Senator Yuen Pau Woo advocated for China’s Thousand Talents Plan before his appointment to the Senate
Mr. Woo co-hosted an event in Beijing with
Before being appointed to Canada’s Senate in 2016, Yuen Pau Woo, who has since been called a “mouthpiece“ for China by a former diplomat, had advocated for a Chinese regime talent recruitment program accused of technology theft and economic espionage. This took place at a 2010 high-level meeting in China that he co-hosted with a Chinese organization associated with Beijing’s foreign influence agency.
According to the press release, the meeting was co-hosted by APF and CCG and was the “the first seminar addressing international talent flow held inside China that has involved overseas institutions and governments since China’s proposal of the Thousand Talents Plan (TTP).”
The TTP is a recruitment program introduced by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2008 aimed at drawing highly talented people, particularly from science and technology fields, to advance China’s scientific and economic development. By July 2012, 2,263 had registered, according to a slide presentation on the APF website examining “meaningful [research] questions to ask about Chinese state programs with Canadian talent.”
By 2017, the state-run initiative had reportedly attracted more than 7,000 people, mostly from “well-known universities, scientific research institutions, and multinational companies in developed countries such as the United States and Europe, including six Nobel laureates,” as reported by Chinese state media.
Notably, China’s talent recruitment efforts, which include over 200 recruitment plans, with the TTP being the most prominent, have gone underground amid increasing scrutiny from Western governments. Participants of plan members have allegedly downloaded sensitive research files before returning to China, submitted false information when applying for grant funds, and wilfully failed to disclose having received money from the Chinese regime on U.S. grant applications, says a 2019 U.S. Senate staff report.
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In April 2023, a former Harvard University scientist linked to TTP was sentenced to two years of supervised release and fined US$83,000 for concealing his ties to the Chinese talent recruitment program. He had been found guilty on six felony charges in December 2021, including two counts each of making false statements, filing false tax returns, and failing to file reports for a foreign bank account in China.
Beijing’s United Front
\The 2010 meeting in Beijing was spearheaded by CCG founder and president Henry Huiyao Wang.
The CCG is a Beijing-based think tank registered as a non-governmental organization, but Mr. Wang has held various roles associated with the United Front Work Department (UFWD), the CCP body tasked with foreign influence. These include serving as a UFWD adviser and a member of several United Front groups, as well as being a key figure in the development of China’s talent recruitment strategy, according to a 2020 study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).
The ASPI report says that Chinese leader Xi Jinping regards the UFWD as an “important magic weapon for strengthening the [CCP’s] ruling position” and that the organization has been accused of foreign interference and suppression of dissidents and democracy activists.
The U.S. State Department describes the UFWD as being “tasked with co-opting and neutralizing threats to the party’s rule and spreading its influence and propaganda overseas.”
Both Mr. Woo and Mr. Wang have been condemned for
In 2018, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio issued a letter to the Wilson Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, warning about Mr. Wang’s United Front affiliation, as reported by Foreign Policy. Mr. Rubio, then chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, also requested that the think tank publicly disclose that affiliation.
The warning preceded a panel discussion on Chinese political interference activities through the United Front, for which Mr. Wang was invited by the think tank as a panelist. Following the Senator’s alert, he reportedly disappeared from the guest list.
Mr. Wang became a senior fellow at APF during Mr. Woo’s tenure as president, according to the 2010-2011 annual report of the Vancouver-based organization. [See p.7 “The Year in Brief”] Additionally, the two had co-authored an op-ed in the Globe and Mail in 2009, advocating for investment, immigration, and educational exchanges between Canada and China.
“I have known Henry for about 20 years but haven’t seen him in many years,” Sen. Woo told The Epoch Times, when asked about their relationship; instead, Mr. Woo suggested directing the question to “people who have been in touch with Henry more recently.”
The Senator didn’t respond to a question about whether he was aware of Mr. Wang’s links to the United Front when he joined APF.
Mr. Wang’s CCG profile suggests that, between 2002 and 2021, he served as the founding president of the Western Returned Scholars Association, a Chinese international students association supervised by the United Front. [由中央書記處領導、中央統戰部代管的全國性留學人員組織] He also holds senior positions in Canadian corporations, including Director of Asia at SNC-Lavalin and Vice President for AMEC-Agra in Canada. Mr. Wang serves as an advisor to various United Nations-affiliated bodies.
The Epoch Times reached out to Mr. Wang for comment, but didn’t hear back.
Position on China
After becoming a senator in November 2016, Mr. Woo has continued to often adopt positions regarded as favourable to the Chinese communist regime.
Mr. Woo opposed creating a foreign influence registry in Canada, despite widespread public support for the mechanism to prevent outside interference in Canadian affairs. In particular, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has warned of steady, and in some cases increasing, foreign interference by state actors. And federal officials have long cautioned that Canada is targeted by foreign states such as China and Russia as they seek to advance their political, economic, and security interests.
Mr. Woo confirmed to The Epoch Times in May 2023 that he had helped draft a petition that opposed the registry stating that it “poses a serious harassment and stigmatization risk for racialized communities.”
In June 2023, Mr. Woo and Sen. Victor Oh participated in a protest on Parliament Hill whose event website called for support for the petition although the event itself was advertised as a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act in Canada. The act, which restricted virtually all Chinese immigration, is also known as the Chinese Exclusion Act. One of the event organizers referred to the proposed registry legislation as “Exclusion 2.0” while two women at the event were recorded saying that its true intent was to oppose the legislation.
Shortly prior to the start of the current public inquiry into Beijing’s alleged interference in Canada, a human rights group slated to participate at the time voiced concerns about the level of standing granted to Mr. Woo that allowed him to question witnesses as well as access non-public information from the inquiry.
The group, citing warnings from Canadian intelligence services about the senator’s and two other politicians’ links to China, subsequently withdrew from the inquiry on Jan. 31, two days after the inquiry’s opening.
Mr. Woo denied the allegations, stating in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times on Jan. 30, “The fact that Human Rights groups can assert publicly that I have links to the CCP without any evidence underscores the risk that foreign interference claims can lead to a witch hunt and exposes the fundamentally illiberal and censorious attitudes of these groups.”
In December 2023, Mr. Woo attended a press conference where he lent support to two Quebec organizations facing allegations of operating as secret Chinese police stations in Canada.
The APF, self-described as an “independent, non-profit think tank,” is funded primarily by income earned on an endowment fund from the federal government and by corporate and individual donors.
