals that are being set up by the Communist Party, and are being done as an informal way to bribe Western politicians, because it sounds like a business deal, but they are business deals that never fail, and are very lucrative.”
In some publicized cases in the past, politicians from other countries have been lured by young attractive women and then blackmailed or robbed following their dalliances.
Seduced and Robbed
“I’ve seen a lot with my own eyes,” Anders says. “It is so very troubling for me to see that.”
He says he has warned other politicians that expensive gifts, business contacts and attractive young women who are “far, far too attractive for a 50-year-old balding politician,” are used to manipulate them. He adds that much of the prosperity the Chinese regime evinces and offers Canadian politicians comes on the “backs, the blood, the sweat, and the tears of the people who are suffering in slave-labour camps in China—the people who wrap five or seven thousand chopsticks a day, the people who are their political prisoners.”
Ministerial staff members are also targeted by the Chinese regime, he says.
“I have heard of ministerial staffers who have been invited out to karaoke events... They’ll have a couple of girls who will say, ‘How long are you in town for? Maybe you’d like to have some fun. Maybe you’d like to go out for dinner. Maybe you’d like to go karaoke.’ And they work these guys, they put some alcohol in them, and then, pretty soon, one thing leads to another. And you know, they can video tape these types of things.”
After former Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin defected to Australia he revealed the regime’s use of such “honeytraps” to entrap Western politicians , including one Australian official who Chen said was forced to advocate for the regime’s interests.
It was also a fate suffered by Ian Clement, then-deputy mayor of London , when he travelled to the Beijing Olympics in 2008, despite having been warned by British intelligence officials before his trip. He was seduced and robbed of important information regarding London’s operations. Another U.K. government staffer, an aide to the British prime minister, found himself in a similar predicament just weeks before.
Michel Juneau-Katsuya , a former CSIS agent and head of the agency’s Asia-Pacific desk, said that Chinese intelligence agents look for sympathetic politicians and other key staff members who can be coerced, bribed, or simply charmed to help the Chinese regime achieve its foreign policy objectives.
The goal of all the intelligence-gathering is to gain influence, Juneau-Katsuya said.
Human Rights Concerns Forgotten
Anders believes some politicians have allowed such trips to affect their convictions regarding human rights abuses in China.
“They’ve got some skepticism, some doubts. But then, they get invited on a five-star trip to luxury hotels.”
Upon their return to Canada, their concerns about human rights violations are either dimmed or forgotten, he says.
Anders says the regime will focus on those who are not supportive of its positions rather than those who already take a stance favourable to its interests.
Sometimes, he says, they will send agents who claim they are opponents of the regime.
They will say, “’Maybe you can give us the names of people who are opponents of the regime. Maybe you can tell us some things about people who oppose it,’ etc.”
Anders says he has been subject to this approach himself. A man who later turned out to be involved in the infamous Profumo scandal in Britain many years ago, approached him to raise money to air a documentary on the Tiananmen Massacre at the time of the Beijing Olympics to cause embarrassment to the Chinese regime.
“I found out later that was totally a ruse, and that his purpose was to find people who were sympathetic to the cause, who might give it funding and money.”
Anders says the Chinese regime especially targets people who are in the middle, “the ones who aren’t already in their pocket,” but who aren’t very opposed to them and are needed to sway to have the majority opinion on their side.
“If you work on the ones who just don’t know, and give them a lavish, five-star trip over to China, and you provide them a prostitute or you give them a lucrative business deal or any number of those things, it’s surprising how effective that can be.”
Overseas Chinese Targeted
The regime also targets members of the expatriot Chinese community. Anders says he has seen in Canada many cases in which regime officials threatened the businesses of the associates of Falun Gong practitioners, a meditation group persecuted in China, and exposed them to hate propaganda, or made threats against family members of Falun Gong practitioners who reside in China.
“And that’s one of the reasons I have serious issues with as many consulates as there are for the People’s Republic of China, because I think every single one of them is being used as an espionage outlet, and a pressure tactic against Falun Gong practitioners, and a number of others here,” he says.
Anders says Fadden should be commended for coming forward with his remarks, and should be encouraged to reveal more.
“In Chinese culture, the idea of saving face and being treated well is important. I think it’s very important to blacken their eye, and to let the People’s Republic of China know that we’re onto them, and that they get bad press over these issues, and that it’s drawn out into public attention and given scrutiny.
“If we don’t hear and speak the truth on these types of things, I think we are only eroding our Canadian values by not talking about it openly.”
With reporting by Maple Lynn
