Claws of the Panda: Beijing’s Campaign on Influence and Intimidation in Canada by Jonathan Manthorpe
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702019876377 |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Reviews
Jonathan Manthorpe
Claws of the Panda: Beijing’s Campaign on Influence and Intimidation in Canada
Cormorant: Toronto, 2019. 291 pp. $24.95 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-77086-539-6
Reviewed by: Charles Burton (cburton001@pm.me), Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Centre for
Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad, Ottawa, Canada
China’s ‘‘sharp power’’ influence activities in Canada are a matter of increasing
political concern in Canada. Canada’s foreign policy for China previously prior-
itized the promotion of Canada’s prosperity and big business interests over all else.
But China’s increasingly egregious violations of the norms of the post-World War
II rules-based order have led to a more sophisticated appreciation of the covert,
coercive, and corrupt nature of the Chinese Communist regime’s comprehensive
pursuit of the People’s Republic of China (PRC’s) interests in Canada, and of the
urgent necessity for meaningful government programming to address it.
Jonathan Manthorpe’s book is a very timely publication. As the author notes,
elements of the story of the CCP’s campaign of subversion in Canada have been
reported consistently by the Canadian media over the years. What I have done is
assemble the work of many of my colleagues in the Canadian media and present in
complete form the story they have told in daily installments and episodes. (p.276)
What he delivers is a well-written tour d’horizon of the PRC’s activities to suppress
the ‘‘5 Poisons’’ in Canada (Tibetans, Uyghurs, supporters of Falun Gong,
Taiwan, and democracy in the Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong); the contro-
versy over the Royal Canadian Mounted Police-Canadian Security Intelligence
Service (RCMP-CSIS) 1997 Sidewinder report; and fall-out from former CSIS
director Richard Fadden’s allegations in 2010 that there are ministers of the
Crown and other Canadian government officials who are operating under the
influence of agents of the Chinese state.
Anne-Marie Brady’s 2017 seminal Wilson Center report ‘‘Magic Weapons:
China’s political influence activities under Xi Jinping’’ is not mentioned, although
Manthorpe does rely extensively on her 2003 book Making the Foreign Serve
China. There has since been a lot of scholarly writing about these ‘‘magic weap-
ons,’’ Brady’s translation for fa bao (lit. ‘‘treasure of the dharma’’), the term coined
by Mao Zedong to characterize the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee’s
International Journal
2019, Vol. 74(3) 480–494
!The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702019876377
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