Chinese officials go ‘out of their way’ to welcome PM
China taking ‘unprecedented’ steps to woo Trudeau
BEIJING—Despite domestic concerns in Canada, Justin Trudeau’ s Liberal government is keen to fold China into its vision for increased multilateral co-operation.
After temporarily resolving a trade squabble over canola — China is backing down, pending further negotiation, on restrictions it had said it would introduce Sept. 1 — Trudeau appears ready to show as much goodwill as possible during his eight-day trip.
Canada’s ambassador to China, Guy Saint-Jacques, said the Chinese were going “out of their way” to welcome the prime minister during a busy week leading up to the G20 summit in Hangzhou.
Trudeau’s family dinner with Premier Li Keqiang at the Forbidden City Tuesday night was “unprecedented,” Saint-Jacques said in Beijing Wednesday.
The latest sign of cozying up came Wednesday afternoon via Finance Minister Bill Morneau, who told journalists Canada is applying to join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Morneau thanked China for its “initiative and leadership,” saying “we couldn’t be more supportive” of the bank’s “lean, clean and green” mandate.
The multinational development bank, announced by President Xi Jinping in 2013, has been operational for just eight months. Its goal is to stimulate growth by funding critical Asian-Pacific infrastructure projects.
The bank set a ceiling for its capital at US$100 billion, with about US$2 billion of that unallocated, said Saint-Jacques. Canada will have to negotiate with several dozen other new applicants, and states who haven’t used their full funding allocations, to figure out how much it will contribute.
The bank’s president, Liqun Jin, said on Wednesday that Canada’s announcement “affirms the way this new bank is being run.” He said the application would be dealt with “expeditiously.”
The AIIB currently has 57 members, including Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa, the U.K. and many other European countries.
The United States, however, has stayed away; its Trans-Pacific Partnership, which includes Canada but not China, is seen by many as intended to counter-balance China’s growing economic influence. But, as anti-trade sentiment boils over in the U.S., that deal seems less and less likely to actually come into being.
Pressure from Washington was one of the reasons that Stephen Harper’s Conservatives opted out of the first round of AIIB membership, according to the University of British Columbia Institute of Asian Research’s Paul Evans.
There were also “worries that the new organization would undermine existing institutions,” such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, Evans said.
That the values underlying the world’s multilateral system could be undermined is a concern for David Mulroney, a distinguished senior fellow at Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, who was the Canadian ambassador to China from 2009 to 2012.
The temptation to “join the line of Western supporters” is strong and “possibly irresistible,” he said.
But Canada helped shape many of the world’s international institutions, Mulroney continued. “We did it by insisting on high standards of probity, transparency and adherence to the rule of law,” he said, adding that China falls short on all of these measures.
“Our flattery, though delivered late, will probably get us some small reward, but at a cost to us in terms of our values and our standards.”
Still, UBC’s Evans thinks AIIB could offer “a potential link to Chinese players with interests in trans-Pacific connections,” noting it already works with the World Bank and other institutions to cofinance projects. “It’s a very good investment for Canadians.”
Saint-Jacques said it is hoped that the AIIB will better position Canadian companies with infrastructure expertise to bid on contracts in the Asia-Pacific.
The AIIB announcement isn’t the only sign of rapprochement. In a meeting with Xi Wednesday afternoon, according to a pool report, Trudeau called the visit “extremely effective in deepening the already close friendship between our countries.”
During a joint press conference, Li said he and Trudeau planned to launch feasibility studies on free trade soon, but Saint-Jacques clarified that no such agreement was formally made.
Despite China’s status as the world’s second-biggest economy — a position Trudeau has said would be “irresponsible” to ignore — critics in Canada look askance at attempts to woo a non-democracy that has been accused of myriad human rights abuses.
In response to a question about human rights concerns, Saint Jacques said that China has made some progress, especially in the realm of economic rights.
But concerns remain about pursuing closer ties with China. They are compounded by doubts around the sincerity of friendly Chinese statements, given the country’s tendency to change the rules on its partners — its proposed restrictions on Canadian canola a recent example.