China’s Economic Miracle Was Built on Mass Displacement. If you think the CCP will treat foreigners better than its own people, when it extends its power over you, please think again: Dimon Liu’s warning to Canadian Parliament, warns Dimon Liu Dimon Liu, a China-born, Washington, D.C.-based democracy advocate who testified in Parliament to the Canada’s House of Commons committee on International Human Rights on December 8, 2025, about the human cost of China’s economic rise.
Liu argues that the Canadian government should tighten scrutiny of high-risk trade and investment, and ensure Canada’s foreign policy does not inadvertently reward coercion.
Liu also warns that the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] could gain leverage over Canadians and treat them as it has done to its own subjugated population—an implied message to Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has pledged to engage China as a strategic partner without making that position clear to Canadians during his election campaign.
…
If you have ever wondered how China managed to grow so fast in such a short time, Charles Li, former CEO of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, has the answers for you. He listed 4 reasons: 1) cheapest land, 2) cheapest labor, 3) cheapest capital, and 4) disregard of environmental costs … “The cheapest land” because the CCP government took the land from the farmers at little to no compensation. “The cheapest labor,” because these farmers, without land to farm, were forced to find work in urban areas at very low wages …
One well known incident of eviction occurred in November 2017. Cai Qi, now the second most powerful man in China after Xi Jinping, was a municipal official in Beijing. He evicted tens of thousands into Beijing’s harsh winter, with only days, or just moments of notice. Cai Qi made famous a term, “low-end population” (低端人口), and exposed CCP’s contempt of rural migrants it treats as second class citizens.
“The cheapest capital” is acquired through predatory banking practices, and through the stock markets, first to rake in the savings of the Chinese people; and later international investments by listing opaque, and state owned enterprises in leading stock markets around the world.
Chinese Communist officials often laud their system as superior. The essayist Qin Hui has written that the Chinese communist government enjoys a human rights abuse advantage. This is true. By abusing its own people so brutally, the CCP regime has created an image of success, which will prove to be a mirage.
I appreciate the information here. I just wish to point out if we’re talking about human displacement, Canada and the US can be accused of the same upon its indigenous populations, the practice of slavery, and a history of segregation/apartheid.
If one is highlighting this mechanism/issue to discuss the real costs of industry and economic development, I think it’s a worthy issue. Were there better alternatives to what the European and Western powers ended up doing to others? I certainly hope so.
But if one frames this so called displacement as a moral issue to pretend a better or superior position, then this is delusional. I’d rather defer to the UN Declaration of Human Rights and suggest that the world should aspire to do more.
This is a confusing stance. You want the world to do more but are disparaging the warning someone with information is giving to a country so they are not roped into abuse.
You don’t know if there were better alternatives to what western and European powers did to others? I really do hope that you, as part of the world are contributing to the solution in some way, because it really does sound like needless culpability.
This is whataboutism. The fact that Canada fails to be perfect in all regards doesn’t excuse anything done by other countries.
You may have misinterpreted the article. This is about Canada’s possible future trade ties with China and the threat of political and economic coercion for all Canadian people.
There were certainly better alternatives in the past. Canada (and the rest of the democratic world) must deal with this. This is an issue of its own.
It has nothing to do with Canada-China relations and the fact that Canada must not get dependent on a dictatorial government that will exploit Canadian people, not matter who they are.
As an addition, there is a report published just yesterday by Genocide Watch, a rights group, that finds China at extermination and denial stages in Uyghur genocide:
The entire report makes a devastating read. This happens now, in 2025.
All of the horrible things you describe have been what humans have been doing to each other since the dawn of time.
Many of the indigenous peoples of the Americas for instance practiced blood sport, ritual sacrifice and they also slaughtered their neighbors in wars. Whenever there is an organized concentration of power, atrocities are committed. The smallest nations and the briefest periods exist all over where less terrible things have happened, but it keeps continuing now… like it always has.
I’m not justifying anything. I think humanity as a species is truly horrific. We’re capable of awful things, no matter how demure we may appear on the surface… and once anyone starts getting that power the things they are willing to do simply changes. Maybe one ruler can be benign, or even two… but it never lasts. History can be forgotten, history books can be re-written, the scale of the atrocity may be different… but it’s always there.
We don’t really deserve anything but extinction as a species. There’s no observable path forward where we will change for the better either.