Zhang Bin, the Chinese billionaire and political adviser to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) who made a million dollar “donation” to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, wanted to build a monument to dictator Mao Zedong and former Canadian Prime Minister. Minister at the University of Montreal.

About $50,000 was originally earmarked for a statue honoring the current prime minister’s father, Justin Trudeau, to be built across from the university’s law school. However, Zhang reportedly offered an amendment. “He [Zhang] suggested a statue with Trudeau and Mao together,” Geneviève O’Meara, spokesperson for the University of Montreal, confirmed to The Globe & Mail on Tuesday.

Zhang made the contribution after the 2015 Canadian federal election that brought Justin Trudeau to power, and attended a subsequent fundraiser in Toronto, which the prime minister was at.

Dictator Mao Zedong, also known as the Great Helmsman, was the founder of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and presided over the country from 1943 until his death in 1976. Mao imposed harmful policies on this largely agrarian country, known as the Grand Leap Forward, in an attempt at rapid modernization.

“Mao thought he could catapult his country beyond its competitors by uniting villagers from all over the country into gigantic people’s communes. In search of a utopian paradise, everything has been collectivized. People had their jobs, their homes, their land, their property and their livelihoods taken away from them,” explained historian Frank Dikötter in an article in the The story today.

However, the Great Leap Forward devastated the newly independent country and claimed millions of lives.

“What emerges from this massive and detailed record is a horror tale in which Mao emerges as one of history’s greatest mass murderers, responsible for the deaths of at least 45 million people between 1958 and 1962,” Dikötter noted.

Reports in recent weeks by The Globe & Mail and Global News have revealed that China has engaged in a campaign of sophisticated election interference in Canada ahead of the 2021 federal election, in which Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party are remained in power.

Sources from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the national equivalent of the CIA, have leaked to newspapers reports that Chinese diplomats made undeclared donations to Canadian political campaigns and recruited businessmen locals to hire foreign students for campaign purposes, according to reports last week. .

The CCP’s main objective was to prevent the victory of the Conservative Party, which it saw as having a tougher stance on issues such as Taiwan sovereignty or human rights in Hong Kong compared to the liberals in power.

“Most importantly, intelligence reports show that Beijing was determined to prevent the conservatives from winning. China has used disinformation campaigns and third parties linked to Chinese-Canadian organizations in Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area, which have large Chinese immigrant communities, to voice opposition to the Conservatives and favor the Trudeau Liberals,” wrote journalists Robert Fife and Steven Chase.

Part of the election interference effort included the dissemination of anti-conservative political messages through local Chinese-language media, including statements such as: “The Liberal Party of Canada becomes the only party that the People’s Republic from China can support.

Prime Minister Trudeau has sought to refute calls for a public inquiry into the issue, saying critics are unnecessarily politicizing the issue. “It’s not a matter of party versus party,” Trudeau said earlier this week.

Trudeau’s allies have also sought to draw a parallel with recent American debates over election integrity. “This is the same Trump-like tactic to question future election results,” said Jennifer O’Connell, parliamentary secretary at the Department of Intergovernmental Affairs.

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