Qiao Collective

Amid warming China-Canada ties, with Prime Minister Mark Carney's much-vaunted visit to Beijing and seeming repudiation of the US-led "rules-based international order," we must not overlook the constitutive role that Sinophobia has played in Canadian politics for over a century.

A Thread 👇🏿 CHINESE SATELLITES: IRAN'S EYES IN THE SKY In the days leading up to the savage and unprovoked US-Israeli attack on Iran, all eyes were on the massive buildup of US air and naval assets in the region. But for the aggressors, some observers proved less welcome than others. Weeks prior to the attack, a previously unknown Chinese firm called MizarVision started publicly posting high-resolution satellite photos of US air bases, naval facilities, and radar installations across West Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean. Each one was matter-of-factly geotagged and annotated with labels identifying individual ships and/or aircraft. With little fanfare, and no apparent motive beyond advertising its own AI-assisted geoanalytics, MizarVision quietly released multiple photos a day on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. Only on 24 February did an unofficial, copycat English-language account begin mirroring its content on Twitter/X. On one level, there was nothing especially radical to MizarVision's otherwise unassuming marketing scheme. The company doesn't own any of its own satellites, instead simply curating and analysing images from European and Chinese operators. Some of those Chinese commercial firms have attained sub-metre image resolution rivaling their most state-of-the-art Western counterparts. But unlike the latter, they're free from US-Israeli censorship regimes. If anything, they have an outsize incentive to look precisely where the imperialists don't want them to. Starting from the very first day of the war, Iran has subjected every US and Israeli facility in MizarVision's photos to devastating counterattack. We may never know if the Chinese company's open-source intelligence (to say nothing of its mountain of unpublished material) played a definitive role in Iran's targeting decisions. But one thing is certain: by helping to level the geospatial playing field, China's satellite network has permanently eroded yet another once-insuperable US technological advantage. And back on earth, Iran's own engineering prowess is doing the same, one multimillion-dollar interceptor at a time. @VoxUmmah @venanalysis @qiaocollective @ProgIntl @KawsachunNews @OrinocoTribune @blkagendareport @SoberaniaPod

“The Iranian embassy in China would like to express its sincere gratitude to the civilised and righteous Chinese people. Guided by humanitarian compassion, you chose righteousness and stood in solidarity with the Iranian people, strongly condemning the brutal attacks launched by the United States and Israel against Iranian children and civilians. We will always cherish this bond of friendship.” ❤️❤️❤️

For decades, the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf branded themselves as oases of stability in West Asia. Their vast oil wealth propped up the petrodollar system, and in exchange the US underwrote their 'security', against both regional rivals and their own hyper-exploited migrant proletariat. They offered vast tracts of territory for use as military bases, reasoning that in a unipolar world, the massive US troop presence would be an ironclad guarantee of their own survival. Just days into the unprovoked US-Israeli war on Iran, those assumptions have gone up in smoke. So too have billions of dollars' worth of US military assets, from the Fifth Fleet naval base in Manama, Bahrain to Kuwait's Ali Al Salem Air Base. Far from deflecting retaliatory Iranian fire, the concentration of US troops has drawn it perilously close to the Gulf states' population centres. As US officials vacate their bases and embassies and scatter to high-rise hotels, Arab monarchs willingly conscript their own people as human shields. Tourism revenue is cratering as hydrocarbon production slows to a trickle and exports through the Strait of Hormuz dwindle to zero. All this should serve as a rude awakening to US 'allies' on the other end of the Asian continent as well. There, an even tighter net of military bases extends down the 'first island chain' encircling China: from South Korea and the Japanese home islands, through Okinawa and the Philippines. In all these countries, the presence of US forces has for decades been an unassailable third rail of domestic politics and a hard limit on genuine sovereignty. Now, they can only watch as their imperial patron fails to defend its Gulf vassals from the consequences of its own aggression against Iran, a country with a fraction of China's size and military strength. This debacle should force a long-overdue reckoning with how empty US promises of 'protection' really are. @VoxUmmah @venanalysis @qiaocollective @ProgIntl @KawsachunNews @OrinocoTribune @blkagendareport @SoberaniaPod

IRANIANS FLOOD STREETS AFTER KHAMENEI KILLING ANNOUNCED Iranians flooded the streets to mourn Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei and his family after illegal US–Israeli strikes on 28 February. The attacks came during nuclear negotiations and also struck a girls’ elementary school in Minab, killing more than 108 people, most of them children. @VoxUmmah @venanalysis @qiaocollective @ProgIntl @KawsachunNews @OrinocoTribune @blkagendareport @SoberaniaPod

IRAN RETALIATES: GULF BASES TARGETED Iran has retaliated against the US and Israeli illegal attacks and reportedly struck US bases and assets in Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE and Saudi Arabia according to Fars News. Sirens are sounding in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Blasts heard in Doha, the Qatari capital, according to a Reuters witness. Missiles directed toward Jordan were intercepted. @venanalysis @VoxUmmah @qiaocollective @ProgIntl @blkagendareport @OrinocoTribune @KawsachunNews

HOW TIBETANS ENDED FEUDAL TYRANNY Decades before the US disinformation industry planted the myth of 'Uyghur genocide' into Western consciousness, and long before it swung behind the nascent separatist movements in Taiwan and Hong Kong, 'Free Tibet' was the #1 anti-China cause célèbre. Buoyed by the West's orientalist obsession with Tibetan Buddhism, the exiled spiritual leader of its dominant Gelug sect attained rock-star status. Feted by multiple US presidents and the Norwegian Nobel Committee, even courted by Jeffrey Epstein according to the latest releases, the Dalai Lama was a veritable celebrity among the elites of the so-called 'free world'. Few questioned why he and his predecessors had exercised not just religious, but temporal power over Tibet for centuries. Fewer still knew that the Dalai Lamas owed their authority and allegiance to conquering Mongol and Manchu armies, or that China's Qing dynasty had defended their rule against British colonial conquest. And almost no one today remembers that the rosy fantasy of pre-communist Tibet as a harmonious Himalayan idyll originated with Nazi SS veteran Heinrich Harrer. But the Tibetan people themselves still remember the brutal realities of life under Dalai Lama rule, with 95% of the population enslaved to a clerical aristocracy that subjected them to backbreaking exploitation and unspeakable tortures. They have experienced firsthand the cultural, linguistic, and religious self-determination that forms the bedrock of the Xizang (Tibet) Autonomous Region -- the fastest-growing in all of China. And they understand better than anyone else the leading role they played in their own emancipation from serfdom: a story systematically erased by narratives of both conquest and external liberation. @VoxUmmah @venanalysis @qiaocollective @ProgIntl @KawsachunNews @OrinocoTribune @blkagendareport @SoberaniaPod

“They want to put China itself on a global kill line." Introduced by a Chinese biology student in Seattle, the concept of “the kill line” started going viral on Chinese social media last year. It’s a term borrowed from gaming culture and describes the condition of financial precarity that many Americans find themselves — where one emergency, whether a medical bill, loss of employment, or accident, could push them into irreversible financial collapse. Charles Xu of @qiaocollective speaks to @radiofreeamanda about why “the kill line” is gaining so much currency in China. Watch The China Report on BreakThrough News’ YouTube channel.

Gen Z is "Chinamaxxing." Are the viral "turning Chinese" memes just trends? Or do they signal a failure of Washington's anti-China propaganda to connect with youth? @qiaocollective joins @radiofreeamanda to discuss. WATCH The China Report 7:30pm ET: youtube.com/watch?v=zdHW33…

A Thread 👇🏿 On 8 February, voters in Japan delivered a resounding endorsement of new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's far-right agenda. Her Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has ruled the country for all but five of the last 70 years, often alone, though sometimes in coalition with more centrist forces. But for the first time ever in Japan's post-WWII history, it will now enjoy a single-party two-thirds supermajority in the more powerful lower house of parliament. It's a sharp turnaround from just 16 months ago, when the LDP was unable to cobble together a bare majority even with its then-coalition partners. In their coverage of Takaichi's landslide victory, Western mainstream media opted to focus on Japanese stock markets' overwhelmingly positive response. They systematically downplay the real agenda animating her ultra-right faction of the ruling party: denying Japan's wartime atrocities and revising its constitution to allow unrestrained military aggression against its neighbours once again. When they deign to mention the diplomatic crisis she provoked with China over Taiwan last November, it's typically spun as an act of defiance against 'Chinese threats'. Needless to say, these commentators studiously ignore Japan's sordid and unrepentant colonial legacy in both Taiwan and the Chinese mainland. It suits the mutual anti-communist interest that the US and Japanese ruling classes have shared since they created the LDP in 1955 as a vehicle to re-install fascist war criminals in power. And as Takaichi forges ahead with her remilitarisation plans -- alloyed to a virulent, Trump-inspired anti-migrant agenda domestically -- her boosters will keep laughing all the way to the bank. @VoxUmmah @venanalysis @qiaocollective @ProgIntl @KawsachunNews @OrinocoTribune @blkagendareport @SoberaniaPod

“YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT” Schedule 7 of the UK’s T*rrorism Act was sold as a counter-terrorism measure. In practice, it has become a border tool used to strip people of their rights not for what they’ve done, but for what they think. Under Schedule 7, police can detain people at ports and airports without suspicion, seize their devices, compel them to answer questions, and deny them the right to remain silent. No charge is required. No allegation needs to be made. Sovereign media spoke to British citizen of Gambian descent and PhD candidate Momodou Taal, who was stopped on arrival in the UK and subjected to hours of questioning. The interrogation was not about imminent threats or criminal activity, but about his politics, his religion, Palestine, and even whether he reads Karl Marx. After fingerprints, DNA swabs, and the seizure of his digital life, authorities admitted they found “nothing of concern”. This is not an isolated case. Journalists, academics, and activists, particularly those critical of Western foreign policy, empire, and Israel, have increasingly been targeted under Schedule 7. The border has become a site where dissent is managed, ideas are mapped, and normal rights are made conditional. It is noteworthy that Taal had his US student visa revoked while studying at Cornell University in 2025, due to participating in pro-Palestine action on campus. If counter-terrorism laws can be used to interrogate scholars about their beliefs, then the issue is no longer security. It is control. @thegambian @VoxUmmah @venanalysis @qiaocollective @ProgIntl @KawsachunNews @OrinocoTribune @blkagendareport @SoberaniaPod

Instead, they urge Chinese Canadians to revive our anti-imperialist spirit in solidarity with pro-socialist forces in other diasporas, our ancestral homeland, and the Global South.

Ultimately, Dere and Li implore diasporic Chinese organizations and politicized individuals to reject the Sinophobic narratives that have been imposed on the diaspora to pacify anticapitalist dissidence and fracture solidarity.

Amid warming China-Canada ties, with Prime Minister Mark Carney's much-vaunted visit to Beijing and seeming repudiation of the US-led "rules-based international order," we must not overlook the constitutive role that Sinophobia has played in Canadian politics for over a century.

I and @walqaisiya gave a long interview to the Beijing Culture Review on how imperialism is re constituting itself and what challenges/limits the Global South currently faces. Link here: mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ZrKUvoszsPfy…