{"id":11549,"date":"2020-05-03T09:26:06","date_gmt":"2020-05-03T13:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/?p=11549"},"modified":"2023-07-24T20:57:51","modified_gmt":"2023-07-25T00:57:51","slug":"a-spotlight-on-canada-china-relations-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/?p=11549","title":{"rendered":"A Spotlight on Canada-China Relations (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Niagara Independent, May 1, 2020 \u2013 <\/em>The last column explored three current irritants in Canada-China diplomacy: the prolonged captivity of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, China sending back two chartered planes without their payload of medical supplies, and the sudden political arrests of human rights activists in Hong Kong. Canada\u2019s relations with China are tense with a great many more contentious issues, including the Meng Wanzhou trial, the overdue decision regarding Huawei\u2019s 5G network, the canola trade dispute, and the multiple queries about China\u2019s influence over the World Health Organization (WHO) and what impact that had on the spread of the coronavirus.<\/p>\n

With growing apprehensions relating to a number of issues between the two countries, Canada\u2019s positions are seemingly ambiguous. Official government responses are scripted and any criticisms of China are muted. This obvious posturing has raised questions and concerns by two Canadians who are eminently qualified to analyze Canada-China relations: two former Canadian ambassadors to China, David Mulroney and Guy Saint-Jacques.<\/p>\n

David Mulroney, who served in Beijing between 2009 and 2012, has grown increasingly critical of the Canadian Government\u2019s unwillingness to acknowledge even the remote possibility of China\u2019s wrong doing. In a CBC interview with Vassy Kapelos, Mulroney identified Ottawa\u2019s Achilles heel, \u201cAgain and again our officials use language that tends to flatter China, tends to veer towards euphemism rather than facts. You can\u2019t get a country right if you don\u2019t even have the very basic vocabulary for describing it. Until we have the courage and the clarity of thought to do that, we are going to be floundering as we are now\u2026. There is a tendency to confuse diplomacy with flattery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mulroney levelled, \u201cPeople have been inconsistent or, frankly, cowardly in their failure to hold China to account. It is a misguided view that by flattering China that we will get better behavior from China.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a separate interview with the\u00a0National Post<\/em>, Mulroney elaborated on this thought, \u201cI\u2019m not suggesting that we need to insult China or provoke a quarrel. We should simply be guided by the facts. And right now the facts argue for the case that China was delinquent, that it wasn\u2019t transparent enough. That\u2019s not a conspiracy theory.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former ambassador assessed, \u201cWhen you start acknowledging the truth, then positive and corrective action is possible. As long as you\u2019re in denial, there\u2019s no hope of action that will ameliorate the situation. This is a tremendous missed opportunity and it\u2019s not too late for the government to slowly turn the ship around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guy Saint-Jacques, who served as Canada\u2019s envoy to China from 2012 to 2016, was pivotal in setting the Trudeau Government\u2019s first trade meetings with the Chinese Communist Party. He tells of Canada\u2019s newly minted government needing to curtail its \u201cprogressive\u201d interests once Chinese officials expressed annoyance at any mention of human rights, environmental policy and gender-based analysis. Saint-Jacques summed up the first trade mission in this way: \u201cCabinet did not fully realize what I call the dark side of China.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saint Jacques believes today Canada is in \u201ca very difficult position.\u201d In a CBC interview a few weeks ago, he explained, \u201cWe should request that a full investigation be made and I see this as a question of national security. The UN Security Council should instruct the WHO to do a full investigation to learn lessons and avoid the repetition of such a crisis in the future. Also, we have to call on a country like China to be more transparent in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saint Jacques also offered, \u201cThe lesson for Canada is we have to ask the WHO to do a much better job\u2026 In the future we could be faced with a similar problem and we have to be confident that the WHO is providing the best advice \u2013 and same thing regarding how we prepared based on the Chinese numbers, obviously those were underestimated for a number of reasons, and we cannot rely on China numbers to make our own decisions in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Mulroney sees the tough questions of the WHO and of China as the start of a much more significant discussion to be had on Canada\u2019s engagement in international diplomacy. He comments, \u201cThe larger problem for Canada is not just a health problem or a China problem; it is a global problem. China is much more influential in global bodies like the WHO, like the UN, bodies that we really depend on as a middle-power and that we helped to create. As those bodies are skewed by China\u2019s influence, they are in some respects corrupted\u2026. We are going into a world where the United States is acting more unilaterally and the multilateral world that we used to depend on is a lot less reliable. We have to do hard thinking that I don\u2019t see us doing right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Strikingly candid comments from two former Canadian ambassadors to China. Yet, when asked about this commentary, the Prime Minister deflects by saying \u201cnow is not the time to raise questions\u201d about other countries and the WHO; Canada\u2019s Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam\u00a0maintains the WHO\u2019s response to the spread of the coronavirus has been a responsible one; and, Health Minister Patty Hajdu continues to ridicule anyone who challenges the data from China. These non-responses to the former ambassadors\u2019 observations suggest there is much to learn.<\/p>\n

Chris George<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of\u00a0CG&A COMMUNICATIONS<\/a>. Contact:\u00a0ChrisG.George@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

LINK:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/niagaraindependent.ca\/a-spotlight-on-canada-china-relations-part-2\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Niagara Independent, May 1, 2020 \u2013 The last column explored three current irritants in Canada-China diplomacy: the prolonged captivity of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, China sending back two chartered planes without their payload of medical supplies, and the sudden political arrests of human rights activists in Hong Kong. Canada\u2019s relations with China are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[76],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11549"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11549"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11551,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11549\/revisions\/11551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}