A thread: I've spent the past few weeks looking into China's '100 most wanted' corruption suspects, 40 of whom are at large. But I found their Interpol ‘red notices’ - the global wanted posters touted by Beijing - have vanished from view. All of them 2/ scmp.com/news/china/art…
I also discovered that one of the '100 most wanted', Liu Baofeng, was arrested after flying out of Vancouver in mid-2019, at height of Sino-Canada tensions over Meng Wanzhou. Extensive official reports of Liu's arrest, bizarrely, did not mention that he came from Vancouver 3/
But his arrest had nothing to do with Interpol, a Red Notice, or Canadian police intervention. Instead, Chinese officers broke him psychologically by visiting his parents and relatives “to preach laws and national policies”, freezing their finances and assets. 4/
This is it!! #MengWanzhou hearing in US federal court in Brooklyn begins!! She is appearing via video from Vancouver. She confirms her presence. Court gets off to an awkward start when judge calls her Ms Wang, and has to be corrected....
Judge explains she has been charged with conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud. Meng says she understands the charges
"How do you plead to the charges?" MENG: "NOT GUILTY"
A thread ensues: Canada has a handful of federal electorates that are ethnic Chinese majority/near-majority seats, all clustered around Richmond BC & Markham ON. I've gone thru #Elxn44 numbers & all experienced a plunge in Tory support, large and remarkable in context IMO. 2/
The context is this: there was no big loss in Tory vote share across Canada (-0.5%), in BC (-0.7%) or Ontario (+1.9%). Where there were losses, the PPC often gained. Anyway. Here goes: /3
In Steveston-Richmond East (47% Chinese), Con vote share was -8.1% and Lib share +7.5%. A comfortable Tory win in 2019, now a comfortable Lib win. "But this seat often yo-yos," you say. Well sure, but let's look next door 4/
You know, there are still about 3,400 mail-in ballots to be counted in #VancouverGranville, where Liberal Taleeb Noormohamed currently leads by 258 votes
Only 45% of the 6275 special ballots have been counted