Chinese in Canada at Risk of Surveillance and Detention due to "Internet Battlefield": CSIS

"Canadians who seek election in ridings with large mainland Chinese populations are likely well aware of the risks of publicly associating with people who oppose the CCP": CSIS on Repression Strategy

By Stanley Tromp

A report from November 2022 by Canadian Security Intelligence Service sheds more light on the extraordinary scale, scope, and drivers of China’s state intelligence efforts against two million citizens of Chinese origin, some of whom potentially face detention “overseas” for their internet commentary.

The heavily redacted CSIS Intelligence Branch Assessment—titled “PRC Transnational Repression Poses Evolving Threat to Chinese-Canadians”—was obtained by The Bureau through an Access to Information request.

One of the report’s most striking claims is that Beijing’s repression efforts include “extraterritorial enforcement”—the assertion that Chinese laws can supersede those of foreign governments. “By detaining or warning overseas PRC nationals who have posted anti-CCP comments online, the PRC government effectively conveys that its laws apply extraterritorially, overriding national laws,” the report states.

While CSIS does not provide further details verifying such cases in Canada, its assessment aligns with a November 2022 statement from MP Michael Chong, who raised alarms about U.S. indictments exposing PRC agents operating on North American soil. Chong cited allegations that PRC agents in the U.S. pressured individuals to visit Toronto to conduct more intensive interrogations.

“Beijing’s agents operating in the U.S. have pressured residents to travel to Toronto for heightened interrogation—suggesting that the PRC views Canada as a safer environment for such operations,” Chong wrote, noting that three Chinese covert police stations had been identified in Toronto.

It emerged later—through media reports—that Chong himself, and his family in Hong Kong, were targeted in 2021 by China’s secret police via a Toronto Consulate official spying under diplomatic cover.

China is effectively working to extend its notorious internet firewall and censorship of Beijing’s critics into the West, aiming to destabilize society, the November 2022 CSIS report asserts.

“The Chinese diaspora has become an important stake in this new political warfare, and fomenting the diaspora’s distrust of democratic institutions has been used as a key component of the PRC’s strategy,” it says, adding that extraterritorial pressure sends “a message to the Chinese diaspora that Western democracies are unable to protect them and guarantee their fundamental rights.”

“In this context, the Internet has become a battlefield for PRC authorities,” it adds. “Dissatisfied with controlling and policing online narratives at the national level, the PRC security and intelligence apparatus has become increasingly concerned with exporting its repressive model.”

Another Canadian intelligence report obtained by The Bureau points to a chilling example. In 2021, Facebook identified a cyber campaign targeting Uyghur activists and journalists, including in Canada, the report states. Attackers used posts designed to lure activists to sites embedded with malware, enabling them to monitor the activities of unsuspecting recipients. Facebook traced the malware to two China-based companies.

The CSIS November 2022 transnational repression report, in rare detail and with historical context, asserts that since President Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2012, the PRC has further centralized its intelligence and security apparatus to tighten ideological control over its diaspora, using coercion, surveillance, and intimidation to exert influence in Western democracies.

It notes that Canada and other liberal democracies have long been considered havens for Chinese political and religious dissidents, Hong Kong democracy activists, and exiled communities—including Tibetans, Christians, and Uyghurs.

CSIS said President Xi’s drive for ideological control and his increasingly assertive foreign policy have “substantially eroded” Western expectations that China’s economic liberalization would lead to political openness and greater acceptance of an international order shaped by democratic nations.

The Chinese Communist Party seeks to co-opt the overseas Chinese diaspora through agencies such as the United Front Work Department, the report states. “In doing so, it spares no effort to monitor, harass, and silence dissidents.” Moreover, “the PRC is known to target and/or leverage family as part of its foreign interference and other threat activity.”

PRC students in Canada—numbering about 150,000 in 2020—have often publicly echoed the CCP’s stance that Western liberalism is unsuitable for China, the report states.

Hence, some have participated in pro-CCP protests and disruption activities targeting groups classified by the PRC as the “Five Poisons” in Canada, often with logistical support from Chinese diplomatic missions. The Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSA)—with 30 chapters at Canadian universities in 2020—has been denounced in many Western nations as an arm of Beijing’s overseas repression apparatus.

The PRC’s so-called Five Poisons—groups it considers threats to the regime—include Uyghurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong adherents, Chinese democracy activists, and the Taiwan independence movement.

Tibetans and the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs are ethnic minorities within their autonomous regions and have faced intensifying repression, the report says, especially since the 2008 Tibetan unrest and the 2009 Urumqi riots. Following the March 2014 Kunming terrorist attack, Beijing imposed mass internment measures in Xinjiang, where more than one million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims are held in so-called “vocational schools.” In addition, protests have erupted in Inner Mongolia over Chinese government efforts to suppress Mongolian culture.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has also been a growing concern for Beijing, particularly since the 2014 Umbrella Movement. In 2020, China enacted the Hong Kong National Security Law, leading to the arrests of hundreds of democracy activists, lawyers, students, and journalists.

In March 2023, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to reports by stating, “We've known about the [presence of] Chinese police stations across the country for many months, and we are making sure that the RCMP is following up on it and that our intelligence services take it seriously.”

The PRC has defended the outposts as “service stations” assisting Chinese nationals abroad with administrative needs such as visa and driver’s license applications.

“But even that violates the Geneva Convention, which says such service activities can only be done in official consular buildings,” said Charles Burton, a former Canadian diplomat and senior analyst with Sinopsis.

And if foreign police come to Canada, Burton noted, by law they must be accompanied by the RCMP. Burton said he does not believe the Chinese police stations identified in Canada have detention facilities, nor is he aware of anyone being physically forced to report to them.

According to the 2016 census, nearly 1.8 million Canadians—about five percent of the population—identify as being of Chinese origin, CSIS’s November 2022 report explains.

While late-20th-century immigration largely came from Taiwan and Hong Kong, especially after Britain relinquished its former colony in 1997, mainland Chinese immigrants have since become the dominant group. About 700,000 have settled in Greater Toronto alone.

Among Chinese Canadians, perspectives on the CCP range from strong support to staunch opposition. While Tibetans and Uyghurs are primarily concentrated in the Toronto area, Falun Gong adherents are more visible in British Columbia, where they frequently protest outside the PRC consulate in Vancouver or distribute copies of The Epoch Times, the report says.

(In 2011, the Chinese consul privately urged then-Mayor Gregor Robertson to boycott a Shen Yun Performing Arts show at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, calling it a symbolic attack by Falun Gong on China.)

Meanwhile, a redacted paragraph points to influential Chinese community leaders.

“Redacted … the most prominent-often affiliated with PRC united front work organizations—have maintained business and political ties in the PRC and regularly return to China,” the report says. “Claiming the leadership of Chinese communities, they have sought to disseminate a narrative in which Chinese-Canadians widely support the CCP and speak with one voice on PRC-related issues, notably through Chinese-Canadian media. United front work co-optees, many of whom also maintain close ties with PRC diplomatic missions in Canada, have played an important role in marginalizing Chinese-Canadians who oppose the CCP.”

The report suggests related impacts on Canadian elections, adding:

“Canadians who seek election in some ridings with large mainland Chinese populations are likely well aware of the risks of publicly associating with people who oppose the CCP.”

It remains to be seen whether China’s electoral interference efforts will be as aggressive in the upcoming federal election as in years past. Public awareness of electoral interference has grown due to media reports and public inquiries.

Still, Charles Burton expects that the problem will escalate in 2025, as Beijing has faced no real consequences for its actions.

In some ways, he warns, the challenge could deepen as China’s sophistication with artificial intelligence and other technologies enables it to craft disinformation campaigns—including deep fake political ads. WeChat and other social media platforms, all closely monitored by the Chinese state, will again be critical battlegrounds.

Burton also noted that Ottawa has yet to implement Bill C-70, the Countering Foreign Interference Act, despite repeated calls from diaspora communities to enact the law before the next election.

“The Chinese media are very keen on Mark Carney becoming Liberal party leader, but we’re not likely to know much about his foreign policy before this election,” Burton said.

Meanwhile, Canadian intelligence documents obtained by The Bureau warn that “PRC officials clandestinely cultivate, sway or assist select local officials”—understanding that municipal politicians in Canada often advance to higher office, where relationships forged early can yield long-term influence.

And “The PRC’s sophisticated, pervasive and persistent efforts to promote its interests through political interference undermine Canadian sovereignty, are anti-democratic, and have divisive effects on Canadian civil society, particularly within Chinese-Canadian communities.”

Stanley Tromp is a graduate of the University of British Columbia Political Science department and an expert on Freedom of Information