National Post (National Edition)
Ottawa's new approach to China must do more than make us feel good
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is finally getting serious about China.
Two years after Chinese authorities arbitrarily detained two Canadian citizens, and three years after Trudeau failed to entice the world's second-largest economy to do a trade deal, he has accepted that he's dealing with an authoritarian bully, not an aspirant to the league of democracies.
Proof ? Instead of using the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Beijing and Ottawa as an occasion to accentuate the positive, such as China's status as the second-most-important buyer of Canadian crops and minerals, the federal government last fall called out President Xi Jinping's use of “coercive diplomacy,” a hard break from the unofficial strategy of trying to be nice.
“As we build a new framework for relations with China, Canada will work with partners to hold the Chinese government accountable to its international obligations,” François-Phillipe Champagne said in an Oct. 13 statement, one of his last significant acts as foreign affairs minister.
A “framework” is overdue. The story of China's rise from poverty over the past few decades is no longer the mostly happy one we had been telling ourselves until relatively recently. The core of that story remains true. China's economy grew 2.3 per cent in 2020 while every other major economy endured terrible recessions, putting it on track to supplant the United States as the world's biggest economy in a decade or less.
CHINA IS AT THE CENTRE OF THE MOST DYNAMIC REGION IN THE WORLD. FAILING TO CONSTRUCTIVELY ENGAGE NOW WILL RESULT IN LONG-TERM HARM TO CANADIAN COMPANIES AND WORKERS. — KEVIN CARMICHAEL
But wealth appears to have empowered the government's totalitarian instincts, no more so than in Xinjiang, where authorities have arbitrarily detained one million Turkic Muslims, according to Human Rights Watch.
Trudeau originally took a narrow, transactional approach with China. He appeared to think he could charm the Chinese into doing a “progressive” trade deal and was swatted away. Things got worse after Canada granted an extradition request from the U.S. and placed Chinese business executive Meng Wanzhou under house arrest in 2018. China jailed Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor soon after.
“The PMO didn't have any wise people,” said Wendy Dobson, co-director of the Rotman School of Management's Institute for International Business. “It set us back.”
We all grow up, and the brat pack that inherited the PMO in 2015 appears to be learning. Trudeau appointed Dominic Barton, an international business consultant with deep knowledge of China, as Canada's ambassador in Beijing. The government has also been talking to China experts for months about its new strategy. Those discussions were reflected in Champagne's statement, and the subsequent decision to join the United Kingdom in applying sanctions on goods imported from Xinjiang amidst reports of forced labour.
Now that Joe Biden is installed in the White House, Marc Garneau, who was handed Champagne's job in a cabinet shuffle earlier this month, will oversee additions and revisions. Some adjustments will be necessary because the new U.S. administration will seek a healthier rivalry with China, doing away with Donald Trump's penchant for bellicosity and confrontation.
In 2019, Jake Sullivan, the new U.S. national security adviser, and Kurt Campbell, who will oversee Biden's Asia policy, wrote an essay for Foreign Affairs magazine that argues the starting point for engaging China should be “humility” about the limits of Washington's ability to influence decisions in Beijing. Therefore, they said, the goal of U.S. policy should be to “establish favourable terms of coexistence,” thus avoiding the “kind of threat perceptions” that were a feature of the Cold War.
That direction might disappoint some of the more hawkish members of the Canadian foreign-policy elite. A side effect of jailing Kovrig and Spavor is that it has rekindled an us-versusthem impulse among some politicians and former diplomats.
Michael Chong, the Opposition critic of international affairs, advised Trudeau this week to seek admission to the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, which also includes Japan, India and Australia; ban Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. gear from the country's 5G networks; and quit the Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which is China's answer to the World Bank, the international lender that is dominated by Washington and European powers.
None of these things would help Kovrig and Spavor. Joining the Quad could make things worse, since the group, which, among other things, organizes joint military exercises, is more about containment than coexistence. The three members of Canada's telecommunications oligopoly have already said they will switch to 5G without Huawei gear, so an official ban at this stage would be hollow. The AIIB has more than 100 members and we flatter ourselves by thinking anyone would notice our departure. “I would like to see a more nuanced relationship with the Chinese,” said Dobson, who served as the Finance Department's top international diplomat in the late 1980s. “I am very disappointed that we haven't been able to unwind the Meng Wanzhou issue … That seems to have stirred up a fury, and that doesn't get us anywhere (with China) since we're small.”
Nuance doesn't mean acquiescence. The economic impact of China's retaliatory measures can be overstated in the moment when trade barriers suddenly appear. Australia, which enraged Beijing by banning Huawei in 2018 and calling for an inquiry into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, lost about US$3 billion in commodity sales to China last year, according to Bloomberg News. Canadian canola shippers were targeted by China in the aftermath of Meng's arrest, but farmers adjusted: they shipped canola worth $627 million in November, the most ever, according to Statistics Canada data.
Rather, nuance means avoiding unnecessary fights such as those Chong is proposing. China is at the centre of the most dynamic region in the world. Failing to constructively engage now will result in long-term harm to Canadian companies and workers. Canada should stand up for human rights and free trade, but the government's interventions should be about achieving something, not just making the rest of us feel good.