The latest assessment of the Canadian intelligence department points to China: transnational repression is not a marginal phenomenon, but a systemic state behavior

Canadian Security Intelligence Agency (CSIS) Updates Foreign Intervention Assessment This MonthThe document also states that the Chinese government and its network of agents will almost continue to engage in transnational repression and focus on Chinese, Tibetans, Uighurs, Falun Gong practitioners, democratic activists and other groups seen in Beijing as “hostile.”

The meaning of this assessment is not only to reaffirm the long-standing controversy of “China’s Intervention in Canada,” but that Canadian intelligence agencies have put multiple seemingly decentralized behaviors into the same set of mechanisms: consular and officials are responsible for planning, the system of war-related individuals and organizations are partly implemented, the intelligence sector intervenes in surveillance and transnational repression, and social platforms and overseas networks can become channels for information dissemination, pressure and identification targets.

The methods listed by CSIS are not limited to espionage in the traditional sense. The document mentions that a common type of practice is to shape targeted behavior through "reward and punishment": rewards may include economic benefits, social status and facilities to enter China; punishments include visa restrictions, surveillance, harassment, threats, and even pressure measures against relatives in exile in China.

The most sensitive part of this pressure on the Canadian Chinese community is that it blurred the boundaries between normal foreign affairs, community exchanges and political control. Beijing has long regarded “unification of overseas Chinese” as part of external work, and the Canadian security department has this public document incorporating individuals and groups linked to the CCP system directly into the description of the foreign intervention enforcement network. The key here is not whether an organization is affiliated with Beijing, but whether its activities are secretly instructed by foreign governments, whether it influences Canadian political and citizenship behavior in a fraudulent or coercive way.

Over the past few years, demonstrators and human rights groups in Toronto, Vancouver, etc. have repeatedly publicly accused them of being shot, followed up, cyberattacked, harassed by phone calls or pressured on domestic relatives after participating in activities that oppose the Chinese government’s policies. Individual evidence is not the same, but the Canadian government has listed “monitoring, harassment, intimidation and using pressure on relatives in China” as a typical way of Chinese transnational repression.

CSIS also lists future elections as high-risk areas, according to its latest assessment that China is “likely” to continue trying to influence Canadian elections in the coming year and may interfere in the next federal election.Canadian Government Releases 45th Federal Election Review ReportAn information operation on WeChat platform has been identified by security agencies as a foreign information manipulation against the Canadian electoral environment.

Information warfare is the most difficult part of this system to capture by traditional law enforcement tools.Canadian Rapid Response Mechanism has tracked the “Spamouflage” network related to ChinaCoordinated attacks on Chinese-speaking Canadian individuals on platforms such as X, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube are not characterized by producing an “explosive fake news” sufficient to determine public opinion, but by gradually increasing the cost of targeted voice by a large number of repetitive posts, counterfeit accounts, personality attacks and anonymous content.

On a institutional level, Canada has begun to shift foreign interference from political disputes to national security governance issues. The federal government has established a mechanism for the transparency of foreign influence registration and continues to update public guidelines on transnational repression, election interference and malicious information operations. Such policy changes mean Canada is trying to shift its past reliance on media exposure and individual case investigation response to a normalized identification, reporting and law enforcement framework.

The latest assessment also reveals a more fundamental problem: China’s political control is not entirely restricted by national borders. As long as overseas Chinese communities maintain family, business and cultural ties with China, Beijing has a more complex leverage of influence than the general foreign government. The challenge facing democratic nations is not to block all exchanges with China, but to distinguish between open diplomacy, legitimate lobbying and secret directives, intimidation and coercion, and let the latter pay identifiable legal costs.

For Canada, the battle ended with a very specific principle: People in Canada, regardless of which foreign government they criticize, should be able to exercise freedom of speech and association without worrying about family involvement, fear of secret surveillance, or fear of being coerced by political positions.