The first CENTRAL DIVISICATION OF CENTRAL INVESTIGATION DIRECTIONS FROM THE PUBLIC PAGE: CGTN PAYING COMPONENTS RED OUT OF THE TECHNICAL BUSINESS

The Foreign Impact Transparency Register (FITR), launched by Canada in August this year, suffered a technical malfunction shortly after the first public records were online. One of them concerned the registration of the French-speaking channel CGTN, the Chinese national broadcasting agency, which was made public and subsequently disappeared from the Government website. The Office of the Canadian Commissioner for Foreign Impact Transparency acknowledges that technical problems arise in the transfer of some of the registration data from the declaration system to an open database; As at 26 September, only two other registrations were still shown on the Government ' s public registration page.

A sum of 4,000 yuan in content to enter the Canadian registry system

On 15 September, the Canadian investigative media The Bureau reported that, according to its government registration records, the Ontario media The Canada Files declared a collaboration with CGTN Français: the time of the collaboration was 5-13 August, for a reward of 4,000 yuan renminbi, or approximately $823, for two sponsorships.

The record of the record that was kept described the goal of this cooperation as to increase Canadian support for China ' s approach to domestic political affairs. The two elements concerned human rights narratives in China and the development of Tibet, respectively. The Canadian Files itself has long called himself a socialist, anti-imperialist media and has published articles criticizing Canada, United States foreign policy and supporting Chinese policy.

Registration does not in itself amount to a violation of the law, nor does it mean that the Canadian Government has found that The Canada Files had engaged in secret foreign intervention. The current Canadian system requires that persons with foreign subjects who have specific arrangements and activities designed to influence the political or governmental process in Canada be legally registered; One of the aims of public registration is to distinguish between transparent, legitimate foreign influence activities and covert intervention requiring the handling of intelligence or law enforcement services.

The only registration that initially involved Chinese subjects subsequently disappeared

After the first three records were made public, the Canadian Files and CGTN Français registered offline from the government website. The Office of the Canadian Commissioner for Foreign Impact Transparency explained to the media that on 15 September, the system had experienced problems in transmitting declared data to a public database, that two other records had been restored and that the third could not be reopened until a technical breakdown had been resolved.

As of 26 September, the Government of Canada ' s public registration page had two records: one for the United States Department of State and the other for the Korean Government; The Canadian Files and CGTN Français remain unrecorded on the page. This is consistent with what the Office of the Commissioner has previously called “third pending technical rehabilitation”.

In a statement issued on 16 September, Canadian Commissioner Anton Boegman stated that the first foreign influence arrangements had already been made public and that more registrations would be issued after the certification had been completed. He stressed that the registration system was aimed at transparency and not at automatic foreign interference.

The relationship between CGTN and the Chinese party media system has been publicly determined by the regulatory bodies

CGTN is the international television network under the umbrella of the Central Radio and Television General of China. When the British Communications Regulatory Authority, Ofcom, revoked the British Broadcasting Licence for CGTN in 2021, it was determined that China Global Television Network Corporation, which was to take over the licence, was controlled by China Central Television, which, as part of the Chinese media group, was ultimately controlled by the Communist Party of China. This finding is based on the legal standards of British broadcasting licence plates on control of political institutions.

Chinese officials have long designated CGTN as an international media medium and have opposed Western countries' depiction of China's state-owned or party-controlled media as “advocacy agencies”. Thus, CGTN ' s content cooperation with overseas media cannot in itself be a direct proof of secret manipulation; The case is of concern in that the partner voluntarily registered payment, foreign subject and impact targets, and this record was subsequently temporarily withdrawn from public view due to a breakdown in the Canadian Government ' s system.

The first credibility test of technical failure to expose the new system

The Canadian Foreign Impact Transparency System came into force on 4 August. The Government stated that the system required eligible foreign influence to be declared within the prescribed time frame and to be made available to the public through an open database, in terms of foreign subjects, modes of activity and the target audience. The Commissioner ' s Office has also made it clear that normal and public foreign influence activities are not ipso facto unlawful in Canada.

The incident therefore contained two issues that required separate observation. First, whether the Canada Files accurately and completely declared his cooperation with CGTN Français; It appears from the records that have been made public and kept by the media that at least the amount of payments, time of cooperation and objectives were officially registered. Secondly, whether the Government of Canada can maintain and make publicly available such information in a stable manner; Currently, there are no Chinese records on the public pages, which are officially attributable to technical failures rather than to the cancellation of registration or the determination that no declaration is required.

For a new system with “transparency” as its core purpose, the disappearance of the China-related projects in the first records as a result of technical malfunctions constituted a real test of the system's reliability. Follow-up needs to see when the registration will be restored, whether the content is consistent with the original version and whether the Commissioner ' s Office will publish a more complete breakdown statement.