This essay is a deviation from my typical content. I am writing about this because it’s an important and under-covered issue, on which I have had several first-hand experiences. It provides a needed context for what is happening with the Canadian-US tariff disputes. Please note that I distinguish between Chinese ethnicity and Chinese communist government operatives.
It happened so quickly, I didn’t get a photo.
We were in a taxi on our way to the Vancouver International Airport this past fall when we passed it.
A white and black car that looked for all the world like a police vehicle, complete with the alternating black- and white-painted sections, the front push bumper and the magnetic mount for a flash lamp or light bar.
What was missing, however, were markings of any type. No name of any police force, municipal, RCMP or otherwise. Given Vancouver’s strong film industry, I thought for a second this might be a prop car. But a good look at the driver inside told me otherwise. Actors don’t wear their costume except on set, and there were no cameras on this car.
The driver was a middle-aged, Asian man, wearing a dark green uniform with bright red shoulder epaulettes with gold stitching. On his left shoulder below the epaulette was a badge with Chinese characters in red stitching. His hat was of the same dark green, with some kind of gold adornment. Brass buttons on his uniform. I caught another flash of red—was it a star?—then we had passed the car.
My husband and I stared at each other in disbelief, both reluctant to voice the same question.
“Was that a PRC army officer we just saw?”
I immediately messaged a friend with Hong Kong ancestry living in Vancouver who I know is keeping abreast of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) police presence in Canada.
“Do CCP police in Canada drive unmarked police cars and wear PRC army uniforms?” I asked.
He didn’t know, but said he wouldn’t be surprised if they did. It’s all hidden in plain sight, he acknowledged.
It feels like we’re under occupation, I thought. What foreign country gets to wear its uniform on the streets of another nation—unless they’re an occupying power?
* * *
It is well-reported that over the last several years, China has been allowed to set up their own secret police stations in both Canada and the US—something China now denies. The reported reason is so that China can spy on their own citizens living abroad to make sure they’re being good citizens—not of Canada or the US, mind you, but of China—a heinous reason enough to wonder why this has been allowed in what are supposed to be free countries governed by rule of law and democratic principles.
According to a November 2023 Canadian House of Commons report on the issue, there are at least five such stations in Canada. “Witnesses emphasized that [these stations] also monitor diaspora communities, collect civil intelligence, harass and intimidate individuals who are critical of PRC policies, and assist PRC public security authorities with coerced return operations,” the report says.
In their report “Patrol and Persuade”—one of the documents which the House of Commons report cites—the human rights NGO “Safeguard Defenders” states that murky agreements and questionable legality underlie the establishment of such PRC police stations:
Safeguard Defenders and other human rights organizations have frequently denounced the complicity of certain governments in the repatriation of individuals to the People’s Republic of China without regard for internationally established standards of due process and protection mechanisms. … In this regard, while the establishment of overseas outposts with the consent of the host country and the cooperation of that outpost with the local law enforcement agencies may indeed provide a useful service to both communities, they are a reason for severe concern.
With so much potential for abuse and violation of Canadian civil rights, why allow, on our sovereign soil, another nation to break our own privacy laws against Canadian citizens? How did this happen? Why was there so little public outcry? If these are legal immigrants to Canada, don’t they now have the rights accorded to all citizens of our country? Shouldn’t we be protecting them against repressive regimes that don’t follow our laws, rather than allowing those countries to oppress their citizens in our country, on the basis of their undemocratic laws? Why allow our sovereignty to be undermined in this way?
To believe that spying on their own citizens is all that these CCP police do in Canada and the US stretches credibility. These alleged stations are more likely to be a barely-sanitized cover for CCP agents acting in both nations.
* * *
I first became aware of the possibility of such hidden-in-plain-sight agents in 2019, when the church I attended for sixteen years suddenly became the focus of a very under-reported protest by Chinese nationals living in Vancouver.
In fact, this moment was also the beginning of my awareness that the major Canadian media outlets were no longer covering crucial news stories.
On August 18, 2019, a small group of mostly Canadian Christians of Hong Kong ancestry gathered at a pro-Hong Kong rally near the Chinese Consulate in Vancouver. Their purpose was to encourage prayer for Hong Kong dissidents in the wake of the Occupy Central and Umbrella movements. These were protests were ignited in response to the Hong Kong Government’s bill to amend the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance in regard to extradition. If the bill had been successfully passed, it would have given China the ability to arrest voices of political dissent in Hong Kong, where they could be subsequently be extradited to China to face trial under their legal system.
After that rally, the prayer group—known as the Vancouver Christians for Love, Peace and Justice—moved over to Tenth Avenue Church. The group had booked a room in the church to hold a meeting to pray for Hong Kong. This was the fourth prayer meeting the group had organized since early June of 2019. All such previous prayer gatherings had been uneventful.
However, this time about one hundred pro-China counter-demonstrators followed the prayer group as they made their way to Tenth Avenue Church. These demonstrators, many dressed in red and holding Chinese flags and placards, surrounded the main and back entrances of the building as the group prayed inside. At one point, members of the protestors tried to force their way inside but were prevented from entering by church members.
Someone notified the police. The Vancouver Police Department dispatched about twenty officers to the site. As the prayer meeting ended, police officers had to clear exit paths through the flag-waving pro-China crowd (video) to allow those who had attended the prayer gathering to leave.
Some protestors took photos and video of the individuals as they left the prayer meeting. The counter-demonstrators shouted insults, accusing the prayer gathering of being a political group attempting to incite hatred and lying about what was happening in Hong Kong. While the pro-China demonstrators had a right to their initial protest, of course, their intimidating actions towards participants crossed a line. Members of the prayer gathering reported feeling scared and fearing for the well-being of their relatives back in Hong Kong.
Here’s the salient point: Chinese nationals living in Canada (but who remained loyal to China) came out in a coordinated counter-protest (allegedly at the order of their government) against Canadian citizens who were exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of assembly and religion. Many of these protestors were wearing red and waving identical flags, the independent Breaker.news outlet reported. They knew the location where to target this prayer movement. They harassed innocent Canadian citizens on Canadian soil, intimidating them by taking images that could be used to clearly identify them to Chinese authorities, the same article added.
And, except for the local police response that day, no one did anything in their defence.
The response of the Canadian media to this event—a clear attempt to quash the prayer group’s guaranteed right to freedom of religion and religious assembly—was silence. No one rose up to defend their freedom of religion and freedom to gather—principles enshrined in Canadian law.
The only mainstream outlet to (nineteen days later) cover the event was the local Vancouver Sun newspaper. The most thorough coverage was provided by a small, local Christian website.
For me, this was one of those Twilight Zone moments. I had received my master’s degree in journalism five years earlier from the University of British Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. That this important story went uncovered in our city was unthinkable, based on the training that I’d received there. In fact, many of my former J-school colleagues and friends were working at the time at the CBC, Canada’s national public broadcaster. Their lack of response to an article I posted on social media from a local independent media source about the event spoke loudly.
That’s when I began to understand that the journalistic institution for which I’d trained was not only failing to cover news stories fairly—but at all. Ten years earlier, this event would have made the evening news. Secular groups with an interest in civil liberties would have spoken out in defence of the prayer group. It would have been discussed on local radio stations.
In 2019, it was no longer culturally permissible in Canada for mainstream media outlets to cover stories where Christians were being persecuted. I’m quite sure if the scenario had been reversed—if local Christians had been persecuting Chinese citizens in Canada—there would have been an uproar across major media outlets. That would have fit the pre-approved narrative.
But the events of August 18, 2019, did not fit that narrative, even though they were a mirror of highly-reported events happening just days earlier in Hong Kong.
I attended the next prayer event held by the Vancouver Christians for Love, Peace and Justice as an act of solidarity. I spoke to some of the participants about the previous pro-China protest. It was clear these participants were shaken. To my surprise, however, no pro-China protestors gathered outside the prayer event this time. The Chinese Consulate may have felt they had already won the day, since the response from the rest of Canada was deafening silence.
* * *
It’s now December 2020. My husband and I have hired a group of six students through a paid co-op program at the University of British Columbia (UBC) to build a prototype app. The students are nearly finished with their placement, and we want to offer them a small thank-you gift in appreciation for working with us.
I knew that one of these students loved to hold Chinese hot pot parties with his family over the holidays. He’d mentioned that there was a local hot pot restaurant chain where his family liked to buy hot pot seasonings. We decided we’d get him a gift card to this restaurant.
After unsuccessfully trying to purchase a gift card online, I walk the four blocks to where this restaurant, known as Haidilao, had a location.
As I walk up to the entrance door, I see multiple security-style cameras pointed at me. Seems a bit of an overkill, I think.
Upon entering the store, another swath of security cameras captures my every move at the front desk as I pay for the gift card. Unnerved, I look out over the empty restaurant. Every single table has a rounded security camera over it, with multiple other cameras pointed down at each table. The hallways are also filled with additional cameras. (See images in video here.)
Back at home, I begin googling. The Haidilao chain is in fact owned by the Chinese Communist Party, as are all Chinese enterprises, I discover. I suspect these cameras are part of the infamous Chinese social credit system, into which I have now unwittingly entered my facial and financial ID.
Months later, stories begin appearing in local media confirming my suspicions—though these stories have since been removed from search results. Privacy and civil rights groups called to have the cameras removed from Canadian soil. Nothing happened. So far as I know, they’re still there today.
* * *
Of course, everyone now knows the events that have transpired since the Covid pandemic which have revealed China’s growing global power and aspirations. A Chinese spy balloon has traversed Canada and the US. In 2022, Chinese telecom Huawei was banned from further placing of 5G towers in Canada, due to concern about the technology’s spying capabilities in a decision called long-overdue. Members of Canada’s Parliament have been accused by Canada’s security agency, CSIS, of colluding with the CCP as well as other nations.
Mainland Chinese migrants fill Canada’s cities. While some may be students or those hoping to find temporary work, Hong Kong-background Canadians explain that citizens of the PRC have a primary loyalty to China, essentially making them agents of their homeland.
I haven’t even touched on the fentanyl crisis and its links to China. On that subject, you should follow Vancouverite Sam Cooper, who has for years been doing some of the earliest and best independent reporting on this and related topics. You owe it to yourself to explore solid journalism on this under-reported issue.
Most of what I’ve written here is not news. However, it seems that as Canadians, we’re not able to hold it all together and see the meaning of the bigger picture. This is why I’ve tried to gather together some first-hand accounts alongside the better-reported news. Truthfully, I’m just scratching the surface of the issue.
* * *
One thing I need to make clear is that I am talking not about an ethnicity (i.e. Chinese) but about some people from mainland China whose primary loyalty is to the Chinese Communist Party. This is an example of why Canada’s multiculturalism—which I once thought was so wonderful—may no longer be working.
Remember, culture is the set of values and beliefs collectively held by a group of people. One of the values that Canada’s culture has long been known for is respect for the rule of law.
We do want many ethnicities in Canada, however I now question if we want multiple cultures. Here’s why. There are numerous cultures (not meaning countries, but cultures) that have little regard for the rule of law. Honour-shame cultures, for example, value getting away with breaking laws to maximize one’s self-benefit, while still maintaining a façade of “honour.” An honour-shame culture defines honour as only the appearance of doing what is right. If you can get away with wrongdoing, so much the better. Shame is what happens when you’re caught in wrongdoing.
However, Canada’s historic culture (as derived from its French, British and Indigenous roots) defines honour as doing what is right, even when no one is watching. Thus, the honour-shame culture and Canada’s culture are in opposition to each other.
Additionally, as in the point I’m making here, if being of another culture means that your loyalty lies to a motherland—one in opposition to the existence of the sovereign nation of Canada that was established in 1867—then that culture cannot co-exist with Canada’s.
* * *
The other day I was reminded of the man in the PRC military uniform I had seen while passing through the largely ethnically Chinese Vancouver neighborhood of Richmond, B.C. I remembered how creepy it felt to see a uniformed officer of a hostile nation on Canadian soil. How it made me feel as though Canada were under occupation.
At that moment, I realized—we probably are. We’re under a soft occupation by the communist government of China.
Perhaps this might be the real reason why our neighbor country to the south is a little upset? After all, they’ve been warning us about this problem since at least 19991, and likely longer. If Canada is indeed under soft occupation by the CCP, then that is a critical security risk right at the United States’ border. You can dislike the current administration’s actions towards Canada (I do), believing it not the best way to handle the situation, yet still see that there might be a real problem on Canada’s side.
On one hand, the occupation happened so quickly that we didn’t get the photo.
On the other hand, it’s been happening quietly for many, many years.
Your voice is needed, and we’d love to hear it in the comments below. However, if you choose to abandon the voice of love in your comments, remember that you are abandoning all of your beneficial power.
Love is the most powerful force in the universe, alone having the ability to create change for the better. Indeed, it is the only force that ever has.
See opening paragraph of Ch. 1, “China’s Unholy Trinity.”
And in the UK the influence of China in academia is equally concerning.
This is an amazing story and quite the warning. Thank you. The way your country handled the truckers’ strike was very disturbing.