Freeland’s disquieting silence on China
Are the Liberals defending Canadian values? asks Charles Burton.
As Canadians digest a stream of statements and punditry around the upcoming NAFTA negotiations, another discourse — possibly more consequential for our future — is being planned in comparative silence.
The second China-Canada Foreign Ministers Dialogue was held in Beijing last week, Canada’s Chrystia Freeland sitting down with her counterpart Wang Yi to “explore ways to further consolidate Canada-China ties,” as Xinhua news agency put it. Upcoming Canada-China trade talks would have topped the agenda.
But despite anxiety across Canada over China’s demands in any new deal, and what is really at stake, we know little about what was even discussed. Freeland flew home with no post-meeting news conference held, no communiqué issued.
Given the shocking spectacle that crowned last year’s edition of this dialogue — remember Wang’s think-skinned, arrogant berating of a Canadian journalist who asked about China’s human rights record? — many will suspect the secrecy is Beijing’s precondition to any further talks.
When John McCallum was a federal cabinet minister, the now-ambassador in Beijing was a champion of expanding connections between Canada and China, and doing it on Chinese terms. McCallum, who accompanied Freeland last week, buys in to Beijing’s “friend of China” platitude. He accepts the Chinese Foreign Ministry line that China is the future, and sustaining Canada’s economic growth means Ottawa should acquiesce to Beijing’s “distinctive” domestic governance and strategic aspirations abroad.
As Justin Trudeau himself said in 2012, “We deceive ourselves by thinking that trade with Asia can be squeezed into the 20th-century mould. China, for one, sets its own rules and will continue to do so because it can. China has a game plan. There is nothing inherently sinister about that.”
McCallum the minister would have agreed, even if turning away from human rights abuse in China is tacit consent of arbitrary imprisonment, torture, suffering and death. But McCallum the ambassador is subordinate to his former junior cabinet colleague Freeland, who has a more textured and sophisticated grasp of Communist regimes, and how to realize Canada’s overall interests in relations with them. Her priorities for relations with China wouldn’t sit well with McCallum, and there will be tensions between them that Beijing will try to exploit to further its own goals.
If the federal government was reticent to reveal what was said last week, the Chinese press was more forthcoming. The China Daily reported that Wang said “China and Canada should maintain high-level exchanges and exchanges at other various levels, promote the construction of a ChinaCanada free trade zone and expand anti-corruption and law enforcement cooperation.” Canada has a problem with this last point, which implies extraditing Chinese nationals from Canada, despite our concerns over China’s lack of due process of law and extensive use of the death penalty.
China-watchers wonder if the PMO told Freeland to avoid engaging her Chinese interlocutors on issues of concern to the Canadian public.
Apparently driven by the Prime Minister’s Office, Canada continues to move to create what Wang described as “a new golden time” of bilateral relations. Seasoned China-watchers wonder if the PMO told Freeland to avoid engaging her Chinese interlocutors on issues of concern to the Canadian public, such as the disappearance of Liu Xia, the widow of the Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo; or the ongoing (17 months and counting) imprisonment of B.C. wine exporter John Chang over what China calls a “customs valuation dispute” but which may really be about refusing demands for payoffs. Canadians also deplore China’s violent persecution of ethnic minorities, people of faith and the lawyers who seek to defend them under Chinese law.
Opinion polls, along with Ottawa’s own consultations with Canadians, detect public alarm over Chinese trade practices, forced transfer of intellectual property and Beijing’s growing influence in Canada. There is also deep concern about such precedents as Chinese enterprises owning Canada’s natural resource enterprises, and Beijing’s demand to use imported Chinese labour on Chinese-directed projects within Canada.
Of course, despite any public apprehension, the PMO is under pressure from Canada’s China-related major corporations to press ahead with free trade anyway.
From her past writings and statements, we know that Chrystia Freeland is unlikely to support unconditional expansion of relations with China at the cost of sacrifice of the Canadian values she has so strongly upheld.
But her silence surrounding her impressions of her first China trip as minister of Foreign Affairs is very loud and troubling.