At a time when political polarisation has become a defining feature of Western democracies, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) appears to be exploiting this vulnerability with precision.
Through targeted psychological operations, or psyops, Beijing is not only meddling in foreign politics but also actively sowing social discord to weaken national cohesion in countries like Canada.
This assessment was laid bare by Jan Jekielek, host of The Epoch Times’ American Thought Leaders programme, during the 2025 Reclaiming Conference in Calgary.
Speaking to a gathering of grassroots activists and civic leaders on September 21, Jekielek issued a blunt warning: “They want to see two sides that are so radicalised that they have to fight each other.”
According to Jekielek, China’s totalitarian regime is deliberately exploiting Canada’s social divisions to destabilise democratic institutions from within. It’s a form of psychological warfare that relies not on bullets or bombs but on manipulation, misinformation, and emotional contagion — the subtle corrosion of trust that binds citizens together.
“The Chinese Communist Party seeks to subvert society,” Jekielek said. “It thrives on chaos, disunity, and distrust. Its goal is not to conquer with tanks but to fracture with narratives.”
He explained that Beijing’s strategy to divide and destabilise is not new. Communist regimes have historically relied on the tactic of manufacturing enemies — both internal and external — to justify their power and maintain absolute control.
What’s different now, Jekielek suggested, is the scale and sophistication of these operations, especially in the digital age.
Social media, he said, has become the primary battlefield. While Western platforms already struggle with disinformation and polarisation, Chinese-controlled networks and apps have introduced a more coordinated and ideologically driven form of manipulation.
These tools amplify division, erode confidence in democratic systems, and manufacture emotional outrage that drowns out reasoned debate.
Jekielek warned that China’s psychological operations target not just political discourse but also identity, religion, and morality — the very elements that define Canadian society.
“They exploit every fault line — race, gender, ideology, faith,” he said. “Every social wound becomes a battlefield.”
The recent assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, Jekielek noted, underscored how such divisions can escalate from rhetoric to real violence.
Kirk, who had long advocated for dialogue between opposing sides, became a target in a climate increasingly defined by hostility and radicalisation.
“He viewed others as people that could be talked to, could be convinced,” Jekielek said. “That heart — that willingness to engage — was what helped shift people. And that’s exactly what the CCP wants to destroy.”
Beijing’s manipulation of public sentiment abroad mirrors the techniques it perfected domestically.
For decades, the CCP has used propaganda, surveillance, and fear to maintain control over its population. To the regime, unity is a threat unless it is enforced from above; true social cohesion among the people is a danger to authoritarian rule.
“The CCP always needs an enemy to justify its existence,” Jekielek said. “In 1989, it was students looking for democracy. That movement was crushed. In 1999, it was Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that promoted truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.”
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, emerged as a peaceful meditation movement in the early 1990s, attracting tens of millions of followers across China.
But by 1999, its popularity had become intolerable to a regime that demanded ideological monopoly. What followed was one of the most brutal persecutions of the modern era.
The CCP launched an all-out campaign to eradicate Falun Gong: arrests, torture, forced labour, and mass imprisonment became routine.
Human rights organisations and witnesses have long documented the regime’s practice of forced organ harvesting from detained practitioners — a grisly industry that has drawn international condemnation.
“They are not willing to give up their faith,” Jekielek said. “They end up in prisons. They end up being tortured, in some cases to death. People are disappearing — an incredibly vulnerable population — and that’s exactly when the transplant industry exploded in communist China.”
Jekielek, who is writing a forthcoming book titled Killed to Order: China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary, described the organ trade as a “state-sponsored atrocity” that exposes the regime’s moral vacuum.
But beyond its brutality, it illustrates the CCP’s deeper mindset: control through fear, domination through psychological manipulation.
This same mindset, Jekielek argued, now guides China’s engagement with the West.
“For years, we vastly misunderstood China,” he said. “We thought engagement — trade, investment, legal exchange — could change the regime. But they never had any intention of changing. In their system, the Chinese Communist Party is always supreme.”
In Canada, this has translated into a campaign of covert influence that extends far beyond trade or diplomacy. Intelligence agencies have repeatedly warned that Beijing operates an extensive network of agents and proxies who attempt to shape public opinion, influence policymakers, and manipulate ethnic Chinese communities.
Psyops targeting the diaspora often mix appeals to patriotism with subtle threats, creating divisions within Canada’s multicultural society.
The CCP’s approach is systematic: it combines espionage, disinformation, and cultural infiltration to fracture social trust.
Online trolls amplify polarising content, front organisations pose as cultural or educational initiatives, and Chinese-owned apps silently harvest user data while curating content to align with Beijing’s interests. Each piece contributes to the broader goal — the erosion of unity in democratic societies.
Canada’s open political environment provides fertile ground for such tactics.
The country’s commitment to free speech, diversity, and digital access — cornerstones of liberal democracy — also makes it uniquely vulnerable to manipulation.
The CCP exploits these freedoms to conduct psychological operations that would be impossible under its own censorship regime.
The danger, as Jekielek emphasised, is not only external interference but internal corrosion. “They want Canadians to turn against each other,” he said. “They want to create a reality where disagreement becomes hatred, where discourse becomes war.”
In that sense, Beijing’s strategy transcends politics. It’s not about left versus right, conservative versus progressive — it’s about dismantling the social fabric that allows democracy to function.
Once citizens lose trust in one another, institutions crumble from within, and the state becomes easy prey for manipulation from abroad.
For the CCP, this kind of division is not collateral damage — it is the objective. It mirrors the tactics used domestically to maintain control: vilifying dissenters, promoting conformity, and weaponising fear. What works at home, the Party has now exported to the world.
Jekielek’s warning serves as a stark reminder that psychological warfare is not an abstraction but a lived reality — subtle, pervasive, and devastating in its consequences.
“The Chinese Communist Party’s greatest weapon is not its army,” he said. “It’s the ability to make free societies destroy themselves from within.” As Canada grapples with growing polarisation, foreign interference, and cultural fragmentation, Beijing’s influence looms like a shadow — unseen by many, but shaping the discourse in ways too insidious to ignore.