Month: December 2009

There is a great deal of hand-wringing in the business press that Chinese Premier Wei Jiabao's very public and very rare rebuke of Prime Minister Stephen Harper today has been bad for business or that it will cost us business.

Globe and Mail columnist Brian Milner writes, for example, that the rebuke “serves as a stark reminder that in the post-global-meltdown world, China, more than ever, rules the economic roost. And that there is a price to pay for ignoring that fact, however much we might abhor the wretched human rights record of the thin-skinned Communist leadership.”

Really?

Here are the stats on the value of Canada-China trade. In 2007, two-way trade between the two countries was up 13 per cent. In 2008, two-way trade was up 11 per cent. In the first six months of this year, two-way trade is up by about 3 per cent — despite a recession. Those are good numbers no matter what way you slice it. Ignoring China, if you look at those numbers, has certainly not been bad for business. Could it be better? Sure. But it ain't been headed for the dumper.

The tourism industry, one must concede, has to reason to moan because while 134 other countries in the world have “approved destination status” from China — which makes it super-easy for Chinese tourists to travel to those destinations and, without which, it makes it illegal for Canadian tour operators to even advertise in China – Canada is just getting its ADS now. But wait: It was Liberal governments of a decade ago that first negotiated ADS. Why here's David Emerson, then the LIberal international trade minister in Paul Martin's government, celebrating such a deal — in 2005. And Harper gets criticized by the Chinese for not getting things done? With all due respect, Premier Wen, when you rebuke our prime minister, you rebuke all 30 million of us – Liberal, Conservative, or NDP — whether we voted for Harper or not.

Canadians are a polite and patient people, Premier Wen, and we have some tremendous social problems of our own that we are labouring to resolve. We do that in a messy, noisy way called democracy. You don't, buddy.

And, by the way, when are you going to pull your spies out of our country? Those spies are costing us a billion dollars a month! Frankly, that ticks me off that you send your security agents into a country that's stood by you for 40 years.

Now, I don't want readers of this blog to mistake this for an apology for the current Conservative government or an attack on earlier Liberal governments. Because I'm privileged to live in a country that values an independent press, I'm lucky enough to put a question or two from time to time to my prime minister — Conservative or Liberal — that might make that prime minister a bit uncomfortable. This is instead, a response, to an unwarranted slight on the government of my country, of Canada, by a country that, it seems to me, has no moral grounds for such a public rebuke of the prime minister of all 30 million of us.

We have the natural resources China's economy craves. We have the financial talent the country needs. Indeed, the state-owned China Daily today [I'm afraid I can't find the link] reported that headhunters from here have been dispatched today to Bay Street to recruit talent from Canadian financial services firm. Why? Probably because our banks have been rated the best in the world.

What about other Western powers? Do you think the Americans can talk tough to China on human rights? ABC News today said Premier Wen is among the 10 most influential individuals in the world on the U.S. economy — and the only non-American — because China holds so much American debt. Draw your own conclusions about America's ability to talk tough to China. China holds no such sway over Canada — a credit, largely, to Liberal governments for their fiscal prudence and discipline. (Prudence and discipline which the current government, frankly, has imperiled but that's an argument for another time.) So who in the West is going to call a spade a spade in China? One of its best frends — Canada — that's who.

Canada has had diplomatic relations with China for — let me check — why 40 years now! No other Western country can say that. As former Liberal foreign affairs minister Pierre Pettigrew noted today, even the arch-Conservative John Diefenbaker shipped wheat to China when that country was starving in the 50s. Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau stuck with China in the 1970s when everyone else in the West would demonize the country. Canadian newspapers were among the first to put their journalists here. And the current prime minister, Stephen Harper, has been a strong advocate for supplanting (or supplementing) the G8 with the G20, precisely because he wanted China at the table.

Canada does this because of the 1.2 million Canadians who have origins in this country and because Canada has generally believed that engagement is the best way to achieve social and political change in China.

And yet, when our prime minister travels thousands of kilometres to visit, his Chinese hosts have the gall to embarrass him in a very public way. I'll tell you something, Premier Wen: There'd be no end of the howling from the media and the opposition in Canada if a Canadian prime minister acted that way toward a guest. It's just not done where we're from.

Harper, to his credit, was polite and respectful to the Chinese in public and, in private, I am told, reminded both President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen that their record on human rights leaves much to be desired. China, let me remind you, still refuses to let independent human rights workers into its country.

Is China improving on that score? Is it ready to join the community of nations that, like Canada, subjects itself to scrutiny on human rights and faces up to whatever defects it might find? I'll let Alex Neve, the secretary general of Amnesty International Canada answer that:

“You could point to some areas of improvement but there’s so many other things that have deteriorated in that time,” Neve told me before I left for Beijing. In the last decade, there has been “the whole relentless campaign against Falun Gong. It’s within that 10-year-period we saw the unbelievably harsh crackdowns last year in Tibet and this year against the Uygher people. It’s in that 10-year-timeframe, we’ve seen the Internet suppression really take off. At the same time, it’s within that timeframe that there have been perhaps very modest steps forward in improving how the death penalty is handled in China. There has been a very encouraging growth in a domestic human rights community, of activists and researchers and human rights lawyers. That’s good news and that’s very encouraging. The flip side is, they have also been under siege. They have been targeted for harassment, imprisonment, mistreatment. Some have had to flee the country.”

Way to go China. Five years may be too long for a Canadian leader to come over and say hi but it's definitely too long for you and your colleagues to come to Canada and see what a success we've made of our plurastic, democratic society.

In the words of Liberal MP Bob Rae, “Seems to me we just have to keep on trying to persuade them that liberty is the better way. It's something we believe in and something we should share with them.”

Here's my AudioBoo version:

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, his country's most popular politician, met Prime Minister Stephen Harper for the first time in the Great Hall of the People here in Beijing. As is customary when two leaders meet, there is a photo opportunity and, usually, the leaders make a few anodyne remarks for two or three minutes before reporters and photographers are ushered out of the room. Not this time. Jiabao, with journalists from both countries watching, publicly rebuked Harper for being, as one state-owned newspaper her put it, the “last G8 leader to visit China”. Here is the transcript followed by the audio file, if you'd like to listen for yourself:

WEN [via translator] Prime Minister Stephen Harper: welcome to paying an official visit to China. This is your first trip to China and this is the first meeting between the Chinese Premier and the Canadian Prime Minister in almost five years. Five years is too long a time for China Canada relations and that is why there are comments in the media that your visit is one that should have taken place earlier.

I remember quoting a Chinese proverb when I gave a speech during my visit to Canada in 2003. The proverb reads, “Common visions and common ideals can bring people together in spite of the thousands of miles that sets them apart.” I expressed the hope that China and Canada will set an example of long term and friendly cooperation between countries different in social systems and level of development.

Mr Prime Minister, your visit this time has a great mission and a special significance. I am willing to have an in depth exchange of views with you on China Canada relations and major issues of common interest to deepen our mutual understanding and trust and take forward exchanges and cooperation between the two sides in various areas. We hope that through your visit the China Canada relationship will turn a new page.

HARPER : Thank you very much Premier Wen. First of all it’s a delight to be here for the first time and a real honour and pleasure to visit your country. I, as I said earlier, I saw the Great Wall this morning, which is something that I think probably everybody should see before they finish passing through this life and I look forward to seeing many more of the treasures of your country and meeting with the great Chinese people.

We have had diplomatic relations between our two countries for almost forty years which has witnessed tremendous growth in not just trade and investment but interaction of our peoples. I agree with you Premier that five years is a long time. It’s also been almost five years since we’ve had yourself or President Hu in our country, and so I hope as we approach this important milestone in our relationship, the forty year anniversary, that yourself or President Hu will also have the opportunity in the not too distant future to visit Canada.

[Reporters are ushered out of the room while Harper continued speaking]

Here is the audio file of that exchange:

Having a drink with a Conservative source the other night in Ottawa, I was told that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was going to release the fourth quarter update while he was in China. No way, I said. True, my friend said. The communication shops across each government department had been warned to keep the day free today to allow for maximum news coverage of the government's quarterly report (a report demanded by the Liberals last spring as their condition for supporting the government's budget).

I was intrigued and began phoning around but, unable to find a second source to make this story stand up, I had to keep this to myself.

So, truth be told, I was not surprised to see Dimitri Soudas, the prime minister's press secretary, and his deputy, Andrew MacDougall, come walking down the aisle of the plane earlier today with a big box full of the hard copies of the very same fourth quarter update. We had just taken off from Anchorage, Alaska where the prime minister's Airbus had refueled en route from Ottawa to Beijing. I was not surprised but a bit regretful that I had not gone with gut instinct and reported earlier this week what was about to happen. And what was about to happen is that the dozen or so journalists travelling with the prime minister this week (he's in Beijing today then travels to Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Seoul, Korea) were about to engage in, by my count, the longest budget lockup ever. Much of that lockup would held somewhere high over Siberia of all places. The flight from Anchorage to Beijing was nine hours and then, we agreed, as a condition of getting the update, to respect an embargo placed upon us by the PMO not to divulge the contents of the update until, lo and behold, Harper began to speak about it in a press conference in Beijing. That's right: Beijing. Harper was going to present his “Report to Canadians”, 13 time zones and thousands of kilometres away from the House of Commons.

I asked the prime minister about this odd unfolding of events. His response — and early opposition reaction — is here.

Some have suggested that, in giving the update to reporters already weary after eight hours of plane travel from Ottawa to Anchorage, and without access to the Internet, our research librarians or any other outside experts, we were ripe to miss something in the numbers-rich 168-page document.

To our credit, we pooled our collective wisdom and I don't believe there is anything we missed. In fact, there are not a lot of new numbers in the report. I have, on the laptop I travel with, the digitial versions of the first three updates, the original federal budget, the ensuing reports of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, and several analysis of the federal economic action plan by leading Bay Street economists. We made use of that material. We were also blessed to have Julian Beltrame of The Canadian Press on this flight. Julian is CP's go-to guy for almost all things related to Flaherty and budgets and he is not fazed by a book full of numbers. Our group of journalists also included experienced vets like CTV's Bob Fife, the Globe's John Ibbitson, CBC Radio's Susan Lunn, CBC television's Terry Milewski, and our talented French-language colleagues, Madeleine Blais-Morin of RDI, Emmanuelle Latraverse of SRC, and Malorie Beauchemin of La Presse. A pretty good group, if I dare say, to go over this material during the Longest Lockup Ever.

That said: I am keen to see what my colleagues back in Ottawa come up with after going over the document and after talking to opposition MPs and economy watchers.

The government, you won't be surprised to hear, gives themselves a very big pat on the back for a job well done guiding Canada's economy through the recent recession. There were 12,000 infrastructure projects, 97 per cent of funds committed, and more than 12,000 jobs created. It all sounds wonderful. But, as opposition MPs have pointed out for more than six months, whenever these numbers are released, the government is found wanting when it comes to the data to support these claims. Indeed, one of those who wishes he could verify the data is none other than the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who knows his way around a spreadsheet.

In any event: I encourage you to review the report and I look forward to your comments and suggestions for further reporting on this document.

*The word “China”, incidentally, comes up exactly twice in the 168 page report.

Some excerpts of interviews I've done over the last couple of days about China and human rights:

First, Bob Rae, Liberal MP and his party's foreign affairs critic, asked how might Prime Minister Stephen Harper go about bringing up the issue of human rights when he meets Chinese President Hu Jintao:

Rae: I don't think there's any surprise. The Chinese are not surprised. First of all, you have to know the entire institutional structure of Canadian representation in Beijing and in the consulates is, in good measure, based on visiting prisons, making regular demarche, as they say, to the bureaucracy about what's happening to Mr. X, what's happening to Mr. Y and so on. This is what Canada does. This is in our DNA. We've been doing it for a long time. So no President of China is going to take offense. He will know that we've been raising all these cases and these issues.

From my own experience, when I used to do it as Premier of Ontario, they will have a very measured response. They'll say, well, what about the human rights of Aboriginal people living in Canada? They'll say I understand there are people living on the street in your city Mr. Rae. What about that? What about this? And so you get into a discussion and a debate. They're not unused to this discussion. They're not afraid of it. There's no reason for us to be afraid of it. It's part of an ongoing engagement not only with the, with the Chinese leadership but Chinese society generally about how a freer economy in all our entire historical experience, a freer economy generally leads to a freer society and that freer society generally leads to a freer politics.

The Chinese are very concerned about stability, they're very concerned about order. They're very concerned about a billion people. They're fearful of the consequences of losing that kind of control. Seems to me we just have to keep on trying to persuade them that liberty is the better way. It's something we believe in and something we should share with them.

And now, here's Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada:

Q: If you’re a political leader, how do you approach this issue?

Neve: I don’t think any of our organizations who work on human rights in China are saying scrap the trading relationship and pay no attention to it. What we have said all along is the problem is we went from one extreme to the other. We went from a time of complete deference when it came to human rights — the extent to which it was being discussed was once a year, in private, behind closed doors — and then swung to this rather haphazard number of instances of strong public comment. And neither of those is the right strategy.

We need something in between which is a comprehensive approach that takes account of the entire range of our relationship with China. It’s not just a trading relationship. It’s not just a human rights dialogue relationship. We have an immigration relationship, we have an international cooperation relationship. We have a multilateral relationship with China an ever-more muscular foreign policy presence on the world stage. We have a natural resources relationship with keen Chinese interest in a whole range of our petroleum and mining companies. What we need therefore is an approach to human rights that takes account of the entirety of that relationship and doesn’t relegate it to a file that one or two mid-level diplomats at foreign affairs are supposed to think about from time to time but makes it a paramount consideration in all aspects of how we have dealing with China. That’s what we need.

Q: Does Amnesty and other human rights groups have enough access to China to do its work?

Neve: We get a lot of information but it’s not [from sources] on the ground. China has never allowed Amnesty International into the country to do human rights research. We have been allowed in very occasionally. I was allowed in once to teach, for instance. I have other colleagues who have been allowed to go in to attend a conference but we have never been allowed to do on-the-ground human rights research, to visit prisons first-hand ourselves. That said, we have been still been able to do a wide range of work on China and we have some incredibly valuable and credible sources of information that we’ve built up over the years.

We’ve repeatedly said to the Canadian government, amongst others, that’s one indicator amongst many others of the state of human rights in China, that they remain so defiant. And it’s not just Amnesty, it’s all human rights organizations. They remain absolutely defiant about granting that kind of access for on-the-ground, independent, fact-finding.

Q: Over the last decade, has the human rights situation in China become better or worse?

Neve We don’t think there’s an answer to that question. You could point to some areas of improvement but there’s so many other things that have deteriorated in that time.”

In the last decade, there has been “the whole relentless campaign against Falun Gong. It’s within that 10-year-period we saw the unbelievably harsh crackdowns last year in Tibet and this year against the Uygher people. It’s in that 10-year-timeframe, we’ve seen the Internet suppression really take off. At the same time, it’s within that timeframe that there have been perhaps very modest steps forward in improving how the death penalty is handled in China. There has been a very encouraging growth in a domestic human rights community, of activists and researchers and human rights lawyers. That’s good news and that’s very encouraging. The flip side is, they have also been under siege. They have been targeted for harassment, imprisonment, mistreatment. Some have had to flee the country.”

Q. All the more reason then to insist, as a first step, that China must allow human rights monitors into the country?

Neve: That would be such a step forward if China really opened itself, even with U.N. human rights experts, some of whom have been let in from time to time to do some very limited work. That’s been problematic, too. China has often tried to dictate the terms under which U.N. experts can come in. The human rights experts haven’t been willing to do so because they don’t allow their terms to be dictated. There clearly is not a willingness and an openness to international scrutiny which many other countries in the West, even countries with serious human rights problems, recognize is part and parcel of being part of the international community. There are many countries in the world with grave human rights problems who nonetheless regularly grant access to our research teams.

We face our own critics as well. We have our own challenges as well. But we know and recognize that we need to respond to those challenges and demonstrate real progress.