Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney shakes hands with President of China Xi Jinping in Beijing, China, on Jan. 16.Sean Kilpatrick/Reuters
Charles Burton is a former diplomat at Canada’s embassy in Beijing, a senior fellow at Sinopsis.cz, a China-focused think tank based in Prague and author of The Beaver and the Dragon: How China Out-Manoeuvred Canada’s Diplomacy, Security and Sovereignty.
Nearly three months after Jennifer May’s four-year appointment as Canadian ambassador to China ended, the office remains dark, with little word about why.
This is obviously a key position in Canada’s diplomatic corps, but in an era of prioritizing trade relations, this office requires more than a sharp business mind.
If the government were to appoint a strictly boardroom wizard, expect a firestorm of outrage – especially from Canadians of Tibetan, Uyghur, Hong Kong or Taiwanese origin who are subject to China’s new Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress in China, which legally assimilates all ethnic minorities into a single Han Chinese national identity.
The legislation also tramples foreign sovereignty, presuming to reach into places like Canada, declaring that organizations or individuals outside of China who “commit acts aimed at the PRC that undermine ethnic unity and progress or create ethnic division are to be pursued for legal responsibility.”
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This is just one reason Ottawa needs to appoint an ambassador with the skill to manage significant non-trade challenges in defending Canadian interests against efforts to exploit the asymmetrical character of Canada-China relations.
When Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met Canadian counterpart Anita Anand for bilateral talks this spring, he said our relations must be based on “setting aside differences and seeking common ground.” But experience shows that Beijing never sets aside any differences. Rather, China expects Ottawa to simply abandon any non-trade concerns in return for greater access to the Chinese market.
In this instance, the carrot was Mr. Wang speculating that if bilateral relations maintain “a momentum of development, and our policies remain stable and positive,” trade could grow 50 or even 100 per cent, “because China will soon become the world’s largest market, and the Chinese market is opening up to Canada more and more.”
When then-Chinese president Hu Jintao visited prime minister Paul Martin in 2005, the leaders elevated relations to a “strategic partnership” and promised to double bilateral trade within five years.
Eleven years later, premier Li Keqiang told then-prime minister Justin Trudeau that China would double trade with Canada by 2025, along with settling a dispute over canola and talks on free trade.
The promises never materialized, and Beijing’s mercantilistic regime – which strictly controls the economy to maximize state wealth and power – will never give Canada access to any significant share of China’s internal markets. Beijing sustains its economy with exports, not imports.
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So it seems Prime Minister Mark Carney was played earlier this year when he let China export a quota of EVs into Canada under preferential tariffs for several years, in exchange for a nine-month reduction in China’s punitive tariffs on Canadian canola meal.
China’s Foreign Minister and its ambassador to Canada have been clear that if we want China to keep buying our canola after the agreement expires in December, we better comply with seven new conditions that Canada has agreed to for revising the Canada-China Strategic Partnership.
These “co-operative mechanisms” – including a Political and Security Consultation Mechanism, and a National Security and Rule of Law Dialogue – are blatantly designed to tip any dialogue in China’s favour.
These restrictions on dialogue will nicely defuse Canadian outrage at China’s violations of international law, its influence and transnational repression programming in Canada, and our efforts to stop the transfer of sensitive technologies to China’s military-industrial complex.
Canada has further allowed itself to be caught in a web of Chinese coercion. For example, facing pressure from the threat of further U.S. tariffs, Canada recently tabled legislation prohibiting imports of goods produced by forced labour. But Beijing is weaponizing a specific clause in that legislation, which allows Ottawa discretion over blacklisting geographic regions alleged to be complicit in forced-labour production. China wants Canada to exempt supply chains tied to Uyghur and Tibetan regions, and will likely attempt to leverage this by stalling negotiations under the Canada-China Economic and Trade Cooperation Roadmap, which was completed during Mr. Carney’s visit to China in January, to reinvigorate the countries’ relationship through such channels as trade and investments.
Chances are Beijing may succeed in this manoeuvre.
But to step back for perspective, the real question is this: How many more times will Ottawa be flim-flammed by Chinese politicians dissembling about huge economic benefits if we give them what works so well in their favour?