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In just one of its many recent forays into the thuggish business of throwing its weight around in Canada – the firings and the chill in Canada’s Chinese-language media, the intimidation of ethnic Chinese community leaders across the country, the lavish investment in propaganda initiatives – the Beijing regime had insisted that no Taiwanese organization should be permitted to attend the Montreal conference, which wraps up this Friday. But ICAO also barred another journalist, with no connection to the Taiwanese government. Chia Chang, the Washington correspondent for the privately owned Taipei news organization United Daily News, was told to leave the ICAO building after producing a Taiwanese passport to ICAO media accreditation officials.

Canada recognizes Taiwanese passports. Beijing does not.

The only thing Global Affairs Canada has had to say about any of this is that Canada cleaves to a “One China” policy, which is exactly what Beijing requires Canada to say, and which, for democratic Taiwan, means its continuing encirclement and international isolation.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, in Vancouver, at least 150 pro-Beijing enthusiasts gathered to raise the flag of the People’s Republic of China at Vancouver city hall to commemorate the anniversary of Mao Zedong’s revolution in 1949. On hand for the celebration was Richmond-East Liberal member of Parliament Joe Peschisolido, who was inconveniently named in a lawsuit only days earlier filed by three Chinese immigrant-investors who claim they were bilked in a $6.9-million scheme involving Liberal fundraiser Paul Oei, who’d just been brought up on fraud charges by the B.C. Securities Commission. Nothing untoward has been found by any court, it is necessary to point out.