The governments of China and India are trying to influence Canada’s diaspora population by pressuring ethnic media to parrot government positions and suppress “red line” subjects they don’t want to discuss. An inquiry into foreign interference was heard on Tuesday.
Two Chinese-Canadian journalists and one Indian-Canadian journalist told the inquiry that India and China use a combination of rewards and threats to influence what and how they report. They said consulates and embassies have threatened to withhold advertising costs over media coverage in Canada.
Indo-Canadian journalist Gurpreet Singh said the Indian government refuses to issue visas to people whose reporting it doesn’t like and exempts journalists from having to get a visa every time Canadian citizens return to India. He said he threatened to cancel his Overseas Indian Citizen Card.
Singh said the Indian government is particularly sensitive to reports about support for an independent Sikh state, controversy over Kashmir, India’s caste system, and who is behind the Air India bombing.
“If you address these issues, you’re going to get a lot of pushback from the Indian consulate and Indian diplomats,” he says.
Victor Ho, former editor-in-chief of the Xing Tao Daily Vancouver newspaper, said China’s “red lines” coverage targets Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, overseas Chinese democracy movements, and the Uyghur minority.
“These are taboos,” Ho told the inquiry. “You cannot publish ideas that are contrary to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party).”
Ronald Leung, host of the weekly TV show, said there are other issues that the Chinese government is trying to escalate to increase internal conflict between Chinese Canadians and other nationals.
“Drug policy is one of the big themes in Chinese society. Because of China’s history, people generally don’t like drug abuse. They hate drugs,” he said. “So there are a lot of differences with what Canada is doing on this issue. The other thing is gender identity, crime and safety, Indigenous issues, human rights.
“When China tries to escalate these conflicts in the West, as you can see in Chinese media in Canada, they will do the same and escalate the problem.”
