In Vancouver, the Chinese community under Beijing’s eye

A few hours before the 34th anniversary^e The anniversary of the crushing of the student movement in Tiananmen Square was being organized at a park in Vancouver Bay on June 4, when Kay (her first name has been changed at her request), 28, received an anonymous phone call. “You better not go there. His interlocutor advised, It will be hot, and we will never be safe from explosive incidents…”

First, the young woman, an administrative assistant who had lived in Shanghai, Canada for four years, never stopped coming. She wears a caution cap and a black mask that eats up half of her face, but notes: “I have no illusions. They already have my photo on their computer. » She says she’s used to this kind of bullying: “They don’t ban us, but want to draw us in. I’m fighting for freedom in Canada, but the people who risk reprisals are my relatives who stayed in the country. »She laments.

behind “they”, indefinite, used by Kay, hides Beijing’s invisible hand; The pressures Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is exerting on its most important diaspora are established outside Asia. One in five of the Greater Vancouver area’s 2.6 million residents are of Chinese descent.

Chinese meddling in federal elections suspected

Located on the Pacific, with the Rockies in the background, Vancouver resembles its American twin, San Francisco (California). The city was shaped by many waves of migration from China. Workers who came to build the Canadian-Pacific Railroad joined the first adventurers in the 1880s, inspired by the gold rush.

A century later, opponents of Hong Kong’s Chinese “normalization” won after the former British colony’s wealthy businessmen, leading “Hangover’s” real estate prices to skyrocket within a few years. One of the most expensive cities today. the world Huawei founder Meng Wanzhou’s daughter spent nearly three years under house arrest ordered by a US court at one of its luxury residences in Shaughnessy. The issue sparked an unprecedented diplomatic crisis between Canada and China.

From November 2022, Canadian media (Global Television Network and The Globe and Mail) Canada’s intelligence agencies suspect the Chinese government of conducting multiple infiltration bids to try to influence the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.

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