Why Ottawa let Chinese attend military forum
Keeping open lines of communication
Three days after Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were freed from a prison ordeal in China, the Chinese military made a surprising request to Canada’s largest defence university.
It asked if some of its personnel could attend an international “military sciences” conference at Royal Military College (RMC) in Kingston, Ont.
The theme of the academic meeting in October 2021 was “resilience and cohesion in the face of new forms of disruption,” and one of the sessions dealt with “China and Russia’s information space attacks on democracy.”
The request rose up Department of National Defence (DND) ranks to the deputy minister, but in the end organizers had good news for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Their officers could attend, though that meant joining a mostly virtual audience by Zoom.
“We were not very pleased by the request, but it’s an open conference,” says Pierre Jolicoeur, the RMC professor who chaired the symposium. “The answer was quickly taken — Yes . ... We want to promote contact between different cultures and different knowledge and people with different perspectives.”
The meeting involved discussion of open-source information that is available to anyone, not sensitive matters, echoed Andrew Mckelvey, a DND spokesman.
Despite getting the green light, there is no record of PLA members actually logging into the conference.
But the episode underscores the thorny question of co-operation between military personnel of nations increasingly seen as a geopolitical adversaries.
The issue came to a head in late 2020 with news that Chinese soldiers had participated in winter military exercises in Canada for years under an accord signed by the then-conservative government in 2013.
Top military leaders decided to cancel the arrangement — reportedly at the urging of the United States — only for Global Affairs Canada to urge against the move. The department worried it could further sour relations with China as Canada struggled to get the two Michaels released.
Last year’s meeting was a less dramatic venue of potential Sino-western defence interaction.
It was RMC’S turn to host the annual conference of the International Society of Military Sciences, a group of national defence universities from 10 mostly small and middle-sized democracies, including Canada, the Netherlands and Portugal. Delegates from other nations also attend.
The meeting took place from Oct. 11 to 14. The two Michaels were released Sept. 24 after being held for two years in what critics called hostage diplomacy by China in response to the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. On Sept. 27, the PLA military science academy asked organizers if their members could attend the conference, according to a “decision note” prepared for Gen. Wayne Eyre, the chief of defence staff, and then-dnd deputy minister Jody Thomas, obtained by National Post through access to information legislation.
In fact, the Chinese armed forces had already attended the event in Warsaw in 2018 and Vienna in 2019, with officers up to brigadier-general level showing up, the note says.
The event is an open academic conference at the unclassified level with “broad international representation,” said the document. Finland, for instance, had organized a panel discussion on military technology, but from a “conceptual” perspective and based on opensource material, said the briefing note.
David Bercuson, a prominent University of Calgary military historian, said there was no reason to bar the Chinese from the meeting, agreeing that nothing would have been discussed the PLA couldn’t learn through other, open-source means.
One has to remember that the current “cold war” with Beijing is nothing like the original one with the Soviet Union, given the billions in trade, tourism, immigration and other contacts between the two countries.
Allowing the PLA to observe winter military exercises at CFB Petawawa, on the other hand, was a mistake — “not in our national-security interests,” he said.
But is there a role generally for the armed forces of two adversaries to interact? In fact, there have long been high-level meetings between U.S. and Chinese and Russian military leaders, exchanges that are seen as a way to lessen distrust and avoid miscalculations that could lead to conflict between nuclear powers.
“As much contact as we can maintain for the simple purpose of communications is a good thing,” said Bercuson.
Jolicoeur, who dealt with the PLA request to attend his conference, agreed.
“I think it’s all good that countries are talking to each other,” he said. “If there are contacts between militaries of different countries, even if they’re adversaries, it’s good to have channels of communication.”