The funny thing is that you can actually check the official Canadian source right here that links to two posts directly (one and two) and if you use some browser translation you can see exactly what the articles actually say which is… literally just a news update for Chinese audiences offering a summary of Carney’s past behavior and achievements. It’s not even really negative, if anything it’s just vaguely uncertain.
I have read them both twice and am not really really finding any false narratives to speak of. The only real editorializing is in portrayal of current exchanges between Trump, Carney, and Trudeau, and if we’re going to consider any kind of characterization of foreign political leaders as somehow pushing a false narrative then we should probably take a look at how all our own media reports on the US, EU, and elsewhere ourselves.
Granted, I don’t speak mandarin and there is always a possibility that there are more skewed statements that are being lost in translation, but I don’t really understand why these particular posts summarizing Canadian electoral politics for Chinese readers on wechat are somehow some kind of election interference.
A snippet, from one of the posts that is being framed as some kind of attack on Carney, which is actually titled “The United States is facing a tough prime minister from Canada”:
Who is Mark Carney? What is his campaign message? Can he lead Canada through the current crisis?
Carney was born in a small town called Fort Smith in the northwest region of Canada. His mother was a teacher and his father was the principal of a local high school. He later became a professor of education at the University of Alberta. Carney, who grew up in an academic family, originally dreamed of becoming a marine biologist, but changed his mind after being admitted to the Department of Economics at Harvard University. He admitted: “I came to Harvard from Canada with a large student loan, and the most effective way to repay the loan was to become a banker.”
After that, Carney graduated from Harvard University and Oxford University, spent 13 years in investment banking at Goldman Sachs, and then returned to Canada to start a public service.
In 2008, Carney, who was only 42 years old, became the governor of the Bank of Canada and was praised for his quick and effective response to the financial crisis. Carney then moved to London to take charge of the Bank of England, the central bank of the United Kingdom, becoming the first foreign governor in the bank’s 300-year history.
The British media called him a “rock star economist” for his series of modern reforms to the traditional Bank of England.
During his tenure in the UK, Carney helped the UK through the turbulent period after Brexit and was called “the only adult in the room.” But at the same time, Carney also caused controversy for repeatedly warning about the economic risks of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU and making remarks about the risks of climate change to financial markets.
After leaving his post as Governor of the Bank of England in 2020, Carney served as UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance, Chairman of Bloomberg, and Chairman of Brookfield Asset Management.
His professional achievements have earned Carney a large support base among Canadian Liberal MPs.
Earlier, Canadian Foreign Minister Joly said Carney was “capable of dealing with major crises”. Canadian Environment Minister Guilbeault believed that Carney was best suited to “manage” US President Trump and lead the Canadian economy to achieve energy transformation in the coming years.
Yeah it would have been more appropriate to say “Chinese-speaking audiences” on my part, especially given the concern seems to be that it was aimed at Canadian voters who can read/speak the language.
The second link was definitely the one I was more referring to when talking about editorializing and characterizations, it’s more emotive language overall but it still doesn’t really say anything wrong or misleading. Disagreeing with the characterization could be reasonable, but the tone of it is like any sensationalized news aggregator blog or social media account anywhere else in the world. Like we don’t call it misinformation when people post a video called “[Public Figure] DESTROYED in HEATED DEBATE!” even if we roll our eyes at the language, and similarly any kind of social media format lends itself to catchier and more dramatic descriptions.
The lack of attribution could actually be the real source of concern. It’s possible there’s some disagreements on wording in a translation, or that not having direct links to sources is viewed as misleading but again… it’s not hard to see that’s exactly how just about any social media news account tends to function these days.
It just honestly feels like this is the Canadian government grasping at straws, especially given that this is being treated like overt election interference from the Chinese government. Given that there is a much more present and obvious concern about US interference. Most of our media outside the CBC and all of our social media is directly owned by US corporations that are backing the fascist threatening to annex us. I don’t understand why the fed and CSIS keep issuing these warnings about often dubious claims of malicious state actors from elsewhere, it’s maddening.