Canada-China Relations committee  Mr. Chair, thank you for inviting me to give evidence today. My academic work at NYU focuses on authoritarian abuses of law in Hong Kong and elsewhere. I'm also a Canadian citizen of Hong Kong origin, and I practised law in Hong Kong for several years. You've already heard at l

Canada-China Relations committee  In that connection, I would endorse some of the suggestions made by previous witnesses. In particular, that would be the creation of a point person within the government to address issues regarding threats to Canadian businesses operating in China and Canadian citizens in Canada.

Canada-China Relations committee  I cannot speak directly to what's happening with Canadian businesses in the mainland. As far as Hong Kong is concerned, I've seen reports thus far relating to the British financial institutions HSBC and Standard Chartered. I would expect that similar pressure would be applied to

Canada-China Relations committee  Fundamentally I think that a large part of the problem is that when people feel threatened—as the reports that many other witnesses have referred to in the past in relation to harassment intimidation of activists in Canada mentioned—they try to get help from one particular govern

Canada-China Relations committee  That would be a fair characterization, yes.

Canada-China Relations committee  It's a complex set of questions with an equally complex set of answers. To make a long story short, key events since 1997 would include the abuse of the power to interpret the basic law that was vested in the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. Since 1997 on onl

Canada-China Relations committee  The PRC's transition to state capitalism has been happening for a very long time now. I would argue that the PRC has not been communist, in the strict sense of the term, for a very long time. As such, I am skeptical of the claim that it has an ideology beyond ethnonationalism. To

Canada-China Relations committee  Thank you very much. I think what we've seen so far with the U.S-imposed Magnitsky-style sanctions on designated Hong Kong and mainland officials is that they are having an effect, and that financial institutions, including PRC state-owned financial institutions, are scrambling