This is an edited excerpt from Under Assault: Interference and Espionage in China’s Secret War Against Canada. The author, Dennis Molinaro, is a former national security analyst and policy adviser for the Canadian federal government.
In mid-century British Columbia, student politics were frequently occupied with the issue of Japanese imperialism, particularly as China came under attack by Japan. Among the most vocal of students was Paul Lin, a child of Chinese immigrants who came to Canada in the late 1880s. He grew up in B.C. and travelled to the U.S. to study engineering, but switched to law as his pro-China advocacy evolved during the 1940s. He changed his name to Paul Ta-Kuang Lin, a more “proper” Chinese name, as Mr. Lin himself put it. By 1948, he was opposed to the Nationalist Party and an avid supporter of the CCP. He eventually moved to the newly formed PRC with his family.
In China, Mr. Lin took advantage of extended family ties to enter the good graces of the CCP. Through marriage connections to the family of revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, Mr. Lin gained direct access to the CCP elite Connections and introductions were made, and Mr. Sun’s widow, Soong Ching Ling became a guiding influence on Mr. Lin and introduced him to senior government officials. Mr. Lin left China before the Cultural Revolution took hold, but not before taking a post at the new Huaqiao University, founded in 1960 by PRC premier Zhou Enlai. This university was designed to promote and encourage overseas Chinese to come to China to teach and bring their knowledge to assist the country.
When Paul Ta-Kuang Lin lived there, the People’s Republic of China was in a hurry to modernize and build infrastructure on a massive scale. That involved a lot of manual labour: These workers in 1960 are repairing a broken dike by hand in Fujian province.Fred Nossal/The Globe and Mail
When Mr. Lin returned to Canada in 1964, he drew the attention of domestic intelligence, then handled by the RCMP Security Service, as well as interest from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Presumably, both services were concerned about Mr. Lin’s connections to the CCP government. Mr. Lin took up a post at a new Centre for East Asian Studies at Montreal’s McGill University in 1965 as an assistant professor. In 1968, he was contacted by newly elected PM Pierre Trudeau’s foreign policy adviser, Ivan Head, and was asked to submit policy papers on China for the government, which he did. Mr. Lin began publicly commenting on the need to recognize the PRC as China. The outspoken professor’s knowledge of China eventually caught the attention of American scholars who were seeking a way to thaw relations between Washington and Beijing.
In 2010, the CIA declassified a 1973 memo about Mr. Lin written by Richard Soloman of the National Security Council (NSC). The memo contained a report which noted that Mr. Lin “should be regarded as a total PRC supporter ... [H]e can be useful to some U.S. companies in establishing contact with PRC trading officials ... but should be regarded by the U.S. as potentially very dangerous.” The CIA was already closely watching this Canadian.
While the attention paid by intelligence agencies to Mr. Lin has been known publicly since 2010, what I discovered through freedom of information requests and recently declassified documents is that Mr. Lin may have been directly influencing Pierre Trudeau and working directly with PRC officials during the recognition talks, something Canadian government officials didn’t know until the talks were well under way. What’s more, I found out even more on Mr. Lin and his connection to the CCP – much more.
For his book Under Assault, Dennis Molinaro revisited how the Sino-Canadian talks in Stockholm came about and what role Lin may have played.Supplied
During the negotiations, the Canadian embassy in Stockholm began regularly producing “China Logs,” an attempt to keep track of the events surrounding the recognition talks hosted in that city. They logged any known contact made by anyone with representatives of the two sides. These logs were sent to the Undersecretary of State for External Affairs. The 20th iteration of these logs, which covered the period from July 2 to August 7, 1970, documented an encounter between a Swedish reporter from Sveriges Radio known only as Pier and Robert Edmonds, a Canadian diplomat working on the talks. Mr. Edmonds wanted the meeting with the reporter to be kept on background and not recorded.
But as it turns out, it wasn’t Mr. Edmonds who ended up leaking confidential information to the reporter, it was the other way around.
Pier asked Mr. Edmonds about the nature of the talks and if they were proceeding well, but then switched gears. He said that in May he’d attended a seminar in Austria, focused on China. Among the diplomats, academics and journalists in attendance was Paul Lin. Mr. Lin approached Pier at the seminar and asked if he could arrange an invitation to Stockholm, which Pier claimed he could easily do. Mr. Lin was asking Pier to help him get into Stockholm without anyone knowing. Afterwards, the conversation didn’t sit well with Pier, and he clearly had to say something about it. Pier “confided” to Mr. Edmonds that he had information for Government of Canada officials only, meaning he did not want to publish it. He wanted to warn the Canadian government about what he knew. He stated that “Lin had obtained a visa to visit China and had been seen at the Hsing Chao Hotel in Peking at the same time as Ambassador Wang Tung” – one of China’s negotiators in Stockholm – “was in Peking.” Pier believed “that Lin had a close personal connection with Prime Minister Trudeau” and, in his talk with Mr. Edmonds, wondered if they had met when Mr. Trudeau was in China in 1960.
Mr. Edmonds denied any knowledge of Mr. Lin’s relationship to Mr. Trudeau. But Pier wasn’t asking – he was telling. He continued, saying Mr. Lin might be working as an “intermediary between the Canadian and Chinese Governments, with close access to both.” Clearly at a loss as to how to react to what Pier was telling him, Mr. Edmonds denied knowing anything about it.
Pierre Trudeau's selection as Liberal leader in 1968 would begin a years-long transformation in Canada's foreign relations, and many other facets of Canadian life. Lin was one of the people the new government asked for policy perspectives on China.John McNeill/The Globe and Mail
When did Mr. Lin meet Mr. Trudeau? The government had approached him for policy papers on China in 1968, shortly after Mr. Trudeau was elected. Why? What did they need Mr. Lin for? Could Mr. Lin have met Mr. Trudeau while Mr. Trudeau was in China in 1960? By that time, Mr. Lin had already courted friendships and relations with senior government officials as well as people with links to the founders of the CCP and PRC. It is certainly a strong possibility. Mr. Trudeau and Jacques Hébert documented in their book that they attended a banquet celebrating the PRC’s founding on October 1, which Premier Zhou Enlai attended and spoke at, and Mr. Lin was close to Mr. Zhou by then and still in the country. That banquet hosted five thousand people, of whom half were foreigners. If Mr. Lin did, in fact, meet Mr. Trudeau in China, this banquet would have been the ideal occasion for it to happen. Given that Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Hébert were the PRC’s guests and had met CCP leaders, a fellow academic with Mr. Lin’s pedigree, and who was close to CCP leadership, would have been a logical introduction to make to the two visiting Canadians.
Pier’s questions were dismissed by Mr. Edmonds, but officials must have been worried when Mr. Edmonds shared what the Swedish journalist had told him. The embassy dispatched a secret memo back home to External Affairs, detailing the Pier conversation. It read, “Pier also mentioned that he had met Paul Lin of McGill at a seminar on China in Austria in May. Lin had asked for help in getting invitation to visit STKM [Stockholm], which Pier provided. Subsequently, Pier said (For CDN Govt Info Only) Lin obtained Visa for PRC and had been seen at Hsing Chao Hotel Peking during period of Wang Tungs [sic] return.” The next sentence was underlined in the original archived copy: “Pier believed Lin had close personal connection with PM Trudeau.”
Why was Mr. Lin trying to arrange a way of getting himself quietly into Stockholm while the talks were under way? Why was Mr. Lin travelling to the PRC and seen at a hotel at the same time as the Chinese ambassador involved in the talks? Pier was not publishing this information; he wanted only for the Canadian government to be aware of it. I interpret Pier’s tone to be one of concern, and I can detect no reason for him to lie. But nowhere in the official histories of the recognition talks is there mention of Mr. Lin being involved. In Lin’s memoir he recounts how he was accused by the opposition Progressive Conservatives of being friends with Mr. Trudeau and involved in the talks. He continually denied ever knowing Mr. Trudeau before 1970, and Mr. Trudeau did the same, even though the PM had invited Mr. Lin for dinner in 1968 (Mr. Lin said he did not attend).
Pierre Trudeau and U.S. president Richard Nixon, who met at the White House in 1969, spent that year rethinking their China policies after the Sino-Soviet split.Henry Burroughs/The Associated Press
The media had caught on to Mr. Lin’s presence as well. According to Mr. Lin, the Montreal Gazette reported on February 28, 1969, that Ottawa sources alleged Mr. Lin had flown “undercover” to China earlier in the year to act as Mr. Trudeau’s secret emissary to Beijing. The Gazette claimed it was Mr. Lin who brought back word that China would not go forward with talks if Canada retained relations with “the Nationalists.”
If that’s the case, it is clear why Mr. Lin was secretly trying to get a visa: He didn’t want his role in the talks publicly known. Pier’s secret message to the Canadian government then raises the strong possibility that Mr. Lin may not only have been a secret emissary for Canada but may also have been secretly working for the PRC to influence the Canadian government and Pierre Trudeau, in the talks or likely even earlier. Pier’s tip, Mr. Lin’s surveillance by the CIA, the surveillance by the RCMP dating back to 1964 and the Gazette’s story all point in that direction.
If it’s true that Mr. Lin was contacting the PM with direction from Beijing, it means that from Day 1 of Canada’s official relationship with the PRC, it had been a target of foreign interference. Mr. Trudeau could have been a target because of his promising career trajectory and rising status. And given that he attended a banquet in China with thousands of other foreigners, he most certainly was not the only Westerner that China had set its sights on.
Back to what I discovered in declassified files, specifically on Mr. Lin. I obtained 900 newly declassified pages of Mr. Lin’s RCMP Security Service file from CSIS. Was he a spy and secretly working for China? According to the RCMP Security Service, yes, he was.
Mr. Lin’s file is heavily redacted, but what is clear is that Mr. Lin was a surveillance target of the Security Service. He was under what appears to be constant surveillance. His appearances in media were logged, and surveillance reports tracking his movements are found throughout his file. In August of 1970, the director-general of the RCMP Security Service, John Starnes, wrote to Don F. Wall, secretary of the Security Panel within the Privy Council Office. He stated that Mr. Lin “is known to us [RCMP]” and that he is “[redacted] known to have a direct link to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.” Mr. Starnes noted that Mr. Lin returned to Canada in 1964, but it’s the reason for Mr. Lin’s return, as Mr. Starnes reported it, that is truly shocking. “It is established,” Mr. Starnes wrote, “that he [Lin] returned to Canada on an assignment for the Chinese Communist authorities. We believe Lin’s principal role here to be that of an ‘agent of influence,’ an advocate on behalf of Communist China.” In essence, the RCMP had established that Paul Lin was tasked with conducting foreign interference in Canada. Other details are redacted, but Mr. Lin was publicly speaking about recognizing China during this period. It appears likely, then, that Mr. Lin was indeed secretly working to influence Canada to recognize the PRC. But why? The RCMP file indicates that the Security Service viewed Mr. Lin as supportive of the Communist Party, but also that he was involved in an extramarital affair. It isn’t clear if he fell for a honeypot trap (in which a person is baited into a sexual relationship and forced into the service of a state under the threat of blackmail), or if he was the one using the woman to engage in intelligence operations on his behalf. The RCMP seemed to think it was the latter.
Keeping tabs on Lin in the 1960s was a job for the Mounties, whose role in foreign intelligence was more central before Canada created CSIS in 1984.Jason Franson/The Canadian Press
The RCMP documented in a report that Mr. Lin was meeting a “female” and that they had “pre-arranged meetings either in Ottawa or Montreal, and they had devised a system of establishing contact with each other secretly,” which contributed to the Security Service’s inability to identify the woman until November of 1969. The Security Service noted that “the investigation might have been terminated at that point with the conclusion that it was nothing more than an extramarital ‘affair’ except for one other factor.” A passage is then redacted in the report, and it then continues on about how the woman was “doing an errand for Lin.” They continued watching the pair, noticed more “clandestine meetings” and kept watching, “especially when Mr. Lin’s intelligence background” was taken into consideration. The file doesn’t explain the comment about Mr. Lin’s “intelligence background.” Mr. Starnes’s concerns about this relationship are redacted in his letter to the Privy Council Office (PCO), but he also told the PCO that sources in the case were very “delicate” and knowledge of it should be restricted to “need-to-know.” The Security Service viewed the relationship as one where Mr. Lin was tasking this woman to carry out activities on his behalf.
In another letter to the PCO, the RCMP assistant commissioner of the Directorate of Security and Intelligence, L.R. Parent, detailed that the secret sexual relationship Mr. Lin was involved in was still continuing in 1971. He stated that he was writing to the PCO after they requested an update on Mr. Lin, “a known agent of the Chinese Communist Intelligence Service.” Mr. Lin was in China in the summer of 1970, and the Security Service noted he was “permitted to travel widely throughout the country” and had lengthy meetings with Premier Zhou Enlai and even met with Mao in September, 1970, one month before Canada recognized China.
In February of 1971, the RCMP also learned that Mr. Lin was seeking to draw “influential Canadian Government Officials” closer to the PRC, but that “he failed” because the Department of External Affairs and PCO were briefed about his plans. Their surveillance also helped to block him and others over whom he “had a potential intelligence hold” from getting access to sensitive government information. But the RCMP did note that Mr. Lin’s role as “an agent of influence” had “increased” since the creation of the PRC embassy. He often acted as a “gatekeeper” to the embassy for Americans and academics, journalists and professionals.
Premier Zhou Enlai gives Pierre Trudeau some pointers on chopsticks in 1973, when the prime minister made his first official visit to mainland China.Peter Bregg/The Canadian Press
Mr. Lin would continue in this role under the watch of the Security Service. In May, 1973, the Security Service prepared a summary on Mr. Lin for the Privy Council and deputy ministers of External Affairs, Immigration and Industry. It details that the Security Service believed Mr. Lin was “tasked for his agent of influence role to cultivate influential leaders of Canadian society and to create a climate of public opinion favourable to eventual diplomatic recognition of the PRC. In this respect his activities were not solely confined to Canada but were also directed at the USA.” In other words, PRC foreign interference against Canada began with Mr. Lin and Canada’s recognition of China, which then assisted the PRC with getting recognition from the U.S. The summary continues detailing how Mr. Lin spent more and more time in the U.S. on a “lecture circuit” that cultivated academics and politicians to persuade U.S. public opinion in favour of China. The Security Service assessed that the U.S. was Mr. Lin’s next target. He took two trips to China that he claimed were for book research, but the Security Service believed they were to receive more tasking on his influence mission. They noted how his “counsel and advice has been sought by an increasing number of U.S. and Canadian notable persons wishing to obtain PRC visas and business recommendations and contacts.” They remarked that he sought to use art and cultural and friendship groups to expose Canadians to China so that they could be brought to, quoting Mr. Lin, “our way of thinking about China.” The summary states that he received “preferential” treatment in China, the kind reserved for high-ranking officials. Notwithstanding his Canadian birth and citizenship, the Security Service cautioned that they believed Mr. Lin was the PRC’s “loyal and dedicated servant.”
The RCMP went on to warn the officials that they:
should be under no illusion when dealing with Lin that his foremost interests and activities are primarily those that will promote the welfare and interests of the PRC, and they should be alert to the fact that he uses his academic position and expertise on China to cultivate high level contacts as a “talent spotter” of individuals who are, or who may in future be, of special use to the PRC.
The RCMP even noted that he attempted to arrange a meeting with Mr. Trudeau in 1968 about recognition for China, but was unsuccessful in that attempt. This, despite Mr. Lin claiming he did not know Mr. Trudeau and that the government contacted him first.
My examination of Mr. Lin’s file covered the years 1970 to 1977, but it was clear based on not only what I saw, but what files remain redacted, that Mr. Lin was a high-profile and sensitive target of investigation for decades, presumably because of his ability to influence leading Canadian and Americans. So much of his file is redacted, and so many questions remain: What did government officials know of Mr. Lin? Clearly some were briefed, as was the PCO. What did the PM know of Mr. Lin’s activities? Did they all choose to ignore these briefings the RCMP gave? If so, why? Mr. Lin went on to help create the Canada China Business Council. Did later prime ministers and government officials know of Mr. Lin’s past activities? The historical record clearly reveals that Canadian, and likely American, intelligence believed quite certainly that Mr. Lin was working for the PRC and engaging in foreign interference in North America. (The details are still redacted.) But if so, Mr. Lin’s greatest achievement may have been the recognition of the PRC, likely China’s first big interference operation against the West. Given the number of individuals he could have steered toward the PRC since, it is little wonder he was treated with such esteem in China.
Canadian recognition of the PRC brought a new era of diplomacy, such as 1972's delegation to Gravenhurst, Ont., birthplace of Norman Bethune. The visitors brought an embroidered portrait of the surgeon who, in the 1930s, had served and died alongside Communist forces in China.John Scott/The Globe and Mail
'Ping pong diplomacy' was another product of the East-West thaw. A 1971 tour of China by U.S. table-tennis players paved the way for Richard Nixon's visit the next year.Norman Webster/The Globe and Mail, AP
On October 13, 1970, foreign affairs minister Mitchell Sharp read out the communiqué detailing the terms Canada and the PRC had agreed to, and the negotiations officially concluded. Canada had recognized the PRC and moved from the “One China, one Taiwan” principle to the PRC’s One China principle.
Had Canada been out negotiated? Yes. It had abandoned Taiwan with little given in return. It seemed to have little idea how strategically China had identified Canada as a means to pressure the United States towards recognition. In his memoir, Mr. Sharp gave Canada a pat on the back, claiming, “It is not often that Canada leads the world. Our recognition led a procession of some 30 other countries who very shortly thereafter followed our example.” Further, the Canadians had viewed the talks as a point of pride in that they managed to achieve recognition in spite of U.S. opposition. Mr. Trudeau even compared himself to a European leader of the past: “Like Frederick of Prussia, I act first, and then I find learned men who will prove I was acting out of right.” But the question wasn’t whether Mr. Trudeau had acted first. It was whether the PM had led the world – or been led down the path toward recognition by foreign interference. Given the revelations about Mr. Lin, it appears the latter is likely.
In 2008, Chen Yonglin, the first secretary of the Chinese embassy in Australia, defected to his host country. He knows very well what the aims of China’s embassy and foreign missions are. Mr. Chen granted me multiple interviews for this book. During one, we discussed the PRC concept of “old friends.” He told me these are people whom “China trusts. They will not speak badly of China” and will defend it and its interests. A “friend” of China is trusted – a business partner, for example – but an “old friend” is even more than that. Old friends have a close and lasting connection to the PRC; not to the people of China, but to the CCP. Mr. Chen told me he recalled reading a file on North American and Oceanic Affairs while he was still working with the foreign ministry. Within that file he noted that among the many “old friends” of China – such as a former U.S. secretary of state – were two prominent Canadians. One was Pierre Trudeau.
According to Chen Wenzhao, the former PRC ambassador to New Zealand, when Premier Zhou Enlai told Mao that Canada had agreed to recognize the PRC, Mao laughed and stated, “Now we have a friend in America’s backyard!” Mr. Chen also explained the significance of the recognition and what Mao meant, in case it was unclear. “Canada was America’s ally. The establishment of diplomatic relations with Canada broke a hole in the backyard of America. And that was piece of slap [sic] on America’s anti-China policy of ‘two Chinas’ and ‘one China and one Taiwan.’” Canada, he added, had created a “Canadian formula” for other countries that could be used to recognize China and “circumvent” the “status of Taiwan.” China was pleased.
Excerpted from Under Assault by Dennis Molinaro. Copyright © 2025 Dennis Molinaro. Published by Random House Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.
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