Rock, Baird on team talking to China
Baird, Rock part of team that met with officials
A Canadian delegation that included former cabinet ministers John Baird and Allan Rock seemed to make headway with top Chinese officials last week by warning that public opinion about China here has “plummeted,” said the mission’s leader.
The fact that Canadians have soured on their second-largest trading partner in the last year may have been something of a revelation, said Gordon Houlden, head of the University of Alberta’s China Institute.
He led the under-theradar delegation that met in Beijing last Wednesday with Lu Kang, the North America chief for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“I did not see movement in the Chinese formal position. I’d like to think that I saw a better understanding of the Canadian position,” said Houlden. “Are they unhappy that the image of their country has plummeted? I guarantee that is the case. Whether that translates into a desire to immediately improve things by releasing the two (Canadian detainees) is another story.”
The delegation spoke at “great length” during the two-hour session about Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, the Canadians held virtually incommunicado by China on nebulous espionage charges, said the professor.
Lu in turn reiterated China’s position that Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei Technologies CFO arrested in Vancouver last December on a U.S. extradition request, should be released immediately, he said.
Houlden said he’s under no illusions that the group created any breakthroughs in the impasse between the nations, but said even a slight change, if there was one, would be positive.
“One can rest assured that the things we said will have been relayed in detail to Chinese policy-makers.”
Both Baird, a former Conservative foreign affairs minister, and Rock, a one-time Liberal justice and health minister, declined to comment, deferring to Houlden.
He and his Edmonton-based think tank have spearheaded “track-two dialogues” both in China and Canada the last few years, but said this year’s trip seemed particularly important given the icy relations between the countries.
There has been little direct contact between Chinese and Canadian government leaders since Meng’s arrest, and the series of actions China took in apparent retaliation.
Those include the detention of the “two Michaels,” the escalation of another Canadian’s drug-trafficking sentence from 15 years in jail to death, and the blockage of billions in Canadian farm exports.
Chrystia Freeland, then foreign affairs minister, met with her Chinese counterpart in August at an eastasia summit conference both attended — their first encounter since the Meng arrest — while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau briefly talked to Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of June’s G20 meeting.
Canada has also been without an ambassador to China for much of the year, though a new envoy, Dominic Barton, was appointed recently.
As well as Rock and Baird, last week’s delegation included Ted Menzies, another minister in Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, plus a former ambassador to China, other ex-diplomats and two former federal deputy ministers.
They met first with the state-controlled Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs in Sichuan province, then in Beijing with Lu, director general of the ministry division responsible for North American affairs.
As the ministry’s former, tough-talking media spokesman, he “has a level of self-confidence that was on display,” said Houlden.
Guy Saint-jacques, a former ambassador to China and a senior fellow of Houlden’s China Institute, said in an earlier interview that some in China’s government are questioning Beijing’s aggressive response to Meng’s detention.
“I have heard from various sources that there is a debate among the Chinese leadership that maybe Xi Jinping has been too tough on Canada, which is perceived as a friend by many people,” said Saint-jacques.
Houlden said he has long believed the apparent tit-fortat reaction by China was a “miscalculation,” and tried to convey that notion during another unheralded meeting he had with officials in Beijing this April.
“I told them … that that tactic doesn’t work with Canadians. We’re a stubborn lot,” he recalled. “I have no doubt that these two (detainees) were taken as pawns in what was supposed to be a negotiation. That hasn’t worked out because our system doesn’t work in that fashion.”
I TOLD THEM … THAT THAT TACTIC DOESN’T WORK WITH CANADIANS. WE’RE A STUBBORN LOT.