Follow the money to get the uproar about China
China is everyone’s favourite whipping boy.
It is accused of committing genocide against the Uighurs, destroying democracy in Hong Kong and threatening members of Canada’s Chinese diaspora.
The U.S. says China is stealing American technology. Washington and some of its closest allies warn that to even use Chinese-made telecommunication equipment risks national security.
Certainly, there are valid reasons to criticize China. Its gangster tactics in the arrest and imprisonment of the Canadians known as the “two Michaels” is unconscionable.
But what’s interesting is that all of this has been turned into a full-bore attack against Beijing.
Many governments run roughshod over democratic rights. Think Saudi Arabia. Why is China being singled out? And why now?
A clue can be found in the business pages. On Sunday, 15 nations — including China — announced the formation of the world’s largest trading bloc.
Known as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), it includes Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
The U.S. is visibly absent from this new bloc, as is Canada. Indeed, the RCEP is widely viewed as a victory for China in its rivalry with the U.S. over who will dominate the world economy.
Early on, the Americans had tried to take the lead by throwing their weight behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade bloc that specifically excluded China. But the election of Donald Trump in 2016 put an end to that.
Trump pulled the U.S. out of the TPP. The remaining 11 members (including Canada) went ahead anyway with a truncated version of the pact. But with the U.S. gone, the energy went out of the project.
In particular, there seemed no need to exclude China. Countries like Japan, which had never stopped talking to Beijing, dusted off plans for forging a new China-centred trade bloc, this one without the U.S.
Once operational, the RCEP will cover more than two billion people, or onethird of the world’s population, making it bigger than both CUSMA — the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement — and the European Union. Its 15 members are Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
Designed to cater to investors, the RCEP ignores issues that concern Canada these days such as labour and environmental standards.
Instead, it is a stripped down bonanza for business — which is exactly what the signatories want.
And it is a bonanza firmly centred in China.
So it should come as no surprise that the U.S. wants to trash-talk China. In the global power game, China is winning. Not only is it a major economy in its own right. It is the centrepiece of an alliance that, within the next few years, could play a significant role in the world economy.
The easiest way to attack China is to zero in on its handling of human rights. That record is abysmal. Beijing used force in the 1980s to integrate Tibetans into China. Beijing is using force now to integrate Uighurs into China. But only now is the world paying attention.
It’s the same with Hong Kong. The territory has never been run democratically. It wasn’t democratic when it was a British colony. It wasn’t democratic when it was handed back to China in 1997.
And it is not democratic now. But only now are the critics complaining.
Ditto the Uighurs. The world had little to say when China was fighting a lowlevel Uighur insurgency in Xinjiang province. Now, Beijing is routinely accused of genocide.
Would China’s critics be as harsh if it posed less of a threat to American economic hegemony? To ask the question is to answer it.
Once operational, the RCEP will cover more than two billion people, or one-third of the world’s population, making it bigger than both CUSMA and the European Union