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The scene outside the offices of the Toronto public school board was raucous.

It was October 2014, and the board was planning to vote on a contract with the Confucius Institute, a Chinese-government affiliated organization that had offered to teach Mandarin to the city’s schoolchildren.

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Critics decried the arrangement, calling the institute a propaganda or espionage arm of the Chinese state. But its supporters were out in force, scores of them, rallying noisily and waving Chinese flags in the heart of Canada’s biggest city.

“You are a damn traitor to China,” one of them shouted to an institute opponent of Chinese descent. “Down with traitors!”

The demonstration was no spontaneous occurrence. Three days earlier, as the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organizations hosted a farewell banquet for a departing Chinese diplomat, Consul General Fang Li had urged locals to come out in support of the institute.