【EXCLUSIVE】Michael Ma 2.0? Gordon Zhang, the Grizzly Bear Institute and the Chinese consulate connection

Summary

The Conservative Party of BC has chosen Gordon Zhang (Guoren Zhang 张国任) as its candidate in Richmond-Steveston. Gordon co-conceived, and by his co-founder's account served as vice-president of, a think tank that worked hand in hand with China's consulate in Vancouver to sell Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative to Canadians. That activity bears the hallmarks of Chinese Communist Party united front work.

Conservatives have seen this film before. In April 2025 they elected Michael Ma in Markham-Unionville. Eight months later he crossed the floor to the Liberals, joined the prime minister's trip to China, and apologised for questions in committee that appeared to play down forced labour in China. Gordon was organising for the BC Liberals in 2021. He is a Conservative in 2026. The question for the party is whether it has just nominated Michael Ma 2.0.

Three things stand out in the record.

• The consulate. The Grizzly Bear Institute of Canada met China's consul general four times in four months in 2017, briefed her on its work, thanked her for her guidance, and co-hosted a forum that concluded Canada should join the Belt and Road. Gordon's campaign biography leaves the institute out.

• The ethnic vote. Gordon's own political writing urges every eligible Chinese resident to sign up and vote, on the ground that votes decide how public resources are shared out. Voters should be asked to choose the most capable representative, not the one who shares their ancestry.

• The party label. His stated reason for entering politics is the standing of one ethnic community, not the principles of any party. A candidate whose loyalty runs to a bloc rather than a platform is a candidate who can change jerseys.

  
  

None of this proves the institute was a united front body, and no Chinese government document found so far names Gordon at any of the consular meetings. It does raise questions that he, and the party that vetted him, should answer before voters do. The seat was decided by 484 votes in 2024. Voting is on October 24, 2026.

Why "Michael Ma 2.0"

Michael Ma is the cautionary tale: a first-time candidate with united front-linked associations whom Conservatives elected, and who was sitting with another party before the year was out.

What happened with Ma. Ma won Markham-Unionville for the Conservatives in April 2025. On December 11, 2025, the night after he posed for photographs with Pierre Poilievre at the Conservative holiday party, he joined Mark Carney's Liberals and brought them within one seat of a majority (CBC, Globe and Mail). He then travelled with Carney on the prime minister's first trip to China (National Post). In a parliamentary committee on Chinese electric vehicles he pressed an expert witness on whether she had personally seen forced labour in China, and later apologised, saying his comments had come across as dismissive of a serious issue (CBC). The Bureau reported that Ma had been a director of the Chinese Canadian Conservative Association, a group a Jamestown Foundation study names as part of the Communist Party's overseas united front network (The Bureau, via Todayville).

What the two have in common. Both are first-time candidates, presented as community figures, in ridings with large Chinese-Canadian populations. Both come with associations that sit close to Chinese diplomatic posts: Ma at a banquet alongside consular officials, as The Bureau reported; Gordon through a think tank that reported to the consul general. Ma's time as a Conservative MP lasted eight months.

Gordon's party history. In October 2021 his co-founder, Jiawei Zhang, wrote that Gordon had told him he was working on the BC Liberal leadership race in support of Kevin Falcon, and that he was running a drive to sign up Chinese residents as BC Liberal members in time to vote (Jiawei Zhang's blog, in Chinese). Five years later he is the Conservative candidate.

A fair caveat, and why it does not settle the matter. The BC Liberals, renamed BC United, folded their campaign in 2024 and much of the party moved to the Conservatives, Falcon included. Gordon's change of label is therefore not unusual in itself. What is unusual is the reason he gave for being in politics at all. It was not lower taxes, smaller government or any conservative principle. It was ethnic leverage. A politician recruited on that basis owes his seat to a bloc, not to a platform, and Markham-Unionville is a reminder of how quickly a label can change.

Votes by ethnicity

Gordon's own words show a politics organised around ethnic identity, and that is the wrong basis on which to ask anyone for a vote.

What he wrote. In the 2021 membership appeal quoted on his co-founder's blog, Gordon wrote that, as immigrants, he and his readers wanted equal treatment and due political status for themselves, their children and the whole Chinese community. He went on: "Votes are a voice! Votes are influence!" Votes, he wrote, decide how public resources are distributed. The stated near-term goal was to get every eligible Chinese resident to vote in the BC Liberal leadership election of February 2022.

Who could vote. The same blog post explains that the leadership vote did not require citizenship. Any BC resident aged 14 or over, citizen or not, could vote after paying a membership fee. Readers were told to contact Gordon directly to sign up.

How his circle saw him. Jiawei Zhang wrote that the party badly needed ethnic-minority talent like Gordon, called him a rare outstanding representative of new mainland Chinese immigrants, and said he could become an excellent ethnic Chinese candidate. He added that he and others had long encouraged him to run.

How the party presents him. The Conservative biography opens by describing him as a community leader with deep roots in the Chinese-Canadian community.

Why this deserves criticism. Wanting equal treatment is legitimate, and Chinese Canadians were denied the vote until 1947. But there is a line between asking for equality and telling people to vote by ancestry. "Choose one of our own" is racial politics, whoever practises it. It treats Chinese Canadians as a bloc to be delivered rather than as citizens who can weigh a candidate's ability and judgment. It tells every other voter in Richmond-Steveston that the candidate's first constituency is one ethnic group. And it is exactly the habit of mind that Beijing's united front work depends on: the idea that ethnic Chinese abroad share one interest and should speak with one voice. A representative should be chosen because he can represent everyone in the riding. His ethnicity should not be the pitch.

An opening for interference. Mass sign-ups of non-citizens for internal party votes are the weak point that Canada's foreign interference inquiry warned about when it examined party nomination contests. Nothing in the record suggests Gordon's 2021 drive was directed by anyone outside Canada. It does show that he is practised in the kind of mobilisation that hostile states have learned to exploit.

The candidate and the think tank

Gordon has no previous electoral record. His co-founder says the Grizzly Bear Institute was the two men's idea and that Gordon was its vice-president.

The candidate. The Conservative Party of BC lists Gordon as its candidate for Richmond-Steveston. As of September 30 he had been announced by the party but had not yet filed with Elections BC; nominations close October 3. BC NDP incumbent Kelly Greene held the seat in 2024 by 484 votes. (BC Ballot, Conservative Party of BC)

The academic. Under his Chinese name, Guoren Zhang, Gordon is listed on the faculty of Kwantlen Polytechnic University's Melville School of Business, with degrees from Nankai University and McMaster University (KPU). In 2020 the Richmond News profiled him as chief executive of Maple Leaf Laboratories, partnering with a Richmond manufacturer on an N95 mask line (Richmond News).

The match. The Conservative Party's candidate biography says Gordon has taught business at KPU's Richmond campus for more than seventeen years and helped establish one of Canada's first domestic N95 respirator lines in Richmond during the pandemic. Both details correspond to the public record under his Chinese name. The same biography lists his companies, a respirator testing laboratory, Lions Club fundraising and his organising of community and technology events. It says nothing about the think tank.

His role at the institute. In December 2018, Business in Vancouver identified Gordon, under the name Zhang Guoren, as one of the people who launched the Grizzly Bear Institute of Canada in 2016 (BIV). Jiawei Zhang's 2021 blog post goes further. He writes that the institute was an idea he and Gordon first worked out together in a coffee shop, that the two of them then invited UBC's Guangyu Wang to serve as president, and that Gordon took the post of vice-president. He calls Gordon his teacher in Canadian politics.

His first political fight. The same post says that in 2017, when the NDP's David Eby tied housing speculation to Chinese buyers and promised a speculation tax, Gordon published a data-driven rebuttal.

The institute. The Chinese consulate describes it as a non-governmental think tank founded in 2016 by ethnic Chinese professors and scholars from several North American universities, together with local entrepreneurs, and headquartered at the University of British Columbia (consulate, March 2017). Its own 2016 introduction says it was set up by ten professors and experts in partnership with a firm called Grizzly Bear Capital, on what it called Chinese-style crowdfunding thinking (Lahoo.ca). University Canada West described it as a group of academics focused on encouraging trade and investment with Canada from a Chinese perspective (UCW).

Four documented contacts with the consulate in 2017

Between March and July 2017, Consul General Liu Fei met or appeared with the Grizzly Bear Institute four times, according to China's own government websites. Two of the four were about promoting the Belt and Road Initiative in Canada.

March 17, 2017. Liu received the institute's president, Guangyu Wang, at the consulate. According to the consulate's account, Wang briefed her on the institute's team, operating model, research directions and results, and thanked her for her attention and guidance. Liu asked the institute to track current affairs, widen its topics and deepen its links with Chinese universities and think tanks. A deputy consul general and three consuls sat in. (Consulate, in Chinese)

May 21, 2017. The institute and UBC's Institute of Asian Research co-hosted a forum on Belt and Road practice in North America, one week after Xi Jinping's Belt and Road summit in Beijing. About 150 people attended. Liu gave a speech urging Canada to seize the opportunity. Speakers included Wang and a researcher identified as being from the Beijing-based China Center for International Economic Exchanges. China's foreign ministry reported that the speakers agreed Canada should move quickly to join the initiative. (Foreign ministry, in Chinese)

May 27, 2017. Six days later, Liu met scholars from the institute, UBC and Simon Fraser University, along with representatives of business associations. The consulate reported that all present agreed to host forums introducing the Belt and Road to Canadians and encouraging them to take part. (Consulate)

July 25, 2017. Liu attended a farewell dinner hosted by the institute. She praised its work on China-Canada exchanges and said she hoped it would help strengthen bilateral relations. Wang thanked her for her attention and suggestions and pledged closer ties with think tanks in China and Canada. (Consulate)

Three details stand out.

1. The March meeting reads like a report to a superior. The think tank's president describes his organisation's work and results; the consul general responds with direction on what it should do next. The Chinese text has Wang thanking Liu for her 指导, a word meaning guidance or direction.

2. Beijing counted the forum as its own outreach. The foreign ministry published the May 21 account in the overseas reporting section of its Belt and Road special topic page, and noted it was the first forum of its kind by a local think tank after the Belt and Road summit in Beijing that month.

3. The consulate turned out in force. Five diplomats attended a meeting with the head of a one-year-old private think tank, and the consul general appeared with the institute roughly once a month through the spring and summer.

The institute's own words and people

From its first public event, the institute presented itself as a vehicle for Canada-China cooperation, took its research agenda from China's priorities, and drew on people who came out of Chinese state institutions.

Its launch. A Chinese-language news report on the institute's founding seminar ran under a headline about the future of think tanks against the background of Canada-China cooperation. The institute billed itself there as the first ethnic Chinese think tank focused on Canada-China cooperation. One participant was introduced as having worked at China's State Information Center, a Chinese government body. Another, who said he had just come back from China, told the institute it must make the Belt and Road its research priority, because it was China's most important issue now and for the future. Also present were Bo Chen, a professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and secretary-general of its free trade zone research institute, and Jan Walls, a former cultural counsellor at Canada's embassy in Beijing.

Its stated mission. The institute says it has strategic partnerships with well-known universities, research institutes and think tanks in both Canada and China, and that it works to promote exchange between the two countries in education, the economy, culture and technology. (Mission page)

Its position on the Belt and Road. An article on the institute's website by its chief researcher, Jiawei Zhang, argues that the initiative is a win-win strategy rather than a one-way Chinese export. It says a positive response is the right choice for Canada, urges Ottawa to speed up and sign a free trade agreement with China, and proposes that Canada open its capital markets to listings by Chinese and Belt and Road companies. It names close cooperation between Canadian and Chinese think tanks as part of the bridge role Canada should play. (Institute article)

Its chief researcher, and Gordon's co-founder. Jiawei Zhang's institute biography says he was chairman and president of a large Chinese state-owned company for more than ten years (Institute biography). He is the man who says he dreamed up the institute with Gordon. His 2021 post praising Gordon's political work appears in a diary series written from Chengdu.

A fellow from a Beijing state think tank. The institute lists Peng Wu as one of its fellows. His biography says he is a former senior consultant at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges and former deputy director of an international investment and acquisitions promotion centre, and now a general manager at a Chinese holding company (team page). When China's foreign ministry reported on the May 21 forum, it described Wu as a researcher from the China Center for International Economic Exchanges and did not mention that he was a fellow of the institute hosting the event.

Its president. Guangyu Wang's biography says he directs a UBC centre responsible for exchanges and cooperation with universities in Asia. He is the only institute figure named in the consulate's accounts of its four meetings with Liu Fei.

A Kwantlen connection. The institute lists Arthur Coren as a distinguished fellow and notes he was dean of Kwantlen Polytechnic University's business school before becoming president of University Canada West (team page). That is the school where Gordon teaches.

Why the pattern matters

The institute's 2017 activity fits the method Canadian authorities attribute to Beijing's united front system: work through sympathetic diaspora organisations, coordinated by diplomatic posts, to move Canadian opinion toward Chinese policy goals.

What the federal inquiry found. The Hogue Commission's final report, released in January 2025, said China relies on proxies that take explicit or implicit direction, and that the Communist Party's United Front Work Department "tries to control and influence Chinese diaspora communities" and to sway politicians toward Beijing's policies, as reported by theBreaker.news.

The consulates' role. A paper published by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service says Chinese embassies and consulates monitor the ethnic Chinese community and coordinate united front activity in Canada (CSIS).

The message. The Belt and Road Initiative is Xi Jinping's signature foreign policy project. A forum where Canadian-based academics, rather than Chinese diplomats, tell a Vancouver audience that Canada should join it is more persuasive than anything a consulate could say in its own name. That is the value such a group offers Beijing, whatever its members intend.

The riding. Richmond-Steveston overlaps the federal seat where, according to the Hogue report, Conservative MP Kenny Chiu's 2021 re-election bid was targeted by foreign interference (theBreaker.news). Voters there have more reason than most to ask about a candidate's past dealings with the consulate.

This is an inference from pattern, not a finding. The consulate's own description of the institute is a private think tank.

Gordon's own public statements

The one on-record comment found so far shows Gordon explaining Chinese sentiment and warning of economic consequences when Canada arrested Huawei's chief financial officer.

Days after Meng Wanzhou was detained at Vancouver airport in December 2018, Gordon told Business in Vancouver that Huawei is seen in China as far more than a company, describing it as close to "a national and cultural icon". He predicted a strong emotional reaction in China and said Chinese firms would think twice about investing in Canada. He also cited Huawei's research spending and its 500-plus researchers in Canada as evidence of its commitment to the country, and framed the arrest chiefly in terms of its cost to Canada. (BIV)