A city councillor in Quebec and two local community groups have been promoting a cellphone application that collects and transfers users’ private information to the Chinese authorities and requires users to comply with Chinese law.
Qiaobao is an application developed by a Beijing-based technology company that operates as a subsidiary of the China News Service, which is the second-largest state-run news agency in China after Xinhua News Agency.
The Qiaobao app, launched in June 2016, is part of a project of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (OCAO) of the Chinese State Council, the office said in a 2016 news release.
The OCAO is an agency affiliated with the United Front Work Department, a primary tool of the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign interference, according to studies cited by Public Safety Canada. In February 2022, a Canadian federal court confirmed that there were reasonable grounds to believe the OCAO is engaged in espionage activities that harm Canadian interests….