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Under Assault: Interference and Espionage in China's Secret War Against Canada
A Hill Times’ Top 100 Best Book in 2025
FOREWORD BY CHERIE WONG
National security expert Dennis Molinaro reveals the shocking details of Beijing’s five-decades-long effort to influence and interfere in Canadian political life. From cultivating future political leaders at the end of the Cultural Revolution to the foreign-interference scandals that have shaken present-day Ottawa, this definitive book addresses one of the most urgent global issues of our time.
Amidst heightened tensions between Western nations and China, Canadians have found themselves astonished by hostage crises, cyberattacks, harassment of members of our government, and theft of intellectual property worth untold billions of dollars. Guided by Molinaro’s experience as a historian and China specialist, Under Assault focuses on the actions of the People’s Republic of China’s government and its governing party, the Chinese Communist Party, against Canada during the past fifty years.
From Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s earliest journeys through the “Middle Kingdom” prior to his election to Parliament in the 1960s, the communist government of the PRC has perceived Canada as a staging ground for spying on and pressuring its ultimate target, the United States. When Canada’s first tech giant, Nortel, was plundered of intellectual property by digital spies; while Canada was manipulated into advocating against the independence of Taiwan; and as Chinese Canadians were targeted in the country where they thought they’d escaped Mao’s terrors, Canada’s leaders have too often seen only what they want to see in an emerging market of inestimable value and fertile soil for democratic change for a long-tyrannized people. Generations of Communist leadership have gladly allowed Canada’s government to labour under these misapprehensions, even when the evidence of China’s spying, theft and harassment of Canadian citizens has been happening right before its eyes. Canada has rarely allowed itself to believe what the rest of the world has long understood.
Using Canada as an early warning Under Assault shows how influence operations quietly shape international democratic institutions, markets, and political decisions—including in the United States. Informed by numerous interviews with generations of Canadian politicians, diplomats and bureaucrats; members of diaspora communities targeted by China who have endured this harassment for too long; as well as by new revelations from recently declassified CSIS documents, Under Assault is a timely, eye-opening account of a country compromised by its own illusions in a time of rising global conflict and a burgeoning new world order.
FOREWORD BY CHERIE WONG
National security expert Dennis Molinaro reveals the shocking details of Beijing’s five-decades-long effort to influence and interfere in Canadian political life. From cultivating future political leaders at the end of the Cultural Revolution to the foreign-interference scandals that have shaken present-day Ottawa, this definitive book addresses one of the most urgent global issues of our time.
Amidst heightened tensions between Western nations and China, Canadians have found themselves astonished by hostage crises, cyberattacks, harassment of members of our government, and theft of intellectual property worth untold billions of dollars. Guided by Molinaro’s experience as a historian and China specialist, Under Assault focuses on the actions of the People’s Republic of China’s government and its governing party, the Chinese Communist Party, against Canada during the past fifty years.
From Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s earliest journeys through the “Middle Kingdom” prior to his election to Parliament in the 1960s, the communist government of the PRC has perceived Canada as a staging ground for spying on and pressuring its ultimate target, the United States. When Canada’s first tech giant, Nortel, was plundered of intellectual property by digital spies; while Canada was manipulated into advocating against the independence of Taiwan; and as Chinese Canadians were targeted in the country where they thought they’d escaped Mao’s terrors, Canada’s leaders have too often seen only what they want to see in an emerging market of inestimable value and fertile soil for democratic change for a long-tyrannized people. Generations of Communist leadership have gladly allowed Canada’s government to labour under these misapprehensions, even when the evidence of China’s spying, theft and harassment of Canadian citizens has been happening right before its eyes. Canada has rarely allowed itself to believe what the rest of the world has long understood.
Using Canada as an early warning Under Assault shows how influence operations quietly shape international democratic institutions, markets, and political decisions—including in the United States. Informed by numerous interviews with generations of Canadian politicians, diplomats and bureaucrats; members of diaspora communities targeted by China who have endured this harassment for too long; as well as by new revelations from recently declassified CSIS documents, Under Assault is a timely, eye-opening account of a country compromised by its own illusions in a time of rising global conflict and a burgeoning new world order.
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Published November 18, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 22, 2026
A very light read, not troubling at all…
But seriously, Canada’s PR is so good; I’ve always thought of them as just our sweet, polite northern neighbor. Silly Katelyn, politics/politicians are aaalways more complicated than they seem.
“We certainly frustrate our American neighbors. The US is surely far more knowledgable about the threat the PRC (People’s Republic of China) poses to Canada than we would like to admit. The uncomfortable truth is that the threat of the PRC to Canada, has been, and remains a direct threat to the national security of the United States. How could it not be? Given all that the US shares with Canada, the more Canada dithers on acting against PRC operations, the larger the risk to the US.”
But seriously, Canada’s PR is so good; I’ve always thought of them as just our sweet, polite northern neighbor. Silly Katelyn, politics/politicians are aaalways more complicated than they seem.
“We certainly frustrate our American neighbors. The US is surely far more knowledgable about the threat the PRC (People’s Republic of China) poses to Canada than we would like to admit. The uncomfortable truth is that the threat of the PRC to Canada, has been, and remains a direct threat to the national security of the United States. How could it not be? Given all that the US shares with Canada, the more Canada dithers on acting against PRC operations, the larger the risk to the US.”
December 1, 2025
Dennis Molinaro’s Under Assault is a riveting exposé that shines a brilliant light on China’s decades-long efforts to gain a foothold into Canadian politics. Through countless interviews and meticulous research, Molinaro exposes how China systematically infiltrated and influenced Canadian politics at the highest levels of government. Given the current state of Canadian politics, Under Assault is timely essential reading that will leave you both enlightened and unsettled; truly one of the most important Canadian books of the past decade.
November 25, 2025
Molinaro's impeccable research has created a fascinating book about the PRC's unfathomable reach inside Canada's political regimes. He details shocking discoveries of the past which reverberates into today's geopolitical climate. A must read for every Canadian voter!
February 13, 2026
Precisely researched and well argued. But not hardly feelgood - it’s depressing to learn that not only was Canada thoroughly infiltrated by the PRC (to the absolute highest level) but that the political elites knew about it and just didn’t care. Turns out that Trump was right all along.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews