The access that communist China’s Confucius Institutes (CIs) have to Canadian student data, as recently highlighted in New Brunswick, has several members of the Chinese dissident community expressing worry over the institutes operating in their own school district and on Canadian soil in general. Sheng Xue, a Chinese-Canadian democracy activist in Toronto, said she is very concerned because access to CI student data can potentially threaten the safety of Chinese dissidents targeted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) who have any connection with the CI. “A large amount of factual evidence shows that CI is not a normal educational or cultural exchange organization, but a spy agency that the CCP has penetrated into the international community, so it has the task of collecting intelligence,” Sheng said in an interview. She said anyone’s personal data in the hands of the CCP can then be used by the CCP for the purpose of persecution. “If …