I understand. I'm in a hotel room with very limited facilities. My apologies.
On the geopolitical backdrop, I've sent you some maps to look at. One of them is the new official map, the vertical world map. It's a China-centred world. It is a literal reorientation, the thinking behind China's very aggressive foreign policy, which Xi Jinping has inherited. He didn't invent it. The thinking behind it started in the 1980s and could even go back to 1949, but the change in direction came in the 1980s, and there will be some names you might be familiar with. Alfred Mahan talked about what a rising power needs to become influential. One is developing a blue-water navy and protecting sea lanes of communication, because China is obsessed about choke points.
Another is Halford Mackinder, the founding figure of modern geopolitics.
U.S. Secretaries of State Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles are third influence. They talked about two concepts that are very important to what's happening now. One of them is the idea of the island chain—the first, second and third island chains—which form the basis of theories of hub-and-spoke defence pacts that link the United States with allies like New Zealand, Korea and Japan. The second concept is peaceful evolution. This is the idea that Communism would be undermined in the eastern bloc by greater contact with the outside world, with the western world, through culture, education and so on. The CCP has been very influenced by that thinking, and under Xi Jinping we're seeing not just a defensive response but a very aggressive response, because China believes the west is weak and divided.
These are the four vectors of CCP active measures, as I've preferred to use this term, that you can look for and find in Canada as elsewhere. One is efforts to control the overseas Chinese communities and their media in our society and use them as agents of Chinese foreign policy, and also sometimes for espionage. Number two is “elite catcher”, targeting our political and economic elites; three is a global information strategy to try to control the international narrative about topics China is interested in; four is the belt and road Initiative, which is a military-political-economic block.
You can see how political interference fits within China's much more aggressive foreign policy as a tool of that foreign policy. It's a means to achieve China's goals without military force; to weaken opposition to China's objectives; to establish client or asset relationships with the elite, and even to establish collaborators within our elite; to access sensitive information and technology—in other words, espionage; to control the diaspora discourse; and to control the international discourse on issues of interest to China.
If you wish, I can talk later about a resilient strategy, but that's enough for an overview.
Thank you very much for your attention.