Thank you.
I am here as an academic and a private citizen who is deeply concerned by the approach to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party. For me, an important reference is the 1999 publication of Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America. I believe, and a number of my other colleagues firmly believe, that we've been operating in that environment since 2000.
The authors, Colonel Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, both PLA colonels, had an idea of conducting a multi-faceted approach in the conduct of kinetic and non-kinetic warfare. The authors explored a full spectrum of non-kinetic but focused warfare to include the diplomatic, financial, trade and biochemical to regulatory, smuggling, drug, media and ideological, among others. This typology would be married with other forms of more known warfare, such as nuclear, conventional, guerrilla and terrorism as a potential PLA war-fighting strategy.
Some in the academic and the intelligence communities have argued that the greatest security threat to Canada's economic well-being is the increasingly pervasive intelligence and economic espionage threat orchestrated by the Chinese Communist Party. This is not a new revelation, as Canadian diplomats and intelligence leaders, such as the former ambassador to China Mr. Mulroney, Mr. Fadden and the present director, Mr. Vigneault, have clearly and openly stated their concerns regarding the ever-expanding and problematic activities of the CCP. Moreover, China experts, such as Dr. Burton, have further reinforced these misgivings regarding China's spectrum of nefarious activities within Canada and our allies.
Our American allies have also surfaced their uneasiness—more aggressively, I may add—about the range of the CCP activities domestically and internationally. In 2020, at the Hudson Institute, FBI director Christopher Wray posited that the FBI is opening a new China-related counter-intelligence case about every 10 hours. Moreover, he stated that of the nearly 5,000 active FBI counter-intelligence cases currently under way in the country, almost half are related to China.
To fully understand the CCP's strategic threat to Canada and our allies, we must appreciate that President Xi views that the CCP is conducting a generational fight for strategic, economic and technical leadership to replace the United States and dominate the global commons. For President Xi, his plan incorporates a whole-of-state strategic approach to become not just an international economic competitor but the only global superpower.
From an intelligence standpoint, the spectrum of tradecraft and methodologies employed by the Chinese government's bureaucracy and intelligence apparatus can be subtle, diverse and sophisticated. Canada and our [Technical difficulty—Editor] intrusions, stealing personnel, corporate and financial data to the more traditional aspects of corrupting individuals, utilizing sex, ethnicity and greed in the pursuit of sensitive information, access or materials.
Chinese—