Politic?: Canada-China Relations

"We were not very pleased by the request, but it's an open conference.The answer was quickly taken -- Yes."
"We want to promote contact between different cultures and different knowledge and people with different perspectives."
"I think it's all good that countries are talking to each other. If there are contacts between militaries of different countries, even if they're adversaries, it's good to have channels of communication."
Professor Pierre Jolicoeur, Royal Military College Kingston, Ontario

People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers march next to the entrance to the Forbidden City (L) after the opening session of the National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing on May 22, 2020. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images)

Bejing has a habit of covertly seeking information, from scientific to manufacturing to state secrets from developed countries of the west in the interests of hastening its own advances in science, technology, medicine, and manufacturing. By whatever means possible, either through cybertechnology or installing Chinese expatriates living elsewhere burdening them with a commitment to furthering the interest of their nation of birth and alternately convincing non-Chinese to act on Beijing's behalf.

China is a huge country with the world's largest population. Investors and business interests from abroad are keenly interested in the prospective market that the huge population represents. Beyond cheap labour that enabled China to scoop up the world's manufacturing and export crown, outsiders are drawn to the country for the potential they hope to reap in expanded business opportunities. But there too, Beijing has its demands, that trade secrets be open to China as a condition of setting up shop in China.

China does not recognize copyright and is infamous for stealing designs and producing counterfeits for a market eager to accept cheap look-alikes, be it designer label clothing or luxury-brand watches. China today is not the China of yesterday. It has bounded by great leaps over the backs of slower, more consciously law-abiding international nations' corporations to infiltrate a presence, move up an executive ladder and abscond with trade secrets to become a competitor and ultimately outcompete and distroy its source.

“Several interactions [occurred between Chinese military jets and the RCAF’s patrol aircraft flying in international airspace near Japan.]"
"In some instances, the RCAF aircrew felt sufficiently at risk that they had to quickly modify their own flight path in order to increase separation and avoid a potential collision with the intercepting aircraft.”
Department of National Defence

Its rocketry technology has now advanced to the stage where it is busy building its own space laboratory, sending up its own satellites for global intelligence gathering. Investing in the cultivating of rare earth properties to become a major stand-alone possessor of assets that control areas of the technology market. Its long tentacles of control have reached into the West to interfere in politics at the most basic levels to the most sophisticated.

Beijing knows how to take actions that make other nations sit up and take notice.You can't help noticing after all, when your citizens are suddenly arrested and imprisoned and given stiff incarceration sentences on the pretense of planning to harm China's security. As was done to Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor when Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was taken into custody in Canada on an extradition request from the U.S.

Exceedingly strained relations between Canada and China became more tense as two years passed and the two remained in Chinese prisons on sedition charges. Other Canadians were given death sentences for drug running by specially convened courts. Meng was Chinese royalty. When she struck a deal with the U.S. to return to China, the two Michaels were released after close to three years. Soon after came the Royal Military College turn as host of the annual conference of the International Society of Military Sciences; national defence universities from ten democracies...Canada the Netherlands and Portugal among them.


Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are back in Canada, after nearly three years of detention in China, September 25, 2021. Photo by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau/Twitter

Then came a request from the Peoples Liberation Army military science academy to allow their members to attend the conference. A conference the Chinese armed forces had attended in 2018 in Warsaw and 2019 in Vienna with some of its high-ranking military officers in attendance. The Royal Military Academy conference theme was "resilience and cohesion in the face of new forms of disruption", with one session dealing with "China and Russia's information space attacks on democracy".

The request moved from the RMC to the Department of National Defence and the office of the Deputy Minister of Defence before it was sent back down to the Royal Military College with no recommendations for or against. At the meeting, discussions of open-source information available to anyone, representing no matters of high sensitivity; the conference held through the internet where invitees could Zoom in.

That was late 2020, but before then, Chinese soldiers were present in Canada to participate in winter military exercises under an accord signed by a previous government in 2013. At that time top military leaders in Canada felt the arrangement should be cancelled, urged by the United States. Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs urged against cancelling the arrangement, expressing concern it might sour relations with China at a time that Canada was attempting to free the two Michaels from Chinese prisons.

The 2020 conference was an open academic event, an unclassified level with "broad international representation". Finland for one had organized a panel discussion on military technology from a "conceptual"perspective based on open-source material.

"[Leaving engagement with China to the discretion of various federal departments leads to] chaos."
"We’ll have chaos as long as individual departments and the [CAF] run their own [self-serving] China policies."

"As long as China is engaging in genocide/crimes against humanity, Ottawa should tell the PLA to stay home."
Canada’s former ambassador to China David Mulroney