6 days ago
Terry Glavin: Resist striking a 'devil's bargain' with Beijing
There is nothing quite so parochial in Canadian foreign-policy debates as the recurring imbecility that the weight of this country's heavy economic reliance on the United States should be lifted by securing advantages in deeper trade relationships with China. Lately, the proposition can even be made to appear sensible, now that the growing costs of doing business with Donald Trump's America can't be properly calculated from one day to the next. So there's a lot of it going around nowadays.
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With the capricious enactment of American import tariffs by decrees that rely on the flimsiest of pretexts, usually followed by their suspension or reduction, then reimposed or threatened again, with changed deadlines and new ultimatums, everything is said to be on the table. (Think copper, steel, aluminum, the automobile industry, agricultural supply management.)
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This is what the 'transactional' American presidency has come to mean. 'Transactional' is the diplomatic euphemism for a willingness to sell out your principles and your closest allies.
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The thing is, neither Canada nor Europe will find relief from the Trump administration's acts of vandalism within the 80-year-old transatlantic alliance by looking for some sugar daddy in Beijing. You'd have to be either a fool or a director of the Canada China Business Council to want to try.
If you like, you can imagine Canada's predicament as a matter of being squashed between two global hegemons, neither of which have any particular regard for the 20th-century's postwar international-relations dictum that you can't just go around trespassing on the sovereignty and security of your fellow United Nations member states.
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Over the past six months, Trump has threatened to resort to military power to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO member state. He has repeatedly expressed the same covetousness for Canada, which would be subdued by 'economic pressure.' Gaza's two million people should be expelled to make way for a massive real-estate development. Ukraine should surrender to Russia all the land that Vladimir Putin's soldiers have occupied in exchange for a ceasefire. That kind of thing.
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Xi Jinping's regime in Beijing, meanwhile, is busy bankrolling Russia's war on Ukraine. The Chinese Communist Party exerts a brutal control of the minority Uyghurs of Xinjiang that amounts to genocide, surpassing only China's invasion and suppression of Tibet. In violation of UN treaties, Beijing is engaged in a sadistic reign of terror in Hong Kong, which was effectively annexed following the mass pro-democracy protests of five years ago. President Xi is constantly threatening Taiwan with invasion and occupation, after having illegally annexed the South China Sea in 2016.
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It is no secret, as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has candidly assessed, that Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party pose 'an enduring threat to Canada.' By espionage, hacking, strong-arm tactics, transnational repression of diaspora communities, influence-peddling, coercion, 'elite capture' strategies, election interference, intellectual-property theft and other clandestine means, Beijing poses far and away 'the greatest counter-intelligence threat to Canada,' CSIS has determined.
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None of this appears to bother Julian Karaguesian, a visiting lecturer at McGill University, or Robin Shaban, a former adviser to the department of finance and a fellow of the Beijing-friendly Public Policy Forum.
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This week, in a Globe and Mail opinion piece titled 'Let's free ourselves of the U.S. and forge closer ties with China,' Karaguesian and Shaban claim that the understanding of China as an unreliable trading partner bent on world domination is a 'made-in-Washington narrative' from which Canada must break free, and only Canada's 'long-standing subordination to the U.S.' prevents us from doing so.
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Because Canadians are 'clinging to an Atlanticist-G7 worldview,' we are trapped in paralysis, and instead — citing Columbia University's Jeffrey Sachs — we should willingly embrace the reality of 'the new multipolar world.' Not coincidentally, Sachs, a once-respected economist, is best known nowadays as an apologist for Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
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Karaguesian and Shaban propose a standpoint that is indistinguishable from the pleadings of Beijing's propaganda platforms and Chinese diplomats in Canada. Michael Kovrig, on the other hand, takes a different view.
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Kovrig is the former foreign service officer and China analyst who was imprisoned and held hostage in China along with fellow Canadian Michael Spavor for more than 1,000 days, in retaliation for the detention in Vancouver of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. Meng was released from house arrest in 2021 in a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department related to charges of violating sanctions on Iran. The 'two Michaels' were released simultaneously.
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In a lengthy analysis published by the Canadian International Council last week, Kovrig sets out the case for an approach to China centred squarely on Canadian values. He dismisses Beijing's diplomatic entreaties this way: 'The implicit deal: kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party in return for economic benefits, sacrifice Canadian manufacturing for agricultural exports.' That's a reference to Canada's tariffs on Chinese electrical vehicles and China's tariffs on canola, pork, peas and some fisheries products. To cave to China would amount to striking a 'devil's bargain,' and its long-term costs would outweigh any benefit to Canada.
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Canada's recent reluctance to kowtow has a lot less to do with what Washington wants and a lot more to do with what Canadians want, Kovrig argues. What the Chinese Communist Party and its Canadian friends don't appreciate is that Canada's national interests are expected to align with Canadian values. It's the way democracies work.
