Why is Ottawa still bungling the China file?

As Canada dawdles on bridge-building with Beijing, countries like Australia are cleaning up, critics say
Mar 07, 2009 04:30 AM

.....Numbers tell the story.

Ottawa says Canada's exports to China rose to $10.4 billion last year, an increase of 10.5 per cent. But Australia's exports last year totalled $47 billion – a whopping increase of 44 per cent year over year.

Australia has no obvious structural advantages: the population is two-thirds that of Canada; it's economy is smaller – in GDP the World Bank ranks Canada 9th, the Aussies 15th; and flying times from Beijing to Vancouver and Beijing to Sydney are the same – in fact, the air time to Vancouver is a little shorter.

......The difference, Burton observes, is that Australia has made China a priority.

Canada has not.

Canada's approach to China has grown "stagnant," "out of date" and "less and less effective," he says.

Australia, by comparison, has leapt at the chance to engage the Middle Kingdom with enthusiasm and efficiency – assigning "higher ranks" of diplomats to its Beijing post, says Burton.

Of course, it helps to have a prime minister like Kevin Rudd, who majored in Chinese language and history in university, is proficient in Mandarin and was posted to Beijing as a diplomat before entering Australian politics.

.......Back in Ottawa, Rae, the Liberals' foreign affairs critic, lambasted Harper last week for what Rae called his "amateurish approach" to Canada-China relations. He urged the Prime Minister to "reach out to China directly and ... repair the damage he and his government have done."

That damage, Rae said, included Harper's decision not to attend the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Conservative MP Rob Anders' comparing the Beijing Games to those hosted by the Nazis in 1936 and then-foreign affairs minister Peter MacKay's dismissive treatment of China's ambassador when that diplomat appealed for an initial meeting........
http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/598211

Why the Cons would neglect to create trade ties with a market like China is beyond me.

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However much the world has changed, many Conservatives remain psychologically stuck the Cold War. For them, China is still the communist behemoth of Moe Tse Tung that they passionately hate. Also, the Conservative evangelical base also vilifies China because of its purported godlessness and general unfriendliness to missionary Christian zealots.

Both of these factors combine to create a hostility towards China by Canadian Conservatives that has nothing to do with much of anything. Harper likes to play to this conservative base whenever possible, and probably figures he can do so in the matter of China without any serious consequences.

In fact, given the tendency of Chinese leaders to have very long memories, Harper is doing enormous long-term harm to Sino-Canada relations, and Canada will end up paying for his political gamesmanship for a long time to come.

Not that Harper cares much about this damage. He'll be long gone.

- B

I forgot to mention above that the Cons dislike for China also reflects the derivative nature of Canada's current crop of conservatives. People like Harper and most of his caucus get their political inspiration and much of their perspective from the right-wing U.S. Republican party and the right wing bloggery.

I was reminded of this today when reading an article about how the Harperites are cutting and starving out the department of foreign affairs. Their antipathy towards this department is a not really a Canadian issue, it is an imported bias against the State department in the U.S, where the right wing has always found state department to be too liberal for their tastes.

The Canadian conservatives attack on foreign affairs and its diplomats is really just an exercise in borrowing political issues and perspectives from the U.S. right wing. While this issue has no real roots in Canadian politics (e.g. the federal PCs never had a bias against the Department of Foreign Affairs) the effect will be real: our foreign service and our future ability to conduct diplomacy is really being gutted.

- B