What next? Canada-china relationship a conundrum
Strategy change toward Beijing needed: experts
When Canadian consular officials visited Michael Spavor in a Chinese prison on Monday — and Michael Kovrig last Friday — they were led by none other than the Beijing embassy’s top official.
Newly minted ambassador Dominic Barton saw first-hand, a government source said, what’s at stake in arguably this country’s toughest diplomatic assignment in a generation.
Now Barton just has to figure out how to end the pair’s ordeal, almost a year after they were detained on nebulous espionage charges.
Two of his predecessors and two academic experts interviewed this week differ on the specifics of tackling that and other challenges, including billions in Canadian exports blocked by Chinese action.
But they agreed on one point: with a newly re-elected government and new ambassador, Ottawa must overhaul its whole strategy for resolving the country’s bitter quarrel with China.
Because whatever it’s done so far hasn’t worked.
Central to that revamp is recognizing that a return to the earlier “romantic” era of enthusiastic engagement with China is not in the cards, the experts concurred.
“The only language China understands is one of firmness,” said Guy Saintjacques, who was the Beijing ambassador from 2012 to 2016. “Now that we have seen the dark side of China and how they can punish you if you do something they don’t like or if you don’t obey their diktats, I think it’s appropriate for us to reassess our engagement strategy.”
A new strategy could include giving the boot to interfering Chinese diplomats here, boycotting the 2022 Winter Olympics or, on the contrary, actually toning down the relatively mild rhetoric Canada has directed at Beijing in public, the experts said.
Already, though, there is doubt about whether a change in approach is likely.
The appointment of Barton as ambassador suggests the Liberals are anxious only to turn the clock back to old ways of interacting with Beijing, said David Mulroney, ambassador from 2009 to 2012. Barton worked closely with powerful Chinese business people and politicians, for a consulting firm Mulroney says is “almost sycophantic” toward the Communist leadership.
“I really wonder whether someone who is on the record as saying he’s ‘bullish’ about China’s strongman leader is really the right person to interpret China for the government of Canada,” said the ex-ambassador. “What we need is a revised China policy, one that says we are not going to relentlessly build the relationship. In fact, that’s actually a little dangerous for us.”
The China impasse began last December when Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei Technologies chief financial officer, on an extradition request from the U.S.
China then arrested Spavor, a businessman who organized cultural visits to North Korea, and Kovrig, a former official in the Beijing embassy working for a peace-focused NGO. Not long after, Chinese courts abruptly imposed a death sentence on Canadian Robert Schellenberg, who had earlier been sentenced to 15 years for drug trafficking.
Then Canadian exports of canola, pork and other agricultural products were stopped.
The government responded by criticizing all those actions, and by recruiting other countries to voice their displeasure. Ottawa also filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization over the canola issue, but Trudeau said in September he wanted to avoid escalating the spat any further.
Nothing seems to have budged on the Chinese side, as Beijing continues to insist that Canada release Meng, even as a court in B.C. vets the extradition request.
“The Canadian government’s policy since December of last year has not delivered the desired result,” said Charles Burton, a former diplomat in Beijing and professor at Ontario’s Brock University. “In fact, our lack of response I think is taken by the Chinese authorities as passive consent for their gross violations of normal diplomatic practice.”
Canada should make it clear it’s no longer business as usual, he said. That could mean boycotting the Olympics in two years, and taking swift action to expel diplomats found to have improperly exerted influence or intimidation in Canada.
Saint-jacques advocated working harder with allies to bolster multi-lateral systems and push China to follow rules on issues such as intellectual property. He also suggested reviewing whether Canadian university researchers should continue co-operating with Chinese delegations in key areas like artificial intelligence.
Paul Evans, an East Asia specialist at UBC, says that publicly confronting a great power like China is “a game we can’t win,” while decoupling trade, technological or human links would be counter-productive.
He suggested that Ottawa actually “tone down” the rallying of allies in its defence, and consider some kind of deal that would lessen tension around Meng’s arrest.