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July 13, 2010Soft Power and Espionage
Martin Regg Cohn has an interesting column in today's Toronto Star on the fine line between espionage and soft power in Canada:
Forget the stagecraft of spy novels, or the make-believe machinations of those captured Russian sleeper agents. China targets Canadians with more mundane tactics ranging from sumptuous free lunches to package tours of China. Last month, a so-called “opinion leader” told me excitedly that he’d been invited on a tour of China. MPs go all the time. So do freelance journalists. All on China’s dime.Call it soft power. But spying can be a deadly serious business when it tars entire communities. The canard of “dual loyalties” has dogged Canadians of Chinese, Japanese, Italian and Jewish descent over the years — with many innocent citizens unjustly detained in wartime.
It’s a mistake to single out diasporas. While the Chinese and other governments shamelessly target émigré groups to aid the motherland, they spend at least as much time and money trying to win over the “landed gentry” — the white folks who make up the Canadian establishment going back generations.
Read the whole thing here.
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