Senator Victor Oh and former Ontario cabinet minister Michael Chan were signatories among those who signed a 2020 letter from an Ontario-based Chinese-Canadian business association to a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official saying the association has been promoting China’s image in fighting COVID-19 and pledges continuing support of the “great motherland.”

The correspondence was in response to a letter issued by the CCP official to Jiang Rui, president of Richmond Hill-based Jiangsu Commerce Council of Canada (JCCC), as reported in April 2020 by the Chinese-language media ccmedia.news, and first reported in English by the Found in Translation newsletter on Substack. The ccmedia.news website includes copies of the two letters.

The March 27, 2020, letter by the CCP official, Lou Qinjian, former secretary of the Jiangsu provincial committee, bears the letterhead of the Jiangsu Provincial Committee of the CCP. It is addressed directly to Jiang as well as all overseas Chinese from Jiangsu in Canada. It is co-signed by another CCP official, Wu Zhenglong, then-governor of Jiangsu. Jiangsu is a province on China’s east coast, north of Shanghai.

In what Jiang described as a “letter from home,” Lou’s letter expressed care and concern toward the overseas Chinese in Canada amid the COVID-19 pandemic and said they will “resolutely implement [Chinese] President Xi Jinping’s instructions and requirements, and make the utmost effort to provide help and support for the health and safety of all overseas compatriots.”

Meanwhile, the letter also urged the JCCC to take advantage of its connections as a Chinese diaspora association to promote to Canadians a positive image of Beijing’s pandemic response.

“[We] hope that you will make use of overseas Chinese as a bridge to convey confidence, actively tell well the story of the fight against the pandemic at home [in China], promote the image of the motherland as a responsible major country, and demonstrate the good citizenship of overseas Jiangsu people,” the letter said.

“Telling China’s story well” is a phrase introduced by Chinese leader Xi in 2013, encapsulating his approach of messaging on the world stage to promote the image of the communist regime.

In the response letter, dated April 10, 2020, which was signed by Oh and Chan, Jiang expressed gratitude to CCP official Lou Qinjian for the letter, saying that following his lead, other Jiangsu government departments have also reached out to show their care and concern, including the Jiangsu Provincial United Front Work Department (UFWD). The UFWD is a CCP agency responsible for co-opting opposition inside China as well as carrying out influence activities abroad.

Jiang also said his group has been committed to the cause of promoting China’s image in Canada since early in the pandemic.

“Since the early days of China’s fight against the pandemic, we’ve made use of the special resources and channels of many JCCC members to tell the story of China’s fight against the pandemic to the Canadian government and people,” Jiang wrote.

“Through extensive and in-depth publicity, China’s demeanour [image] as a responsible, courageous, competent, and cooperative great power … is receiving more and more understanding, support, and appreciation from the Canadian government, people, and overseas Chinese!”

The ccmedia.news article included photos of Oh and Chan signing the letter. Over a dozen other senior JCCC members also signed.

Oh, a Conservative senator, was appointed to the Senate in 2013.

Chan, who was a cabinet member in the previous Liberal government in Ontario, is now deputy mayor of Markham, Ont., a city that is part of the Greater Toronto Area. At the time of the signing of the letter, he was not a public office holder.

Oh and Chan, both honorary presidents of the JCCC, didn’t respond to requests for comments from The Epoch Times.

The JCCC, established in 2002, says its goal is to promote trade and business collaboration between Ontario and Jiangsu. It has over 1,000 members, including elites in the business, government, and academic communities, according to its website.

Jiang Rui, who began serving as JCCC president in 2018, has also held positions in organizations associated with the CCP, according to reports in local Jiangsu media and state media in China.

Apart from being JCCC president, Jiang is also an overseas representative of the provincial-level Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body in the People’s Republic of China, and also a key body of the CCP’s UFWD, according to ourjiangsu.com, a Chinese website directly owned by the Jiangsu provincial branch of the UFWD.

The Epoch Times reached out to Jiang for comment via the JCCC but didn’t hear back.

According to a January 2021 JCCC report, Jiang was also elected vice-president of the Jiangsu branch of the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification (CCPPNR), a China-based organization directly supervised by officials in the Politburo, the CCP’s highest decision-making body.

The report included photos taken at a conference on the establishment of the Jiangsu CCPPNR, held on Jan. 9, 2020, in Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province. A number of senior CCP officials, including the vice governor of the province, members of the Jiangsu Provincial Committee of the CCP, and the head of the UFWD, attended the conference, according to an article posted on the Jiangsu provincial government website.

The CCPPNR has branches in many countries, including two in Canada and at least 20 in the United States. In October 2020, the U.S. State Department designated a CCPPNR branch, the Washington, D.C.-based National Association for China’s Peaceful Unification, as a foreign mission of the Chinese regime, describing it as a front organization of the UFWD.