Then-Head of CCP Department Now Designated a Spy Agency Met With Canadian Ministers in 2018

Then-Head of CCP Department Now Designated a Spy Agency Met With Canadian Ministers in 2018
Song Tao, minister of the International Liaison Department of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, delivers a speech at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, China, on Dec. 2, 2017. Fred Dufour/AFP via Getty Images
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Then-head of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) department responsible for engaging with foreign political parties met with multiple federal cabinet ministers and the national security adviser to the prime minister during a 2018 visit to Canada. This CCP department was recently designated an “intelligence service” by a German federal intelligence agency.

The International Department of the Central Committee of the CCP, also known as the International Liaison Department (ILD), operates “de facto as an intelligence service of the People’s Republic of China and is therefore part of the Chinese intelligence apparatus,” says a “Safety Notice for Politics and Administration“ in German.