{"id":142193,"date":"2012-08-23T06:03:58","date_gmt":"2012-08-23T13:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=142193"},"modified":"2012-08-23T14:18:44","modified_gmt":"2012-08-23T21:18:44","slug":"xinhua-accused-of-monitoring-critics-in-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2012\/08\/xinhua-accused-of-monitoring-critics-in-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"Xinhua Accused of Monitoring China Critics in Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Canadian MP Bob Dechert was found to have sent flirtatious emails to a Toronto-based Xinhua correspondent<\/a> last year, it stoked suspicions that China’s official news agency doubles as an arm of its intelligence apparatus. A former Xinhua contributor in Ottawa has now accused the agency of using parliamentary press accreditation to gather information meant for official eyes only<\/strong><\/a>. From Kathryn Blaze Carlson at National Post:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThey tried to get me \u2026 to write a report for the Chinese government on the Dalai Lama using my press credentials as a way of getting access I wouldn\u2019t otherwise have,\u201d Mr. Bourrie, a long-time freelancer who has written for several major Canadian newspapers, said in an interview with the National Post. He alleges there are individuals within Xinhua who are acting as spies, seeking to \u201cmonitor [practitioners of the spiritual movement] Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama and any other critics of the Chinese government in Canada. That, I know for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u2026] Mr. Bourrie said \u201c90%\u201d of his assignments were \u201cnormal\u201d and that all of his own work was \u201clegit,\u201d but he also said there were warning bells along the way. The first sounded in June 2010, when he was asked to determine not only the identities of those who protested Chinese president Hu Jintao\u2019s arrival at the G20 Summit in Toronto, but also where those protesters were staying.<\/p>\n

[\u2026 L]ater he said he started receiving \u201cweird\u201d requests, including an assignment to determine how Canada deals with what Mr. Zhang [Dacheng, Xinhua’s Ottawa bureau chief] apparently called \u201cevil cults\u201d \u2014 more specifically, Mr. Bourrie said, he was interested in Falun Gong.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Bourrie left Xinhua in late April. But Zhang has denied any suggestion of espionage<\/a>, according to\u00a0Mike Blanchfield at The Canadian Press:<\/p>\n

\n

Zhang told The Canadian Press that Xinhua’s policy is to “cover public events by public means” and his bureau’s job is to cover news events and file the stories to Xinhua’s editing rooms. It is up to them to decide how and what to publish, Zhang said, calling those decisions internal matters.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] “Nobody told him to pretend to be a journalist and act for a foreign power,” Zhang said. “That is his Cold War ideology.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Bourrie himself was dismissive of such accusations<\/strong><\/a> in the midst of last year’s Dechert scandal, writing at Ottawa Magazine that:<\/p>\n

\n

It makes for wonderful copy when a middle-aged backbencher sends lusty e-mails to a Xinhua reporter, but if Xinhua is typical of a Chinese spy agency, we have nothing to worry about.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] It does follow the comings and goings of Falan Gong and the Dalai Lama. If anyone is being spied on by Xinhua, it\u2019s them. Still, the Dalai Lama\u2019s handlers accredited Xinhua for a speech last week in Montreal by the exiled Tibetan leader.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a strong anti-China lobby whose front men are ex-CSIS agents who are being quoted in this country\u2019s best papers saying Xinhua is an arm of Chinese intelligence. They\u2019re right that anything you tell Xinhua is being told to someone who might tell someone in Beijing. Giving anything sensitive or secret to any reporter is a dumb thing to do.<\/p>\n

When dealing with any journalist, Xinhua or New York Times, don\u2019t tell them anything you don\u2019t want on a billboard. Simple as that.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Canadian MP Bob Dechert was found to have sent flirtatious emails to a Toronto-based Xinhua correspondent last year, it stoked suspicions that China’s official news agency doubles as an arm of its intelligence apparatus. A former Xinhua contributor in Ottawa has now accused the agency of using parliamentary press accreditation to gather information meant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":962,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[116,14744,14745,14746,100],"tags":[6363,5935,319,5984,5810,6390],"class_list":["post-142193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world","category-level-2-article","category-level-3-article","category-level-4-article","category-politics","tag-canada","tag-dalai-lama","tag-espionage","tag-falun-gong","tag-hu-jintao","tag-xinhua","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\nXinhua Accused of Monitoring China Critics in Canada<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2012\/08\/xinhua-accused-of-monitoring-critics-in-canada\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Xinhua Accused of Monitoring China Critics in Canada\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When Canadian MP Bob Dechert was found to have sent flirtatious emails to a Toronto-based Xinhua correspondent last year, it stoked suspicions that China’s official news agency doubles as an arm of its intelligence apparatus. A former Xinhua contributor in Ottawa has now accused the agency of using parliamentary press accreditation to gather information meant […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2012\/08\/xinhua-accused-of-monitoring-critics-in-canada\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"China Digital Times (CDT)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ChinaDigitalTimes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-08-23T13:03:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-08-23T21:18:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/CDT-logo.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"186\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"177\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Samuel Wade\" \/>\n<meta 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