Canada bans Chinese reporters over spy concerns

August 21, 2014 by Joseph Fitsanakis

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org

The office of the prime minister of Canada has banned reporters working for China’s state-owned media from covering the Canadian leader’s official trip to the Arctic, due to concerns that they may be spies. For the past several summers, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper has undertaken official tours of the Canadian Arctic, in an effort to promote the country’s northern economy and attend military exercises. However, in a move that has raised eyebrows in Ottawa and Beijing, the organizers of the trip have issued a ban on a number of Chinese reporters from joining the Canadian prime minister’s entourage. The Winnipeg Sun reported on Wednesday that the unprecedented step was taken over concerns that the Chinese journalists in question may in fact be intelligence operatives in the service of China. The paper cited a quote by a spokesman from the office of the prime minister, who reportedly told the Québecor Média International news agency that “certain news outlets are no longer welcome” to travel with the prime minister. It appears that the reporters in question include primarily those working for The People’s Daily newspaper and the Xinhua news agency, both of which are owned by the government of China. Two Chinese journalists working for these outlets, Li Xue Jiang, and Zhang Dacheng, caused controversy during Harper’s trip to the Arctic in 2013. The two appeared to show more interest in photographing their fellow journalists and the interior of Canada’s prime ministerial airplane than covering Harper’s trip. Li even wrote an article for the Chinese-language edition of The People’s Daily at the time, in which he mentioned that he had come under suspicion of spying for China, saying that a secretary from the office of the Canadian prime minister had tasked an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to keep an eye on him. IntelNews readers will recall that in 2012 Canadian reporter Mark Bourrie resigned his post as parliamentary correspondent for Xinhua, accusing the Chinese news agency of running spy operations in Canada. The Ottawa-based Bourrie claimed he had been asked by Zhang, who was his bureau chief, to provide the identities and contact information of political activists who had publicly protested against Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to Canada in 2010. He was also allegedly asked to attend a keynote speech by the 14th Dalai Lama at the Sixth World Parliamentarians’ Convention on Tibet, which was held at the Ottawa Conference Center, and report on the activities of “Tibetan separatists”.