Last week the original Chinese version of the article below appeared in the Chinese-language magazine Beijing Spring. It is about the background of Zhang Yikun the (non-English-speaking) Auckland businessmen who suddenly emerged into the public spotlight recently when Jami-Lee Ross released a tape of a conversation with National Party leader Simon Bridges. Zhang Yikun had, it appeared, arranged/facilitated a set of donations to the National Party, totalling $100000, and had discussed with Bridges and Ross the possibility of another ethnic Chinese MP, apparently naming as a possible candidate one of his own employees/associates. Once the spotlight fell on Zhang Yikun it turned out that he had had extensive associations with senior figures in both main New Zealand political parties. And both he and his associate appear to have extensive involvement with the PRC’s United Front programme.
The article was written by Chen Weijian. The full version of his article, in Chinese, is here. When it appeared Anne-Marie Brady described it as a “must read”. The English translation below was done by Daisy Lee, an Auckland-based China researcher (with a few suggestions from me to improve the flow for an English-speaking readership). The translated version omits some detail that is in the original article, and reorders some material (but from the fuller version I’ve seen, this version omits nothing that is central to his case). I offered to make the translation available here.
I asked for some biographical material and this is what I received
Chen Weijian is Auckland-based prominent Chinese political commentator.
He is the chief editor of online pro-democracy magazine Beijing Spring. The magazine was established in the United States in 1982 and the current president is Wang Dan, one of the most visible student leaders in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
Immigrating to New Zealand in 1991, Chen Weijian and his brother Chen Weiming published the weekly Chinese newspaper “New Times” from 1996 to 2012. Chen Weiming is a famous artist and sculptor known for his works of the 3-meter bronze statue of Edmund Hillary and 6.4 meters tall Goddess of Democracy.
In late 1970s when Chen Weijian lived in Hangzhou city of China, he founded a private magazine Silent Bell which was banned by the Chinese government as illegal publication.
On my reading, the author’s key point is that the evidence of Zhang Yikun’s close association with the Chinese Communist Party, and the high regard in which he is held by the Party, is crystal clear. Among that evidence is his very rapid ascent in various significant organisations that are part of the party-state’s overall United Front programme.
Chen Weijian’s article reinforces my view that New Zealand political parties and political leaders should steer well clear of those individuals like Zhang Yikun who are so closely associated with the Chinese Communist Party; a Party that is the source of so much evil at home in China, and which seeks to control the Chinese diaspora (and turn it towards Beijing, challenging the ability of migrants to become loyal to the country they’ve settled in) and to neutralise political opinion in countries around the world, including New Zealand. There is no sign that such people – and Zhang Yikun appears to be one of the most important of them in New Zealand – have the interests of New Zealand and New Zealanders at heart in their interactions with, and donations to, our political parties. And yet our politicians court him, and honour him.
If it is of use to anyone, I have put the text below in a separate document available here
State patriotism by Chen Weijian Oct 2018
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State patriotism
By Chen Weijian
4 June 1989 was a bloody day that cannot be erased in Chinese history. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) opened fire on unarmed students whose blood stained Tiananmen Square. 29 years later, on the same day, a New Zealand overseas Chinese leader, former PLA member Zhang Yikun, received the New Zealand Order of Merit.
On September 12th, Zhang Yikun was formally honoured at Government House. The news was even covered by China’s CCTV: a star in the overseas Chinese community was on the rise. But while awaiting his spectacular future, Zhang Yikun this month burst into public view in New Zealand following his undeclared $100,000 donation to National Party.
The question of what political donations are legal and illegal is a matter for the relevant authorities. What I want to talk about is Zhang Yikun’s political background in China and the role he has been effectively playing in New Zealand as a “patriotic overseas Chinese” leader.
In his motherland, China, Zhang Yikun has held quite a few resounding political titles which distinguish him from all the other community leaders of the CCP’s United Front organisations in New Zealand.
In 2012, Zhang was elected as the vice chairman of Hainan Provincial Federation of Industry and Commerce.
The website’s home page says the Federation is a group of people’s organisations and chambers of commerce under the leadership of the CCP. It is a bridge between the Party and the government to connect with the private sector.
That all members of the Federation must serve the party’s interest was explicitly addressed by Sun Chunlan, the minister of the United Front Department, when she spoke at a national training conference in July 2017 to the chairmen and party secretaries from all of the provincial Federations of Industry and Commerce.
She said then that “where the work of the Party and state is progressed, the Federation of Industry and Commerce should organize the majority of people in the non-public economic organisations to follow”.
Zhang Yikun’s superior, the chairman of this Federation, is a famous businessman, Chen Feng, the co-founder and chairman of the Chinese conglomerate HNA Group.
HNA is known in New Zealand after the Overseas Investment Office declined its $660 million bid to acquire ANZ Bank’s UDC Finance last December.
Ranked No. 205 on Forbes 2017 China Rich List at $1.7 billion, Chen Feng is also a former PLA member.
It is unclear if Zhang Yikun’s wealth in China can be compared with Chen Feng’s holdings in HNA, because on several Chinese websites Zhang is only declared as the chairman of Hainan Lian Sheng Fa Industrial Co., Ltd. and there is no information about the company’s financial position.
However, one thing is certain: Zhang Yikun is not a normal business person, otherwise he would not have been able to become the vice chairman of the Hainan Provincial Federation of Industry and Commerce.
In Hainan province, Zhang Yikun plays an important role in another United Front Organisation, the Hainan Provincial CPPCC (Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference ) where he was promoted to the Standing Committee in January 2013.
A Brief History of the CPPCC in its website explains that the CPPCC, established in 1949, is a creation of the CCP which combines the Marxist-Leninist theories on united front, political parties and democracy, with China’s concrete practice. In its new century and new stage of development, China’s united front has further expanded and become the broadest possible patriotic united front composed of all socialist workers, builders of the socialist cause, and patriots who support socialism and the reunification of the motherland.
Five months after he was elected in the Standing Committee of the CPPCC, Zhang Yikun was nominated by the United Front Work Department of the Hainan Provincial Committee as a “ Builder of the Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.”
At the top of a list of criteria, any potential nominee is required to have good political quality, resolutely support the leadership of the CCP and the socialist system, the party’s line, and its principles and policies.
Southland District Mayor Gary Tong says Zhang Yikun, posing here with John Key, is well known in central government.
While Zhang Yikun has been diligently fulfilling his political responsibility in China, he has also been highly committed to the United Front Work in New Zealand.
Although he has been in New Zealand for nearly 20 years and is still unable to speak English, it has not affected him networking with politicians. Gary Tong, the mayor of Southland, who is currently travelling with Zhang in China, said that Zhang is well known in central government and has close links to high level ministers and MPs. They include National Party leader Simon Bridges, former PM John Key, party president Peter Goodfellow, Deputy Leader Paula Bennett, Auckland Mayor and former Labour leader Phil Goff , current Justice Minister and former Labour Party leader Andrew Little and other senior politicians.
Auckland Mayor Phil Goff at Zhang Yikun’s house wearing a gifted Chinese costume.
Among them, Auckland Mayor Phil Goff, who was in Hong Kong on 4 June 1989, and saw the massacre on live broadcast TV. The experience had moved him and he has showed sympathy for activists in the past. For example, when Wei Jingsheng, a famous Chinese democracy activist visited New Zealand, Goff invited him to lunch at Parliament. Times have changed, and though Goff is still particularly fond of China, his favour now seems to rest with interests associated with the CCP.
In New Zealand, Zhang appears to have been almost fated to succeed. He is admired by many immigrants who have been working hard for small achievement. Zhang talks of his own success quite modestly, as if “ I was not intending to pursue wealth, but prosperity just landed on me without my intention”.
Zhang Yikun was born in a village called Nigou in Puning County of Guangdong Province. In 1990, at the age of 18, he joined the People’s Liberation Army in China. Joining the army was an opportunity for a rural youth to get out of the countryside. In his brief time in the army, Yikun was promoted to the headquarters. In 1992, he was discharged, and started to work at the government of the Hainan Provincial Special Administrative Region. The fact that he was able to transfer positions implies that he was already well-regarded, since only those who were could get such transfers.
In 1996, Zhang Yikun was sent to the (prestigious) Chinese Academy of Social Sciences for postgraduate study. This in-service postgraduate program is specially designed by the CCP for the training of its officials. Having joined the army at age of 18, his education was at most an intermediate level. What led to him, an official with only an intermediate school education, being sent to an institution for higher education? We can only speculate.
Soon after his arrival to New Zealand in 2000, he ran his own restaurant called “China Yum Cha Restaurant”, located at a premium location near Princes Wharf in Auckland. Unlike most Chinese immigrants who start washing dishes and cutting vegetables, Zhang directly became the boss of a large-scale restaurant (and subsequently opened another two restaurants). He had never run his own business in China nor apparently had any opportunity to make extra money. His monthly wage was just 800RMB in 1996. A large investment was required to finance this restaurant, so we can wonder where did the money came from?
Since then his business has becoming extremely successful. He has successively founded New Zealand Huanglian Group Ltd, HLG property Management Ltd, New Zealand Huanglian Natural Food Ltd and KCC Construction Ltd. The penthouse of 175 Queen St Auckland, the most expensive commercial building in New Zealand, has become the heart of his business empire. His business has developed to encompass multiple fields and multiple countries. Activities include property development and management, export and import, commercial investment. Several overseas offices have been set up in Hainan province, Guangdong province, Hong Kong and Thailand.
After establishing his business empire, Zhang Yikun began to build his career as an overseas Chinese community leader. Unlike Steven Wai Cheung Wong, the former head of the United Chinese Association in New Zealand, who had to cultivate his relationship with the Chinese consulate for some years for his dreamed position, Zhang Yikun’s political promotion has been as astoundingly rapid as his commercial success.
In 2015, he formed the New Zealand Chaoshan General Association (CGSA), for people from Chaozhou and Shantou district of Guangdong province, and has taken the role as the chair of the International Chaozhou Federation after two years.
Undoubtedly, Zhang Yikun is treasured by the senior Chinese politicians or he wouldn’t have been given this significant role to unite those wealthy ethnic Chinese who are valuable to the CCP in their attempts to expand China’s global influence.
As just one example of his connections, on 3 September 2015, Zhang Yikun was invited to Zhu Ri He military base in Inner Mongolia to watch the military parade. He stood on the viewing platform watching the armed forces marching, various new types of military vehicles and missiles in the parade, and the aerial display. He emotionally said, “as a military officer, seeing the country is strong, (my) feeling of pride is rising.”
In New Zealand, he has been frequently visited by high level Chinese delegations. On 8 June 2018, his former comrade, Luo Baoming, the former party secretary of Hainan province, now the vice chairman of OCAC (Overseas Chinese Affairs Office) was warmly hosted by Zhang Yikun and his CGSA in Auckland.
At the reception dinner party, the two Chinese MPs who have made such a contribution to the New Zealand-China relationship, Jian Yang and Raymond Huo, witnessed how this senior OCAC official praised Zhang Yikun.
“The fulfilment of China’s dream needs the overseas Chinese community leaders like president Zhang Yikun who has the strength and passion for the state patriotism”.
State Patriotism! Here we have Jian Yang, former officer lecturer of a PLA spying school, and his fellow PLA veteran, Zhang Yikun, both members of “New Zealand Veteran Association” (Zhang Yikun is the president of the association), standing together to welcome a high ranking Chinese communist official, is it a coincidence?
Jian Jian Yang (far right) and Zhang Yikun (second from right ), the two former PLA members greet Luo Baoming, the vice chair of OCAC
If the above is not enough to set the scene, here is another photo. This one was taken on 30 August this year in Beijing. Zhang Yikun is staring at the display wall of propaganda and listening. The display wall is themed in communism red, titled “Always Go With the Party” and next to it is the symbol of communism, the hammer and sickle.
Zhang reading the “Always Go With The Party” display banner in Beijing on 30 Aug 2018
The New Zealand government granted him a high honour on 4 June, the day the whole world commemorates the young students whose lives were taken by the evil party. Zhang Yikun, the former PLA member, carried his honour back to Beijing to express his love to the party.
Is his beloved country New Zealand or China? There is nothing wrong if he says he loves China. But in reality, he loves the Communist Party and is following the steps of the party forever. Of course, we can’t simply conclude just from a photo that he wants to follow the party all the way. For that, we should see what he has done in the past and what he is doing now.
The revelation of Zhang’s donation has brought back to fore stories that had been dormant for a while. The National MP Jian Yang, exposed last year for his hidden past as a PLA intelligence officer and teacher in PLA spy school, and later sitting in the Foreign Affairs committee of Parliament. And now, another (former) PLA member, Zhang Yikun has emerged on the stage.
New Zealand is the land of the long white cloud, often described as the last pure – uncorrupt – land in the world. Unfortunately, it has been polluted by CCP’s Human Common Destiny. The clean-up of the pollution may have begun, but completing it will take time.
croaking cassandra 
The 30 years that I have been in New Zealand tells me that it is not New Zealand being corrupted by the CCP but they are here to learn and survive against New Zealanders that enable corruption legally. We are top notch in margin businesses due to our small volumes having to compete and survive against the biggest businesses around the world who have developed by sacrificing margin for volume businesses.
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On the AM show this morning Amanda Gillies said Trump was Racist and Sexist and Homophobic those words exact quote.
Strange people can say that without repercussions to nz but would not dare question the PRC regime.
Even if Trump may be those things it’s really pathetic for our media to behave like that.
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If President Xi behaved like Trump than I would expect to hear those same Amanda Gillies abusive words applied to President Xi by New Zealanders. But instead President Xi has been very restraint, polite and a top notch gentleman politician in the Trade war that Trump has launched together with a tirade of expletives on Twitter.
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Is Trump an authoritarian ruler? Is trump locking up Muslims into camps and re-educating them?
Are you allowed to say those things about the Chinese president in China?
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Is Trump an authoritarian ruler? Yes, the US does have a number of checks and balances but the US president does display every capacity to become a dictator is he can shut down the various check and balance institutions.
Is Trump locking up Muslims into camps and re-educating them? Yes, but more waterboarding torture would be the exact wording. Yes, definitely to 11 million illegal migrants more Mexicans and other hispanics and also separating and locking up children, also lost a few children and still looking for them.
Yes, Chinese social media websites do point fingers where there are major concerns with corruption or abuses of human rights but President Xi has not behaved anywhere like Trump has.
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Don’t get confused. China isn’t locking up Muslims and putting them in re-education camps, it is locking up Uighurs and putting them in re-education camps, there is a difference there that people keep missing.
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An expletive is a swear word. Supply me with one instance of such a tirade and I will believe you. President Xi has the full apparatus of state run media to launch attacks upon people and countries on his behalf. Australia, UK, India come to mind as countries having come under fierce attack from state run media at various times in the past. “Top notch gentleman”? Really? Perhaps Stalin and Mao were gentlemen but at their behest the lives of tens of millions were nevertheless ended.
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You should have had a warning on Phil Goff’s photo Michael (optional)?
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The evidence of Chinese Communist Party interference in our domestic politics accumulates steadily like Siberian snow. How long can the political class continue to stick their fingers in their ears and insist there is nothing to see? The photo of Goff, Auckland’s self-appointed censor of free speech, was particularly nauseating. Thanks again Michael for your work in bringing all this to the fore.
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Were you a victim of the Allen/McCully chop list. Was it the sacking of those not believing in the Chinese future. Thank You
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“The Chinese are not buying in Brazil. They are buying Brazil,” Bolsonaro,the Brazilian Churchill has warned repeatedly.
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Getgreatstuff
Why not get a fisa warrent to impeach trump?
What’s your opinion on the dossier and comey etc? Is that legitimate behavior?
Maybe Hilary is your kind of President? Regime change?
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The FBI with Muller is certainly slowly but surely trying very hard to do just that. Impeach President Trump. But it is unclear if the President can grant himself a Presidential pardon as Trump has indicated he is already looking at this option and has team of high powered lawyers as blockers.
The US at the moment is a comedy parade of arrests, resignations, sexual misconduct, and fake news.
Hilary? I did think she has health issues and should not have been running against Trump. She should have left it to Bernie Sanders.
Mid Term elections could see the Republicans win and give Trump full control of all check and balance institutions and law making. The makings of a dictator.
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Children being locked up by trump are part of illegal immigrants who have violated American immigration law? They are free to leave anytime.
Are the ughars free to leave?
just checking.
You cross the border illegally you pay the price and Trump has every right to lock them up. Like the caravan which ironically will arrive the day before the mid terms how convenient. The caravan funny enough refused Mexican asylum.
The Republicans will keep the house and Senate and validate president trump.
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Refused Mexican asylum? Of course they did. They still think they can have ‘the American dream’. The US seems full of food and land and money, cos that’s what’s on TV. They don’t think about killings, riots, bombs etc, ‘cos they’ve had fear and starvation in their own country. What they really want is jobs, and relative peace and stability, cos then they can make some money and keep their families together. But then, I’m an old(er) woman in NZ, so possibly out of touch. But I don’t think so, at least for the majority of refugees.
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Free to get kicked out of their homes and separated from their families. It affects 11 million Illegal migrants in the US to be treated as dogs in kennel sized cages. Not free to live in their homes in the US where they have lived for decades and children born in the US separated from their parents and caged separately.
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Those detention centres for children were set up by the Obama administration to deal with the results of two serious problems; child kidnappers/traffickers and illegal immigrants. The children are held:
A/while checks are done to ensure the adult accompanying them are the parents or legal guardians
B/ to ensure they have food, water and shelter in a harsh environment
C/ in a separate facility from dangerous adult criminals.
Of course this was presented as the evil work of the dreaded Donald Trump by our lying media and never corrected when the actual facts became apparent. Many of the photos used in the media beat up showing the camps and the children were taken during the Obama presidency but, you know, never let the facts get in the way of a good story and a chance to denigrate D.T.
Our idiot MSM just regurgitate the lies coming from deeply partisan news networks the NY Times, Washington Post and CNN etc.
I’ve just finished re-reading Orwell’s 1984, scary similarities I’m afraid.
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Evidence trump is water boarding Muslims?
Oh that was John McCain I think and Obama at guantanamo bay that they promised to shut.
Bush and McCain started it. Obama continued it after promising not to.
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When you pay to have huge prisons for Muslims in another country then it is evidence that you are doing things illegal under US jurisdiction. Water boarding is the US version of acceptable torture. Blood is not drawn and the prisoner does not display any physical bruising. If Trump is not doing waterboarding then he would have shut down those facilities set up for illegal practices at enormous cost.
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From closeguantanamo.org (I deliberately chose an opposition/activist site to avoid any suggestion that the numbers have been sanitised):
“779 prisoners have been held by the U.S. military at Guantánamo since the prison opened on January 11, 2002. … 40 men are still held”
How on earth does that constitute “huge prisons for Muslims in another country”? How does it possibly compare with 11 million Uighurs who have been jailed by the organised crime gang that has seized control of one of the world’s great and ancient civilisations?
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Bringing Trump and USA into these comments reminds me of my Mum saying “two wrongs don’t make a right”.
The article is about a man who may be modest and kind and charming and who may have never committed a bad deed. However he doesn’t shout his opinions into the void like us commentators, no he can whisper them to the leaders of our political parties.
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To back your point, I’m quite happy to write a separate post (again) about Trump some time. I regard the man as totally unfit to be President, lacking any of the requisite skils, graces etc. But debate his (de)merits, and his policies, on their own terms. https://croakingcassandra.com/2017/02/15/trump-and-muldoon/
And do the same for the PRC, and its activities at home and abroad, and our government’s attitudes to it and its representatives.
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I’m in no hurry for an article about Trump since our newspapers are full of them. Far fewer are the articles about CCP’s soft diplomacy and whether is it is succeeding – doesn’t much depend on how hard headed our politicians are. [Or should that be non-CCP politicians are].
If you do write an article about Trump it need not cover the extent of his skills and graces but it would be interesting to get an experienced economist’s view of his policies that potentially affect NZ’s economic prospects.
I simply can’t resist one Zhang Yikun -v- Donald Trump comparison. I prefer the former’s hairstyle.
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Don’t worry, i’m not rushing to write about Trump either. I partly made the comment to dissociate myself from Trump defenders who pop up here from time to time (while also finding whataboutism pretty sickening, especially when in the PRC context we are talking of such a systematically evil regime.). it is a bit like people who want to point out bad things Winston Churchill did over a long career. Sure, there were some and they should be taken seriously in evaluating the man’s whole life, but in the titanic struggle of his age, he was on the side of right, and the hitler regime was unambiguously evil.
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At the time Hitler had his apologists and certainly Stalin did. We can now know which British socialists were willing to report problems with the new peoples paradise in the USSR and which were willingly fooled. That would be a concern for journalists visiting Xinjiang being fooled the way some fabians were visiting the Ukraine in the thirties; they reported back about the people looking happy and well fed while a deliberate famine was killing an estimated 7 million Ukrainians. Similarly the Danish red cross visited Theresienstadt Jewish prison camp in 1944.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/theresienstadt-red-cross-visit
How about writing about USA economic policy without mentioning the president? I suspect the USA has greater potential to disturb our economy than China has. We could live without the contents of 2 dollar shops (I love them) but potential restriction on internet services or persuading Japan to take soft fruit from California in preference to NZ seem more drastic than China refusing our milk powder and timber.
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Bringing Trump into it seems more like misdirection. With the way the discussion has moved away from the subject it has worked, but it makes me question the motive of those doing it.
As for the whispering in the ear of our leaders rather than our feeble shouting in the wind, I can but agree. Will our leaders ever break free from the insidious quiet promises of power and gold. Or will they sell us off to a life of servitude first.
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No motive other than to bring some common sense to the discussion of the so called evil CCP. Firstly it is not 11 million Uyghurs in re-education camps. It is only those that have been either caught or perceived as a threat to peace and security to the region. The number of Uyghur held in re-education camps is less than several hundred thousand likely hardcore muslim dissidents. Sure there may be some mistakes(our NZ jails are full of mistakes as well) but the purpose likely is a genuine attempt to stop civil unrest. Sure there may be minders within the Uyghur communities but this is no different from our community groups that police their own communities. Puketepapa(old name Mt Roskill) has such a community patrol if I can actually stay awake at nights to attend. All we do is gossip about our neighbours and inform police of any potential issues or wrong doing in the community.
“It is estimated that Chinese authorities may have detained hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic Muslims,Christians and also foreign,such as Kazakhstani, citizens to be kept in these shrouded internment camps throughout the region. United Nations and many international media reports have said as many as 1 million people are being held in such “reeducation camps” in this region.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_reeducation_camps
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Just to strongly dissociate myself from these views attempting to minimise the plain evil going on in Xinjiang. Apart from anything else, comparing NZ neighbourhood watch groups with a system in which people find uninvited government spies living in their house is sickening.
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And yes, Trump is actually trying to kick out 11 million illegal migrants out of the US which means that actually 11 million people are subjected to all sorts of police shakedowns, jailed, having to hide in sewage conditions to escape detention.
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Michael, for someone that has never even bothered to visit Xinjiang and any part of China, I am rather surprised you would actually believe everything you read and being such a strong vocal armchair critic. I doubt you actually even have any direct contact with anyone who have actually attended one of these re-education camps which I have.
I actually took the trouble to spend 2 weeks in various provincial cities and compared the living conditions and the threat presence of any armed soldiers or vigilante groups watching my every move as I freely went around and took more than 5,000 pictures everywhere I freely visited. None of which I encountered other than UNARMED civilian police. Unarmed soldiers were present for a very efficient crowd control on the first day of the week long National holiday as many as a million people on National holiday walked towards the Shanghai Bund, then they all just disappeared on the 2nd day onwards as the crowds dissipated.
I encountered armed soldiers, armoured vehicles and armed police checkpoints everywhere in Italy in my December Xmas visit.
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Just to clarify, I have visited China a couple of times.
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When? Because the China I visited prior to the China Olympics in 2005 was quite different from the China I just visited in November 2018
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Quite a while ago (and I would not go back while the country is as it is now). Not that it is very relevant: my focus is on the NZ political system, and the very well-documented approaches of the PRC regime. Evil as they are domestically, from our perspective (and that of our govt) what they are up to abroad, and here, should be the more important consideration. We can’t change the world (in this case China) but we can show some decency and self-respect, valuing our own system and beliefs.
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An Australian MP asking about access to Xinjiang
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Correction: October 2018
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I bring Trump up because it’s so pathetic how partisan society is. Why crucify Trump yet pander to the PRC.
I think it’s a fair comparison. Point taken about Trump and going off topic however.
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Zhang Yikun
What has been gleaned from your articles
Zhang Yikun arrived in NZ in 2000 with considerable cash, sufficient to establish an upmarket restaurant called “China Yum Cha Restaurant”, located at a premium location near Princes Wharf in Auckland. That suggests the funds were moved into NZ by Zhang. That is not necessarily so as the funds could have been moved in by friendly proxies in smaller tranches. Sufficient to escape the non-existent AML money laundering controls which would take another 13 years to be enacted.
Zhang does not speak english yet is able to establish significant business interests in NZ to the extent of $40 million in personal wealth. That is quite an achievement if you consider his lack of integration and communication skills restrict his activities to within his own ethnic chinese diaspora in which case there is some form of loyalty or coercion that is not an attribute of native NZer’s
The question that arises is this. If the funds that were used to establish Zhang were illegally transmitted and formed the foundation of his empire which in turn have enabled him to establish the charitable organisations, which in turn obtained the Queens Birthday honour order of Merit for services to the Chinese Community is dishonourable
It all needs to be questioned
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You can probably put most chinese from mainland China that have bought properties anywhere in the world with cash in that same period in the same illegal category. At that time it was illegal to exchange cash from Yuan to NZD as the Yuan was not a traded currency. Most chinese at the time used a Chinese export or import company as an intermediary as these were the only companies that could trade in and out of chinese Yuan legally as they bought or sold products in and out of China.
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Sometimes even just the trade in papers to white wash the money made from stock exchange in China
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[…] By Michael Reddell […]
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/31/uk-believes-china-has-interned-about-1-million-uighur-muslims?CMP=share_btn_tw
https://www.aspi.org.au/report/mapping-xinjiangs-re-education-camps
Great piece of work.. Well we really do know now what we are dealing with.
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A very timely warning re the shameless sucking up from the Aussie traitor Bill Shorten:
“Trump has made it clear that he is no longer going to tolerate mendicant allies who shelter behind American blood and treasure, sneering all the while.
If Shorten becomes prime minister, he will have to deal with a president he once mocked as “barking mad”. Back then, Shorten felt safe shooting his mouth off because he foolishly wrote Trump off. Trump will surely remember Shorten’s sneer, just as he’ll be reminded that Labor sent its own staffers to work for Bernie Sanders and vandalise Trump signs.
Shorten is also trying to play handsies with an increasingly belligerent China.
China already treats Australia with contempt. Hundreds of its spies have infiltrated greedily compliant, left-dominated universities, with the openly stated purpose of “picking flowers in foreign lands to make honey in China”: in other words, stealing military technology. China has already stolen sensitive plans for the JF-35 stealth fighter. Communist operatives are bullying and threatening Chinese national students on Australian campuses. Shorten can talk up his “blue continent” Pacific partnership, but the Chinese will be well aware that he is made of water and snake oil.
The final act in Shorten’s opera of sycophancy was signalling to the Jew-haters in Jakarta that he is well prepared to sell out Israel to pander to Muslim bigotry. Quote:
On the Jerusalem embassy issue, Shorten said only Guatemala and the US had arrived at this decision. He said the government’s decision was made without consultation with the foreign service or defence forces.”
https://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2018/11/shorten-dog-whistles-to-communists-and-anti-semites/#more-419616
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[…] soon followed by a comprehensive Chinese-language article by Chen Weijian 陈维健 (an English translation is now […]
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