Good morning, folks.
My name is Cherie Wong. I'm in Ottawa, and I am the executive director of Alliance Canada Hong Kong. Thank you for having us.
Foreign interference in our institutions is not new. Since the 1990s, Chinese dissident communities have raised attention regarding foreign overreach in every aspect of Canadian society—not just in elections but also in research, in civil society, in academic spaces and in private businesses. Though the diaspora are the primary target of foreign interference operations, Beijing targets all persons of influence, and many Canadians are unaware of their tactics.
This committee has also convened to discuss the issue of rising xenophobia in Canada. While I am glad to see such an open discussion on foreign interference in Canadian elections, it is disappointing to see media, political and social discourses leaving out important cultural insights from diaspora communities that have valuable and first-hand knowledge about things such as how to differentiate between a person of interest, a target of foreign influence, a willing accomplice, an active agent and someone with ties to the consulate. Some of these sensationalized perspectives have stoked racist and xenophobic sentiments towards Asians in Canada, and they do not offer the nuances that dissident voices from Tibet, Hong Kong and the Uighur communities can bring.
As a racialized diasporic organization, we are invited to comment only on xenophobia even when we have written reports and heavily consulted on foreign influence in Canada. Meanwhile, governments and media are engaging with experts not in these spaces and trying to summarize their research on the very things that we, the diaspora, are seeing on the front lines.
Anti-Asian racism is growing in Canada, and threats of transnational state-sponsored violence have also intensified in recent years. The diaspora communities are excluded in the Canadian discourse while surviving Beijing’s overreach in our communities. The notion that all ethnic Chinese communities are supporters of the Chinese authorities is racist and reductive. These communities are not a monolith but are vibrant and diverse in language, culture and politics.
Our community members have long observed foreign interference activities under our noses: riding nomination forms handed out during consulate-affiliated demonstrations, officials from the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office cozying up to elected officials, ethnic reporters attending Beijing-backed conferences, as well as photo ops and efforts to wine and dine business and political elites.