Xinhua Ottawa Bureau Chief Dacheng Zhang takes video footage during an announcement by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Norman Wells Wednesday. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
Ottawa freelancer Mark Bourrie says he cut ties with Xinhua when he discovered an assignment would be filed to the government, not the news service. Dave Chan for National Post
Ottawa bureau chief dismisses spying accusations against Chinese news agency as ‘Cold War’ ideology
Mike Blanchfield, Canadian Press | Aug 22, 2012 5:26 PM ET
OTTAWA — A Canadian journalist says he quit working for China’s news agency because it wanted him to spy on the Dalai Lama in Ottawa.
But the Ottawa bureau chief of China’s Xinhua news agency dismissed that claim as “Cold War” ideology.
Ottawa-based freelance journalist and author Mark Bourrie makes the allegation against the Xinhua news service in an article published in Ottawa Magazine, and in an interview with The Canadian Press.
The matter will likely revive debate around the long-standing issue of whether Xinhua is an intelligence-gathering front for the Chinese government instead of a legitimate news service.
Bourrie, 55, said he resigned in April after working for two years for Xinhua in Ottawa because its Ottawa bureau chief, Dacheng Zhang, wanted him to use his parliamentary press pass to gain access to the Dalai Lama’s final news conference, and turn over all notes and materials without writing a story.
Bourrie says the agency collected hours of video and other notes of the Dalai Lama’s most recent trip to Ottawa on April 27 and 28, but it wasn’t interested in publishing a story on the Tibetan spiritual leader. The Chinese government considers the Dalai Lama to be its enemy.
Zhang, who is currently travelling with other Canadian journalists on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s annual tour of the Arctic, denied Bourrie’s claim on Wednesday.
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.
Bourrie said that Xinhua’s journalistic access to Parliament Hill and other Ottawa events should be reviewed by the parliamentary press gallery because the credentials it has issued are being used to gather information for a foreign government, not solely for media reports.
“The core issue is how much access we’re willing to give to people who are both journalists and agents of the Chinese government in Ottawa,” he said in an interview.
“When the crunch came with the Dalai Lama, it was obvious they weren’t working as reporters anymore; that they were working as agents of the Chinese government.”
Chris Rands, the press gallery’s president, said its executive is “aware of a disagreement” between Bourrie and Xinhua.
“The executive has asked both sides to come and explain their views. Bourrie told us he would not meet with the executive until he could publish his article,” Rands said Wednesday.
“It is now my understanding his article will be published this week. The executive looks forward to hearing from both sides shortly.”
Bourrie, a veteran freelance journalist who has published several books, said the news agency approached him in Ottawa in late 2009 because it wanted to expand its coverage of Canada and compete with other news services.
I knew I had never written anything for Xinhua that I would not have filed to a Canadian newspaper
The Chinese Communist Party created Xinhua in the 1930s to handle revolutionary propaganda. It is run by the government in Beijing, and has grown into an international multimedia empire.
Xinhua is also widely suspected by western intelligence agencies of having links to China’s spy services.
This issue surfaced last summer when Conservative MP Bob Dechert, the junior foreign affairs minister, acknowledged sending flirtatious emails to a female correspondent of Xinhua. The government concluded that he did not harm any Canadian interests through his conduct.
Bourrie said he was aware of Xinhua’s reputation for spying, but was ignored when he asked Canada’s spy agency, CSIS, for advice.
Over the course of his two years writing for Xinhua, Bourrie said its promised expansion never materialized.
Zhang said Xinhua is a respected world news agency and he considers it an honour to cover news in Canada to “promote mutual understanding and friendship between China and Canada, which enjoy a fast developing strategic partnership.”
Bourrie said he mostly covered routine political subjects, but said he received and rebuffed some unusual requests from his bureau chief.
Among them, he said: find the names and addresses of the people who protested the 2010 visit of Chinese Premier Hu Jintao to Ottawa.
But Zhang said Bourrie had been freelancing for Xinhua for about two years and was never told to find anyone’s address.
“Nobody told him to pretend to be a journalist and act for a foreign power,” Zhang said. “That is his Cold War ideology.”
Bourrie said Zhang also asked him to investigate which Canadian government department worked to suppress “evil cults.”
Zhang eventually told him that he wanted to investigate the status of the Falun Gong movement in Canada, said Bourrie.
The Chinese government banned the Falun Gong spiritual movement and has subjected its followers to a brutal crackdown after it gained some prominence in China in the 1990s.
Overall, Bourrie writes, “I knew I had never written anything for Xinhua that I would not have filed to a Canadian newspaper.”
Then the Dalai Lama arrived in Ottawa for a two-day event on April 27. The Chinese government considers the Dalai Lama to be an enemy of the state, and portrays him as a dangerous separatist.
Bourrie covered the Dalai Lama’s speech to the Sixth World Parliamentarians’ Convention on Tibet at the Ottawa Conference Centre — an event that was open only to accredited journalists. Members of the parliamentary press gallery were admitted because of the press badge that it issues.
Bourrie said he was told the information he gathered at the session would be used in a news story, but he said he never found evidence of one.
The next day, he said he was told to “cover” the Dalai Lama’s news conference. He was given a video camera and told to provide a transcript of the Dalai Lama’s remarks.
When Bourrie asked if this would lead to a story, he said he was told by Zhang that Xinhua does not report on Tibetan separatists.
“We were there under false pretences, pretending to be journalists but acting as government agents,” Bourrie concluded in his article.
“That day I felt that we were spies. It was time to draw the line. I put down my pen and notepad, listened to the Dalai Lama, shook his hand when he left, went home, and sent Xinhua an email telling them I quit.”
Zhang said that the day of the Dalai Lama press conference, all he asked Bourrie to do was to take notes of the speaker’s main ideas, not detailed coverage, as he was busy shooting video.
Bourrie said in the interview that he expects to attend a meeting of the press gallery executive soon that will examine the possibility of rescinding Xinhua’s press gallery privileges.
“I think there’s been a betrayal of the trust that the House of Commons puts in the parliamentary press gallery to protect Parliament Hill from foreign agents.”
It is expected that Zhang will also be summoned to explain his version of events.
Ottawa bureau chief dismisses spying accusations against Chinese news agency as ‘Cold War’ ideology
China’s state-run news agency being used to monitor critics in Canada: reporter
Kathryn Blaze Carlson | Aug 22, 2012 3:17 AM ET | Last Updated: Aug 22, 2012 10:05 AM ET
Mark Bourrie had just finished listening to the Dalai Lama speak at the Ottawa Civic Centre with his wife and daughter when he says his cellphone rang: It was his boss — the Ottawa bureau chief for the Chinese state-run news agency, Xinhua — asking Mr. Bourrie to take notes at the spiritual leader’s press conference and pin down what happened at the Dalai Lama’s private meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper earlier that April day.
On its face, the request was not an odd one. Mr. Bourrie, an award-winning Canadian journalist and author, had for two years worked as a full-time freelancer for the news agency and had covered the Dalai Lama’s speech at a convention the day before.
They tried to get me … to write a report for the Chinese government on the Dalai Lama using my press credentials as a way of getting access I wouldn’t otherwise have
But by this point a series of what he called “odd” requests by bureau chief Dacheng Zhang had Mr. Bourrie concerned the news agency was gathering intelligence on Chinese dissidents and sending information back to Beijing. He said he asked Mr. Zhang if his reporting on the Dalai Lama’s visit would be published as a news story; Mr. Zhang, he said, told him the news agency does not typically publish anything related to the Dalai Lama, the Buddhist leader who has long campaigned for the separation of Tibet from China.
What then, did Xinhua want with Mr. Bourrie’s coverage?
“They tried to get me … to write a report for the Chinese government on the Dalai Lama using my press credentials as a way of getting access I wouldn’t otherwise have,” 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 “monitor [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.”
An email to Mr. Zhang was not acknowledged by deadline on Tuesday. The National Post also tried to reach him at Xinhua’s Ottawa bureau — which Mr. Bourrie said is the modest home of Mr. Zhang and his wife, Li Shi, who also works for Xinhua — but Ms. Shi answered the phone and said Mr. Zhang was on a media tour with Mr. Harper in the Arctic. She directed any questions about Xinhua to Mr. Zhang.
Mr. Bourrie recounts his two years working for Xinhua in the upcoming issue of Ottawa Magazine, which comes out Thursday, where he offers the first real glimpse into an organization that has long raised eyebrows in the intelligence community for its close ties to the governing Chinese Communist Party.
Last fall, the state-run agency came under intense scrutiny when news broke that Conservative MP and parliamentary secretary Bob Dechert had exchanged flirtatious emails with Xinhua’s Toronto bureau chief. One year before that, CSIS director Richard Fadden publicly warned that some politicians were falling under the influence of foreign governments through personal relationships. He hinted China was among those governments.
I think some of them are spies under the cover of being reporters for the Xinhua news agency
Charles Burton, a Brock University professor of Chinese politics and a former diplomat in Beijing, said Mr. Bourrie’s account “confirms everything we know about Xinhua.”
“The function of the Xinhua news agency is to gather information for the regime,” he said. “I think some of them are spies under the cover of being reporters for the Xinhua news agency.”
Julie Carmichael, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, said in an email she “cannot comment on matters related to national security” and that “all credible threats are investigated by the appropriate authorities.”
Xinhua’s Chinese presence in Canada is small — Mr. Bourrie said he knows of only four or five correspondents, two of whom are in Ottawa, one or two in Toronto, and one in Vancouver. According to a May 2011 Xinhua press release, the agency employs 16,000 people and runs three bureaus in Canada and seven in the United States.
Mr. Bourrie said “90%” of his assignments were “normal” and that all of his own work was “legit,” 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’s arrival at the G20 Summit in Toronto, but also where those protesters were staying.
“‘Canadian reporters don’t do that,’ I explained,” Mr. Bourrie writes in his upcoming Ottawa Magazine exposé. “The subject was quickly dropped, and I went back to my regular work for the agency, writing about Bank of Canada announcements, new crime and immigration laws, Royal visits, and quirky news.”
The function of the Xinhua news agency is to gather information for the regime. I think some of them are spies under the cover of being reporters for the Xinhua news agency
But later he said he started receiving “weird” requests, including an assignment to determine how Canada deals with what Mr. Zhang apparently called “evil cults” — more specifically, Mr. Bourrie said, he was interested in Falun Gong.
Mr. Bourrie noticed that while he had covered Falun Gong press conferences and events on Parliament Hill, those stories, as far as he could tell, were not published online. He said he is now under the impression the information was sent to Beijing.
Mr. Bourrie cut all ties with Xinhua on April 28, 2012, the day of the Dalai Lama’s press conference, and immediately notified the parliamentary Press Gallery of his concerns.
“At today’s news conference, you informed me the material that I was to send you would be forwarded to the Chinese government,” Mr. Bourrie wrote in an email to Mr. Zhang, which was also copied to the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery chief, Terry Guillon.
Mr. Zhang, who along with Ms. Shi is listed as a press gallery member, responded saying “any message released at news conference is news, and news is open to every one, including the government.”
Mr. Bourrie says in his magazine article that Xinhua swiftly replaced him with another accredited freelancer in Ottawa.
The president of the press gallery, which grants the accreditation that gives journalists access to government buildings, politicians and press conferences, said the executive is “aware of the disagreement” between Mr. Bourrie and Xinhua.
“The Executive has asked both sides to come and explain their views,” president Chris Rands said in an email. “We are in a process at the moment and I cannot pre-judge any decision the Executive may, or may not make” concerning Xinhua’s media accreditation.
The EX Files
Below is an excerpt, care of Ottawa Magazine, from Mr. Bourrie’s upcoming piece on his experience working for Xinhua news agency in Ottawa. His full account can be found in the September issue of Ottawa Magazine, due to hit newsstands on Aug. 23.
When journalist Mark Bourrie began working for the local bureau of the Chinese news agency Xinhua, he was excited by the prospect of informing China about Canadian politics. But a questionable request during the Dalai Lama’s visit in April was too much for his journalistic conscience. He quit. Now Bourrie gives a behind-the-scenes account of his two years in the employ of Xinhua.
IT ALL BEGAN at a Parliament Hill Christmas party in 2009. My wife, kids, and I sat with a nice Chinese family who were just a few weeks away from moving back to Beijing after a four-year stint in Canada. Yang Shilong was bureau chief for the Chinese news agency Xinhua. We got to chatting. The agency, which until then had been staffed by Chinese nationals, was looking to go mainstream, he told me, and planning to hire Canadian journalists to write about national politics and finance for Xinhua’s rapidly expanding audiences in China, the West, and the Third World. The job sounded interesting and the prospect of a steady gig was happy news, given that I’d just recently finished two years of teaching in the journalism department at Concordia University, returning to freelance writing just as the recession started to bite hard and magazine work dried up.
When I expressed interest, Yang immediately offered me some freelance work. A few months later Xinhua dangled the prospect of a full-time job as head of the agency’s English-language bureau in Ottawa. The cynic in me wondered if the offer might be too good to be true. Indeed, when I mentioned Xinhua to friends, their first reaction was often to ask whether this meant I would be a spy.
But wasn’t that an old-fashioned attitude? Canadian corporations were forging links with China. So were governments. Why not be the person who informed China about Canadian politics? It was a huge audience. Xinhua stories appeared in newspapers that had more readers than all Canadian daily papers — put together. Still, I was skeptical. Were they spies? Was I being recruited to be the Western face of an arm of China’s repressive regime? Before accepting Xinhua’s job offer, I set out to do some basic research on the agency and its work.
It is owned by the Chinese government — a red flag to any freedom-loving individual — but then almost everything in China is owned by the government or by the People’s Liberation Army. Whatever is left is under Beijing’s strict control. I also discovered that although it was the country’s largest news agency (with more than 100 foreign bureaus, as well as dozens of offices within China), the government covers just 40 percent of Xinhua’s costs. Xinhua makes up much of the rest of its revenue by selling its news — especially financial stories — to Chinese-language media in the West and to newspapers in the Third World. At the time I was considering Xinhua’s offer, the agency was in the midst of an ambitious plan to almost double its number of bureaus outside China — to about 200 — and looking to employ as many as 6,000 journalists abroad. (Over the next two years, Xinhua would also launch a 24-hour English-language news station and set up shop in a skyscraper in New York’s Times Square. It even created an iPhone app for “Xinhua news, cartoons, financial information, and entertainment programs around the clock.”) Xinhua was obviously planning to expand fast, and my role, along with potentially thousands of other journalists, would be to provide much-needed content.
Looking beyond the numbers, it was clear to me that Beijing also realized it had an image problem — both in China and abroad — and believed that Xinhua could be used to change people’s view of China and strengthen China’s “soft power.” That said, I knew the news agency had not yet shaken its reputation as an intelligence front for the People’s Republic of China.
I had two job interviews at that time. One was with Kory Teneycke, head of the Sun News Network, who wanted me to do investigative pieces on left-wing activists. (I left the interview with the impression that there would be little room for objective reporting.) The other was with the Xinhua bureau chief, who said his agency did not care which party was in power in Canada. “We need good, objective news from Ottawa.” Despite Xinhua’s image problems, they had made the better offer.
China’s state-run news agency being used to monitor critics in Canada: reporter
