China uses its trade power as leverage to infiltrate institutions and bully virtually every Western nation. Anastasia Lin knows this firsthand, having grown up in Communist China and faced down the regime as an international human-rights activist. Even after Chinese rights advocates immigrate to the West, the Communist Party uses their family members in China as leverage to silence and intimidate them. The free world should unite to counter Beijing’s abuse.
Anastasia Lin, an actress and Miss World Canada 2015, is the Centre for Independent Studies scholar-in-residence in 2019. She is the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s ambassador for China policy and a senior fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
In 2015, Lin was denied a Chinese visa to attend the 65th annual Miss World contest on the southern Chinese island of Hainan, because of her outspoken advocacy for human rights and religious freedom in China.