The promise, and perils, for Trudeau in China
Stakes are high as Trudeau heads for talks in Beijing
Here is Canada’s camerafriendly prime minister, fresh off a summer of shirtless spelunking. And there is President Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful, autocratic leader since Mao Zedong. Short of a boxer-versus-judoka pay-perview fight with Vladimir Putin, it’s difficult to visualize an encounter more fraught with potential pitfalls for Canada’s neophyte leader.
But early next month, meet they will, on Xi’s home soil, in Trudeau’s first official visit to Beijing, before the Group of 20 summit in Hangzhou. The stakes are higher than any Trudeau has yet faced internationally. By comparison, his bromance last spring with U.S. President Barack Obama was a cakewalk.
The visit presents at least as much promise as peril, observers say — if Trudeau can convert the advantages of his name, fame and likability into a new relationship with the increasingly mobile, wealthy and media- savvy Chinese middle class, as a starting point toward closer ties.
“I think the Chinese people, who are increasingly prosperous, footloose, with more ways to express themselves … will be interested in Trudeau,” says David Mulroney, Canada’s ambassador in Beijing from 2009 to 2012. “He’s young, with a young family. The smartest thing they could do is let him be himself in China.”
So shirtless Trudeau, rockclimbing in the Baihe Valley? It’s not as daft as it may sound — if it can help kick-start a relationship widely deemed to have gone awry during the Stephen Harper decade.
Here’s some of what the Prime Minister’s Office says about Trudeau and China. On strategic goals: “Canada is de- veloping a consistent and comprehensive approach to its relations with China, at the highest level, to advance shared objectives on commercial, people to people ties, climate change, the rule of law fronts and to bolster shared prosperity and growth of the Canadian middle class.”
On human rights, with the case of Canadian coffee shop owner Kevin Garratt, imprisoned and accused of spying, still unresolved: “Canada will continue to urge China to uphold its Constitution, rule of law, the basic principles of international law and its international human rights obligations.”
On the increasingly tendentious territorial disputes between China and its immediate neighbours: “Canada is concerned by the rise of tensions in the East and South China seas, which have the potential to undermine regional peace and stability.”
On whether or not the Trudeau government will pursue a bilateral free-trade agreement with Beijing: “Expanding trade with large fast- growing markets, including China, is a key component of Canada’s minister of international trade’s mandate. We are looking at all avenues to further deepen our trade and investment relationship with China, but these discussions need time.”
The wording reveals caution, more than anything else. There’s no mention of the Garratts by name; no mention of the recent international tribunal ruling against China, and in favour of the Philippines, in the South China Sea dispute; and no promise to pursue Sino- Canadian free trade.
‘ TRADE OPENINGS’
Such caution may be ordinary pre-summit diplomat-speak. Or it may reflect a wider strategy. Either way, it feels like a play for time. The China visit is guaranteed to thrust the Liberal government into a new debate about how, and how much, Canada should engage with Communist China. That debate spans the partisan divide.
“I think it’s problematic to start negotiating a free- trade agreement with China,” says Tony Clement, a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative party. “I would not be in favour of doing that with any alacrity right now, until they can show that whatever trade deal would come out the other end would have the kind of judicial protections that we, in a society like Canada’s, have come to expect.”
On the other side are those, both Liberals and Conservatives, who contend that, come what may, Canada cannot afford to stand back from the world’s second- largest economy, soon to be its largest — particularly in light of the headwinds facing the Trans- Pacific Partnership ( TPP) trade agreement in the U.S. Congress.
“We should be pushing for as much and as many trade openings as possible,” says one senior Conservative. “We shouldn’t take anything off the table. In fact there should be a back channel (to free-trade talks) going right now.”
The imbroglio that occurred in Ottawa in June, when Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi angrily lectured a Canadian journalist who asked him about the Garratt case and China’s South China Sea expansionism, has not helped. The incident sparked a media furor, a rebuke from Trudeau and opposition accusations of Liberal spinelessness in the face of Beijing’s bullying.
But such incidents, says Derek Burney, a former Canadian ambassador to Tokyo and Washington and long-standing advocate of much greater engagement with China, should not obscure Canada’s growing need for deeper ties. “You can’t allow episodic events to undermine the strategy.”
That strategy, the former diplomat says, should be fullspeed ahead toward bilateral free trade, following Australia’s example. Anything short of that, he contends, is not an option. “To be a bystander to the fastestgrowing market in the world doesn’t get you a lot. And there isn’t a lot of growth in more traditional economies.”
Burney adds: “I’m not unaware of all the complexities and difficulties in negotiating with the Chinese, who are becoming more confident and assertive with their growing power status. But that doesn’t suggest to me that we stand back. The situation is not going to improve if we wait.”
At stake, say Burney and other free- trade advocates, is nothing less than Canada’s future prosperity. He notes the arguments for liberalized trade go hand in hand with the need for more oil pipeline capacity, which would make Canada’s most valuable resource export available to a global market. “If the government started explaining what the opportunities are in a market like China, that would make the argument for (pipeline) infrastructure more compelling,” he says.
In a report in January, the Canada China Business Council estimated Sino- Canadian free trade would generate $7.8 billion in new economic activity within 15 years. In the case of North American free trade — perennial whipping boy of presidential candidates in U. S. election years — trade between Canada and the United States tripled, to $2.4 billion a day, in the 25 years after the introduction of the first bilateral agreement in 1989.
TERRITORIAL RIGHTS
The delicacy of the Liberal position is evident in Parliament. Conservative trade critic Peter Kent hammers the government on what he considers to be its weak response to Chinese territorial encroachments in the Western Pacific. “We believe the government should be much more forthright and much more frank in supporting the international ruling and in challenging China’s expansionist intentions.”
But at the same time, Kent says, “that’s not any reason not to pursue a free- trade agreement.” Indeed, he contends, the government should be more outspoken on both tracks, simultaneously. “The Liberals have been far too timid in embracing the TPP and free trade generally … It comes down to their being unwilling to take any decisions which will upset anyone.”
Kent points to the example of prime minister Brian Mulroney, who staked his political future on the initial Canada-U. S. free-trade deal in 1988, though he faced a backlash at the time, and ultimately won. “I think that by demonstrating his conviction, (Mulroney) convinced Canadians and convinced the Liberal opposition even, reluctantly. I think we need more of the same.”
But the go-hard, go-fast approach to a free- trade agreement ignores several realities, argues former Ontario premier and federal Liberal leader Bob Rae, one of which is that the relationship ran aground under the previous Conservative government.
Prime minister Stephen Harper’s Nexen Resources decision in 2012 — he allowed a Chinese state-owned firm to buy the Calgary-based company but froze further acquisitions — was expedient at the time. But, Rae says, it midwifed an incoherent foreign-investment posture that endures to this day.
Moreover, he says, there are legitimate reasons to proceed cautiously on any trade deal. “Getting to an agreement is a long-term process. We certainly need much greater assurances than we have at the moment that the Chinese economy is not full of hidden subsidies.”
But even Rae, the one- time democratic socialist, is ultimately for deeper ties with China. “The important point for everyone to understand,” he says, “is that more than 50 per cent of our ( gross domestic product) depends on trade. We’re one of the most trade-dependent countries in the ( Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development). That’s just a reality of who we are.”
It is lost on no one that Prime Minister Trudeau has a personal opening here, thanks to his father, Pierre, having been among the first Western leaders to establish diplomatic relations with Communist China in 1970. “The Chinese never forget a friend,” says the senior Conservative. “Pierre Trudeau was viewed as a friend … and that is not to be underestimated or forgotten. I think there is going to be an openness to Trudeau that would never have been made to Harper.”
To be a bystander to the fastest-growing market in the world doesn’t get you a lot.
David Mulroney cautions against placing too much stock in the personal. “One of the things the Chinese will do is personalize relationships … but in fact it’s not personal. Really it’s about the bottom line.” Trudeau’s goal this time should be modest, to lay a foundation for the future, he says. “I’d prefer it to be the start of a conversation rather than a be-all-end-all.”
That said, the diplomat believes this PM, because of the media flair that helped get him elected in Canada and has made him a celebrity elsewhere, has a unique opportunity to make inroads. “( The Liberals) have an asset in Mr. Trudeau, because he’s a different kind of leader,” Mulroney says. He adds: “We have to figure out who the target is. I think it’s the Chinese people.”