Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon.
I would like to supplement the evidence this committee heard from civil servants on November 18 by providing information about the relationship between Nuctech and the Chinese Communist Party apparatus that is the regime of the People's Republic of China.
The Nuctech corporate organigram shows the Chinese Communist Party branch and its party secretary, Chen Zhiqiang, at the apex of Nuctech's corporate pyramid. The party branch is at the top. The Nuctech board of directors and senior executive management is therefore subordinate to direction from the Chinese Communist Party.
Indeed, party secretary Chen is also the chairman of Nuctech's board of directors. As a very senior official of the Chinese Communist Party, Mr. Chen is also currently a member of China's National People's Congress. The party secretary is thus the highest ranked and most powerful official at Nuctech.
The Chinese state heavily subsidizes Nuctech and other Chinese hardware and software development and production to make it highly competitive in global markets. That's why they tendered the cheapest bid to us. Like all Chinese state enterprises, Nuctech's raison d'être is not primarily economic profitability; it is also to serve other overall PRC regime purposes.
As was mentioned in the evidence in a previous meeting, China's National Intelligence Law of 2017 compels all Chinese nationals, including those working for Nuctech at home and abroad, to collaborate with agents of the Chinese state on request, to further Chinese state interests by, you know, purloining confidential data and engaging in compromise of infrastructure around the world.
This intelligence law is really just pro forma. In fact, Nuctech's connection to the Chinese party/military state is much more than a master-servant relationship; it's really a symbiotic relationship. What I mean by that is that Nuctech, like all Chinese state enterprises, is fully integrated into the PRC party, state, military and security apparatus because, as party general secretary Xi Jinping has put it, “Party, government, military, civilian, and academic, east, west, south, north and centre, the Party leads everything.”
Just as the Chinese Communist Party does not allow for true civil society or non-government sectors, there are also no industrial enterprises in China existing independently from China's party state. In terms of assessing bids, we have to understand that Nuctech is of a substantive nature utterly different from that of its foreign competitors, those existing in a civil space outside of political institutions.
This is a hugely significant distinction between Nuctech and non-Chinese security equipment concerns. Nuctech's purposes are actually the Chinese Communist Party's purposes for Nuctech. Because of its role as an integral element of the unified Communist Party regime, Nuctech's primary purpose is not to generate profits but to serve the overall interests of the Chinese Communist Party at home and abroad, including China's massive domestic and international intelligence-gathering program.
Nuctech can reciprocally draw on Chinese military and intelligence services to obtain foreign technologies and foreign data to serve its advantage. It's fully supported by the Chinese Communist Party's extensive United Front Work Department operations, coordinated out of the PRC's embassies and consulates abroad.
This is because Nuctech, like all PRC enterprises, is mobilized by the Chinese Communist Party to serve PRC regime geostrategic goals throughout the world. That's why you have the Chinese Communist Party branch party secretary, Chen Zhiqiang, as the highest ranked official of Nuctech.
The key here is to recognize that Nuctech is a function of an integrated party-state-military-civilian-market PRC regime complex whose strategic intent is severely at odds with the interests and values of the liberal democratic west, including Canada.
My conclusion will be very brief.
Canada's country-agnostic approach to procurement, while arguably politically correct, should not be applied to bids from People's Republic of China enterprises, state or otherwise. Because China routinely grossly flouts the norms of the international rules-based order in diplomacy and trade, this country-agnostic approach obscures the realities of Chinese regime enterprises and the threat they pose to Canada's national security. In short, like the Chinese Communist Party, Nuctech cannot be trusted by Canada under any circumstances.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.