Canada’s ‘China syndrome’

 

The obsession with foreign plots to undermine our institutions is a hallmark of the erosion of political discourse in Canada

As the war in Ukraine stalls, or moves towards the possibility of a Chinese-brokered peace agreement that would conclusively prove the waning influence of US hegemony, the empire and its provinces seek to renew tensions with an old enemy.

The allegation that China attempted to interfere in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 federal elections is just the latest example of Sinophobic hysteria conjured up by the agencies whose actions remind us that the term ‘military intelligence’ is an oxymoron.

It was just a few weeks ago that the useful idiots of the American military industrial complex were demanding Canada boost defence spending in response to the apparent threat of Chinese spy balloons (Conservative MP Michael Chong thinks the balloon barrage warrants participation in an American-led ballistic missile defense program of dubious utility). The American military had not even proven the first balloon was in fact being used for espionage purposes when it dispatched fighter jets to shoot down several more objects (each with missiles costing $400,000 a piece), all of which are now believed to be weather balloons launched by hobbyists. Information about the first balloon, which was apparently retrieved by the US Navy, remains confidential. American and Canadian efforts to recover the other objects were suspended.

Meanwhile, we are told the COVID-19 pandemic originated in a leak from a Chinese laboratory. This conclusion was made with ‘low confidence’ and comes from new information which remains hidden from the public. The theory that was once popularized by Trump supporters and other conspiracy theorists is now being reported as plausible if not likely by those who had once rejected it. The idea that the virus leaked from a Chinese government lab is no more credible today than it was when far-right politicians and pundits were weaponizing uncertainty for personal gain at the start of the pandemic. But it certainly sounds sinister. Evoking the spectre of a ‘Chinese government lab’ conjures images, either of secret military bioweapons, or lax safety standards and subpar security. The truth of the matter is neither of these things: the Wuhan Institute of Virology is one of the safest laboratories in China, well-known among the global community of epidemiologists and virologists for its work studying coronaviruses, not to mention its collaborations with similar labs in Canada, the United States, and France. There is in fact no new evidence pointing towards the lab leak hypothesis. The likeliest answer is still that the virus made its way to humans through an intermediate host.

Continuing this trend of creeping Sinophobia, we are now expected to believe that China attempted to interfere in the last two federal elections, a claim whose evidence has been withheld from the public but apparently shared widely with the intelligence services of several other nations.  (more...)

Canada’s ‘China syndrome’