Prime Minister Stephen Harper will meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao, visit the Great Wall of China and honour Canadian soldiers killed in Hong Kong during the Second World War as part his first trip to China.
In the last month, Harper has visited India, Singapore, Trinidad and Tobago and, on Tuesday, will depart for China, where he'll touch down in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. He will also visit South Korea while he's in the region Dec. 2-7 and become the first Canadian prime minister to address the South Korean national assembly.
"The most important deliverable about this visit is the visit itself," said Peter Harder, president of the Canada China Business Council and a former deputy minister at the department of Foreign Affairs. "The bottom line from a business perspective is that the Chinese business culture works best when there is a strong political relationship at the top and I hope that this visit this isn't just a one-off but actually the beginning of a more sustained engagement by the prime minister and his government.
Some business leaders and some of his political opponents have accused Harper of letting the China-Canada relationship languish by failing to visit the country.
"The prime minister's got some lost ground to make up with the Chinese because we have a huge and very dynamic Chinese community here in Canada and yet it took him four years to make this visit," said NDP Leader Jack Layton. "That was too long and he started out with a lot of criticisms and without really opening any doors."
Tags: stephen harper, china, canada foreign policy