BCBusiness

ANthONY w. mAw SEptEmBER 2018 BCBusiness 43 NDP–Green Party government is stepping up its e„orts to expand trade and investment ties with China. In May, Minister of State for Trade George Chow announced a renewed focus on Hong Kong (see p.32), which is set to grow in importance, given Beijing's plan to expand the hinterland around one of the world's leading ports. With the rise of the so-called Greater Bay Area, encom- passing Hong Kong and the mainland cities of Guangzhou a n d S h e n z h e n , B.C. ex pec t s to build on the $200 million worth of investments it has attracted from Hong Kong bu si nesses over the past ˜ive years, Chow says. In 2017, B.C.'s exports to Hong Kong rose 12 percent, to $221 million. The province's Hong Kong trade o™ce is hoping to attract investments in B.C. from ƒrms in the Hong Kong region specializing in technološy, mining, farming, seafood and research. If the trade o™ce attracts more Chinese investors to B.C., how will the province deal with Metro Vancouver's already stretched housing supply? Will the focus on technol- ošy and research investments increase the risk of Chinese espionage and intellectual property theft in Canada? Acknowledging that the NDP-Green gov- ernment "doesn't have a good handle" on the housing challenge, Chow says his focus is on boosting trade and investment to cre- ate business opportunities and jobs for British Columbians. His ministry's role is to promote B.C. as a hub by providing infor- mation, facilitating meetings and explaining the province's business environment and regulations to investors, he notes. On national security, Chow says Ottawa must provide the "leadership" because it's the federal government's responsibility to screen companies for potential threats. "It's not something that we in B.C. can manage," he admits. "It's something that we have to manage as a nation together with the fed- eral government." THE DIASPORA THREAT Beijing's power to disrupt the global opera- tions of Chinese companies adds a new dimension to the China threat by putting more businesses, big and small, at risk of being caught up in President Xi's anti- corruption crackdown. As B.C. learned from its dealings with Anbang Group, inter- national companies with Chinese partners and countries courting FDI from China will be exposed to Beijing's ability to arrest key executives. "Xi Jinping is not a policy wonk," says Willy Lam, the ƒrst China watcher to blow the whistle on the 65-year-old leader's plan to extend his stay in o™ce. "His knowledge of ƒnance and economics is very limited." There's also no guarantee that Xi will win the war on corruption, an endemic problem throughout China's long history, observes Lam, an adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a senior fel- low at the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation. China faces more domestic turbulence as Xi's crackdown, while popu- lar, threatens the careers, the fortunes and even the lives of many of the country's rich and powerful, who will intensify their plot to bring him down. Xi's appetite for power has seen him reach out to the estimated 60 million people of Chinese background living outside China. In Canada, in¦uential commentators have fret- ted that some among the country's 1.5 mil- lion ethnic Chinese, along with the 186,000 students from China, could be operatives for Beijing. If such suspicion grows, the spotlight could shift to the ethnic Chinese community, who make up 20 percent of Metro Vancou- ver's population. In a Canadian Press interview last year, David Mulroney, Canadian ambas- sador to China from 2009©12, warned of Beijing's attempts to tap members of the Chinese diaspora in a bid to in¦uence Can- ada's political process. This spring, Charles Burton, a well-known China hawk, penned an Ottawa Citizen column that advocated expanding resources for "our police and security agencies to counter Chinese subversion." The assistant professor of political science at Ontario's Brock Univer- sity wrote of ¦ushing out "politicians with divided loyalties" and "apologist pundits" who he believes are acting for China's inter- ests in Canada. Burton's commentary draws a rebuke from the CUIA's Houlden, who thinks Cana- dians would be better served by informed dialogue and debate on China issues, not general rhetorical attacks on people with- out names and details. "My concern is that [Burton's comment] could be seen as an attack on former and current civil servants," he says. "Both have dif˜iculty defending themselves against innuendoes." Also, people of Chinese ancestry are a large and diverse group. "Canadians of Chinese origin have very di„erent political views," Houlden says. "They're not mono- lithic at all." To engage an increasingly complex China, Canada needs to draw on the knowl- edge and skills of the tiny pool of Chinese tal- ents at its disposal. But Chinese Canadians on the front line now face the additional hur- dle of proving they're not ƒfth columnists. "They could go anti-China to prove that they are even more anti-China than the non-Chinese," Senator Woo suggests with a tinge of sarcasm. "That would be the easy way out." Woo says this is already happening in Vancouver, where some of the more xeno- phobic voices hitting out at Chinese and other foreign buying of real estate belong to Chinese Canadians. Chak Au, a member of Richmond city council since 2011, decries the increasing di™culty for o™cials of Chinese ethnicity to operate if questions about their loyalty grow. "If such suspicion becomes paranoiac, what good will it have for the country?" asks the former mental health worker, who emi- grated from Hong Kong in 1988 and served as a school trustee for 12 years. By obsessing over how China might harm Canada, the hawks forget that the diaspora threat works both ways. UBC's Paul Evans turns the question around. "To those who fear the Chinese trying to inƒltrate and in¦uence Canada, I ask if we're not in¦uenc- ing them," he says. "As long as they are here, we are exposing them to political reasoning, values and expectations of how government and our society is run. So, who is in¦uenc- ing whom?" ° BaNG BaNG Wu Xiaohui, former chair and CEO of Anbang Insurance Group; the Bentall Centre towers in Vancou- ver, purchased by Anbang and now reportedly owned by the Chinese government

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