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But Lunjun Mou, a spokeswoman for the Dragon Festival, said the event was geared entirely toward showcasing Chinese culture, and the 70th anniversary was mentioned only because it happened to coincide with the celebrations.

“The sole purpose of the Festival is to promote multiculturalism by sharing Chinese traditions in culture, arts and food with all Canadians with different backgrounds and also celebrating their’s,” said Mou. “The funding from the government is only a small part and we have to rely on largely the sponsorship from business organizations and enthusiastic individual supporters.”

Critics say the incidents are just the latest examples of China’s long soft-power reach into Canadian society, with the added wrinkle of financial support from Ottawa.

Beijing has reportedly poured increasing resources into such efforts in recent years, the influence campaigns spearheaded by a party branch called the United Front Work Department (which reportedly recommended Zhu for the anniversary gala). Its actions have come under newfound scrutiny in Canada as the feud with China unfolds.

The arrest in December of Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou under an extradition treaty with the U.S. touched off an angry response from Beijing. China imprisoned two Canadians on ill-defined espionage charges, abruptly increased a Canadian’s drug-trafficking sentence to death from 15 years in jail, and imposed trade barriers on billions in Canadian agricultural imports.

The Council of Newcomer Organizations placed its ad in the Chinese Canadian Times — a free, Chinese-language newspaper that claims a “vast distribution network across Ontario” — in early August.

At that point, the Hong Kong demonstrations had been mostly peaceful, bringing a million or more people to the streets some days to oppose a now-defunct extradition law, decry alleged police brutality and call for more democracy.

The council’s ad dismissed the protests as a foreign-incited assault on the city’s stability, much as the strife has been characterized by China itself.

“Recently, certain self-serving political actors who do not hesitate to collude with foreign anti-Chinese powers, luring young extremist activists to be their cannon fodder, have continuously violated the peace of Hong Kong,” it said in part.

Heritage Canada said it has funded the council to the tune of $99,760 over the past several years. Employment and Social Development Canada granted it $38,000 in 2016.