OTTAWA—Prime Minister Stephen Harper will take a page out of the Jean Chrétien political playbook when he heads to China Monday.
There will be no Team Canada banner or jackets in sight.
No travelling circus of premiers and corporate Canada aboard the military Airbus carrying the prime minister and his entourage to Beijing, Guangzhou and Chongqing.
But the way it is shaping up, Stephen Harper’s second official visit to China to boost political and trade ties amounts to a Team Canada expedition without the bells and whistles.
Canadian business leaders who want a stronger political engagement with Asia — and with China in particular — will be there in force.
A delegation of 10 Canadian business and academic leaders will be on the flight with Harper, the Prime Minister’s Office says.
But many more are travelling separately. In all, 40 are under the PM’s wing, but more than 100 are expected to hear Harper speak to a Canada-China business audience in the southern manufacturing centre of Guangzhou.?
In 2003, Paul Martin ditched the flag-waving Team Canada “branding” trips so closely associated with Chrétien. In 2006, Harper was happy to follow suit.
That is, until three years of keeping his distance from Beijing and vowing not to let trade — the “almighty dollar” — trump human rights concerns brought Harper no end of grief from Canadian premiers and business leaders desperate to open doors to Asia and the world’s second-fastest growing economy.
More commercial deals will likely be signed this week.
But the Canada-China Business Council and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives are calling for much more.
They want renewed annual visits between leaders. More important, they want a coherent Asia trade strategy that includes pursuit of a free-trade agreement with China or, in the immediate future, the completion of a foreign investment protection agreement, and an agreement to export uranium to China, which Australia has. Canada needs to elbow its way into the Trans-Pacific Partnership, they say.
Without a solid political framework for boosting Canada-China trade, Harder says, “We will simply fall behind our aggressive competitors in this relationship.”
There’s already catch-up to do.
Harper put China back on his foreign policy priority list in 2009. He made his first official visit, swallowed a scolding from Beijing and reset the Canada-China relationship.
This second visit has been a long time in the works.
Canadian ministers have made more than 30 treks to China since Harper was last there.
“He’s obviously taking international relations much more seriously than he did when he was in minority government, and it’s intimately tied to the prosperity agenda, which is number one priority for this government,” says Fen Hampson, director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.
The China trip is equal parts trade mission, equal parts political outreach expedition.
In a transition year for the Chinese leadership, which changes once every decade, Harper is bringing along five cabinet ministers — including trusted foreign affairs lieutenant John Baird and Joe Oliver, natural resources minister — in a display of how important the trip is to his government.
Harper will hold bilateral meetings with President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao.
But he will also have face time with “China’s next generation of leaders,” as Harper’s spokesman Andrew MacDougall puts it.
Amid the political jostling for top spots now underway in China, Harper will meet with Vice Premier Li Keqiang, a likely prospect to take over from Wen as premier.
In Guangzhou, he’ll meet Wang Yang, the up-and-coming Communist Party secretary of the southern province of Guangdong.
And in Chongqing, a western Chinese megalopolis of 33 million, Harper will sit down with Bo Xilai, another Communist Party secretary whom Time magazine described as the closest thing China has to a political rock star.
It’s a return to summit diplomacy. And the Chinese are big fans.
The Chinese government has its own wish list when Harper arrives: energy exports, yes. And Canada’s backing for China to obtain observer status at the Arctic Council. Canada is about to take over a two-year term as chair of the council, made up of eight nations that ring the North Pole. The Arctic region is believed to contain vast untapped oil and gas reserves.
Yet the trip comes amid worrying signs that China’s own economic growth may be slowing, with China’s monthly exports and imports having dropped slightly, likely due to falling demand in U.S. and European markets and reduced domestic demand.
On top of that, there are grim reports about China’s recent crackdowns on human rights.
Amnesty International Canada and other human rights activists see the trip as a chance for Harper to publicly protest rights abuses, violence by security forces against Tibetan activists, and to press the case of individual “prisoners of conscience” detained in Chinese jails.
“Prime Minister Harper used to take the position that human rights should not be bartered away for the sake of trade — and this is the position we must continue to take,” says Liberal justice critic Irwin Cotler, former attorney general.
Cotler is part of an international legal team working pro bono on behalf of imprisoned Chinese lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who was on the list of 10 individuals highlighted by the Canadian Coalition for Human Rights in China.
Gao, 45, was jailed for his very public advocacy on behalf of Falun Gong practitioners. It is believed he is being held in a Xinjiang prison in northwest China; his wife and two children defected to the U.S.
Cotler says cases like Gao’s and that of Liu Xiaobo, the jailed Nobel Peace Prize-winning democracy activist, are a test of China’s commitment to the rule of law, our bilateral relationship and the validity of our training programs.
Canada has long provided funds and expertise for legal aid and judicial training in China. Canadian officials, lawyers and judges, including Supreme Court of Canada judges who partake in the training, never tout it, lest they paint a big cost-cutting target on the programs or provoke embarrassment in China that leads to the cancellation of the training.
“We are supposed to be training them in adherence to and respect for the rule of law, for an independent, impartial judiciary, for the independence of the legal profession, and for the Chinese constitution,” says Cotler.
“But if all these things are systematically violated — as represented in the cases of Gao and Liu — then this makes a mockery” of those efforts, he said.
Hampson sees the stakes differently.
The Conservative government is “striving to find the right balance between human rights, doing business and figuring out how to have that conversation with” China, he says. “The human rights people are never going to be happy, to be blunt, because that’s the only prism through which they see the relationship.”
Furthermore, Harper may think his government’s already made his point in advance of this trip. In a speech in London on human rights last week, John Baird made a direct reference to concerns with China.
“In China, we see Roman Catholic priests, Christian clergy and their laity, worshipping outside of state-sanctioned boundaries, who are continually subject to raids, arrests and detention,” said Baird. “We see Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetan Buddhists, and Uighur Muslims face harassment and physical intimidation. These abhorrent acts fly in the face of our core principals, our core values.”
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Tonda MacCharles
There will be no Team Canada banner or jackets in sight.
No travelling circus of premiers and corporate Canada aboard the military Airbus carrying the prime minister and his entourage to Beijing, Guangzhou and Chongqing.
But the way it is shaping up, Stephen Harper’s second official visit to China to boost political and trade ties amounts to a Team Canada expedition without the bells and whistles.
Canadian business leaders who want a stronger political engagement with Asia — and with China in particular — will be there in force.
A delegation of 10 Canadian business and academic leaders will be on the flight with Harper, the Prime Minister’s Office says.
But many more are travelling separately. In all, 40 are under the PM’s wing, but more than 100 are expected to hear Harper speak to a Canada-China business audience in the southern manufacturing centre of Guangzhou.?
In 2003, Paul Martin ditched the flag-waving Team Canada “branding” trips so closely associated with Chrétien. In 2006, Harper was happy to follow suit.
That is, until three years of keeping his distance from Beijing and vowing not to let trade — the “almighty dollar” — trump human rights concerns brought Harper no end of grief from Canadian premiers and business leaders desperate to open doors to Asia and the world’s second-fastest growing economy.
More commercial deals will likely be signed this week.
But the Canada-China Business Council and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives are calling for much more.
They want renewed annual visits between leaders. More important, they want a coherent Asia trade strategy that includes pursuit of a free-trade agreement with China or, in the immediate future, the completion of a foreign investment protection agreement, and an agreement to export uranium to China, which Australia has. Canada needs to elbow its way into the Trans-Pacific Partnership, they say.
Without a solid political framework for boosting Canada-China trade, Harder says, “We will simply fall behind our aggressive competitors in this relationship.”
There’s already catch-up to do.
Harper put China back on his foreign policy priority list in 2009. He made his first official visit, swallowed a scolding from Beijing and reset the Canada-China relationship.
This second visit has been a long time in the works.
Canadian ministers have made more than 30 treks to China since Harper was last there.
“He’s obviously taking international relations much more seriously than he did when he was in minority government, and it’s intimately tied to the prosperity agenda, which is number one priority for this government,” says Fen Hampson, director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.
The China trip is equal parts trade mission, equal parts political outreach expedition.
In a transition year for the Chinese leadership, which changes once every decade, Harper is bringing along five cabinet ministers — including trusted foreign affairs lieutenant John Baird and Joe Oliver, natural resources minister — in a display of how important the trip is to his government.
Harper will hold bilateral meetings with President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao.
But he will also have face time with “China’s next generation of leaders,” as Harper’s spokesman Andrew MacDougall puts it.
Amid the political jostling for top spots now underway in China, Harper will meet with Vice Premier Li Keqiang, a likely prospect to take over from Wen as premier.
In Guangzhou, he’ll meet Wang Yang, the up-and-coming Communist Party secretary of the southern province of Guangdong.
And in Chongqing, a western Chinese megalopolis of 33 million, Harper will sit down with Bo Xilai, another Communist Party secretary whom Time magazine described as the closest thing China has to a political rock star.
It’s a return to summit diplomacy. And the Chinese are big fans.
The Chinese government has its own wish list when Harper arrives: energy exports, yes. And Canada’s backing for China to obtain observer status at the Arctic Council. Canada is about to take over a two-year term as chair of the council, made up of eight nations that ring the North Pole. The Arctic region is believed to contain vast untapped oil and gas reserves.
Yet the trip comes amid worrying signs that China’s own economic growth may be slowing, with China’s monthly exports and imports having dropped slightly, likely due to falling demand in U.S. and European markets and reduced domestic demand.
On top of that, there are grim reports about China’s recent crackdowns on human rights.
Amnesty International Canada and other human rights activists see the trip as a chance for Harper to publicly protest rights abuses, violence by security forces against Tibetan activists, and to press the case of individual “prisoners of conscience” detained in Chinese jails.
“Prime Minister Harper used to take the position that human rights should not be bartered away for the sake of trade — and this is the position we must continue to take,” says Liberal justice critic Irwin Cotler, former attorney general.
Cotler is part of an international legal team working pro bono on behalf of imprisoned Chinese lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who was on the list of 10 individuals highlighted by the Canadian Coalition for Human Rights in China.
Gao, 45, was jailed for his very public advocacy on behalf of Falun Gong practitioners. It is believed he is being held in a Xinjiang prison in northwest China; his wife and two children defected to the U.S.
Cotler says cases like Gao’s and that of Liu Xiaobo, the jailed Nobel Peace Prize-winning democracy activist, are a test of China’s commitment to the rule of law, our bilateral relationship and the validity of our training programs.
Canada has long provided funds and expertise for legal aid and judicial training in China. Canadian officials, lawyers and judges, including Supreme Court of Canada judges who partake in the training, never tout it, lest they paint a big cost-cutting target on the programs or provoke embarrassment in China that leads to the cancellation of the training.
“We are supposed to be training them in adherence to and respect for the rule of law, for an independent, impartial judiciary, for the independence of the legal profession, and for the Chinese constitution,” says Cotler.
“But if all these things are systematically violated — as represented in the cases of Gao and Liu — then this makes a mockery” of those efforts, he said.
Hampson sees the stakes differently.
The Conservative government is “striving to find the right balance between human rights, doing business and figuring out how to have that conversation with” China, he says. “The human rights people are never going to be happy, to be blunt, because that’s the only prism through which they see the relationship.”
Furthermore, Harper may think his government’s already made his point in advance of this trip. In a speech in London on human rights last week, John Baird made a direct reference to concerns with China.
“In China, we see Roman Catholic priests, Christian clergy and their laity, worshipping outside of state-sanctioned boundaries, who are continually subject to raids, arrests and detention,” said Baird. “We see Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetan Buddhists, and Uighur Muslims face harassment and physical intimidation. These abhorrent acts fly in the face of our core principals, our core values.”
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Tonda MacCharles
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