Seeking a Strategic Vision for Canada-China Relations
| Author | Wenran Jiang |
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200906400403 |
| Subject Matter | Canada and Asia |
Seeking a strategic
vision for Canada-
China relations
In celebrating the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the Asia Pacific
Foundation of Canada, a key task is to reflect critically on Canada-China
relations. As a rising global superpower and Canada’s second-largest trading
partner, China is rapidly becoming one of the most important countries for
Canadian foreign policy. Canada’s relations with China have undergone
memorable and significant developments in recent decades. Ottawa opened
trade with China in the early 1960s by selling it wheat, a scarce commodity
in the world’s most populated country, which at the time was experiencing
famine on a massive scale. In 1970, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau
established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic—ahead of most
other western countries. The two countries have enjoyed steady
improvements in bilateral ties over much of the past 40 years.
Wenran Jiang is an associate professor of political science at the University of Alberta and
Mactaggart Research Chair of the China Institute. The author would like to thank Yuen Pau
Woo for his academic advice, Simin Yu for his research assistance, and Trish Saywell for her
editing help.
| International Journal | Autumn 2009 | 891 |
| Wenran Jiang |
Until the Conservatives came to power in early 2006 under the
leadership of Stephen Harper, Canada’s China policy was rather consistent
and nonpartisan. This was the case under various Liberal governments and
during the years when the Conservative government of Prime Minister Brian
Mulroney was in office. Beijing had also viewed Canada as a friendly western
power and, in recent years, increasingly as a potential market for China’s
dynamic modernization program. Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to
Canada in the autumn of 2005 marked a new height in bilateral ties. Both
countries agreed to elevate their bilateral relations to a “strategic
partnership,” a term that Beijing uses to define key close relations with
countries around the world.
But after the Conservatives took office in early 2006, Harper made
unannounced and yet obvious changes to Canada’s China policy. Ottawa
stopped using the term “strategic partnership” to describe bilateral relations
and removed China from the priority list of Canadian foreign policy. Harper
has yet to visit China after three-and-a-half years in office.
Nevertheless, there are also signs that the Conservative government is
making major readjustments to its China file. Four federal ministers—of
international trade, transport and infrastructure, foreign affairs, and
finance—visited China over a four-month span this year, apparently to
prepare the groundwork for Harper’s visit to Beijing this fall. With such
timing in mind, this article will review the rise of China as a global power and
its implications for Canada, evaluate critical issues in Canada-China
relations, and, finally, offer policy recommendations for a nonpartisan China
policy.
THE RISE OF CHINA AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR CANADA
When the Asia Pacific Foundation was created a quarter of a century ago,
China was just beginning its reform and “open-door” policy. China’s story
since then has been one of explosive economic growth and integration with
the world. During this process, the state has changed from an ideologically
driven communist apparatus into a market-oriented one. China today is the
third-largest world economy, the second-largest trading nation, and the
largest holder of foreign reserves. Beijing has become the largest debt holder
of the United States, using much of its foreign earnings to purchase US
treasury and other bonds and financing the US deficit economy. It also
attracts the largest amount of foreign direct investment among the
developing countries.
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| Seeking a strategic vision for Canada-China relations |
All of this was driven by the Communist party of China and its push to
modernize industry, agriculture, science and technology, and defence.
Through a very competitive, cutthroat market economy, China has become
deeply integrated into the world economy. China has the largest goods-and-
services-to-GDP ratio among the major economies, much larger than that of
Japan, South Korea, or other southeast Asian economies, with the exception
of Singapore. This trend has accelerated since China entered the World
Trade Organization in 2001.
On the sociological level, however, China’s growth story has also been
about a very strong desire by ordinary Chinese to have a better life. They long
for the kind of living standards enjoyed in North America and other advanced
industrialized regions. In the past 25 years, China has registered the largest
internal migration in world history: more than 350 million people have
moved into the cities and another 130-150 million rural migrant workers are
working in urban centres. This urbanization trend will increase even faster
in the next 10-20 years, with another 350 million people expected to become
city dwellers in 2020.1
All of this has implications for China and the rest of the world. First, the
Chinese economy, despite the global economic crisis of the past year, will
continue to expand into the foreseeable future. The world’s most populated
country will increase its consumption level substantially (currently just 37
percent of GDP, compared with 70 percent in the US). Construction of
housing, highways, mass transit, and other infrastructure projects will
continue to boom. The auto industry will become the largest in the world
(for the first time, more cars were sold in China than in the US last year).
China will become the largest tourist destination in the world by 2015; it
currently ranks fourth, with 150 million visitors in 2008. And in 2010, 65
million Chinese are expected to travel around the world.2
Second, China has fuelled its rapid economic growth in the past three
decades through a traditional development model featuring heavy
industrialization, labour- and capital-intensive manufacturing industries,
1 Dexter Roberts, “China prepares for urban revolution,” BusinessWeek, 13 November
2008, www.businessweek.com.
2 “Tourism industry expects no slump after Olympics,” China Radio International, 19
June 2008; Xiang Li, Rich Harrill, Muzaffer Uysal, Traverse Burnett, and Xiaofeng Zhan,
“Estimating the size of the Chinese outbound travel market: A demand-side approach,”
Tourism Management, April 2009.
| International Journal | Autumn 2009 | 893 |
| Wenran Jiang |
export-led growth, low labour costs, and extensive damage to the
environment. China is already the world’s second-largest energy consumer,
the second-largest energy producer, and the second-largest power market.
To meet future growth goals, China will need more energy and resources,
which will lead to extractive activities on a massive scale both inside and
outside China. China’s modernization drive and its position as the “factory
of the world” will require huge increases in energy consumption. With about
seven percent of global GDP in 2008, China consumes 42.6 percent of the
world’s coal, 60 percent of its iron, 38 percent of its steel, 54 percent of its
cement, 28.5 percent of its copper, and 35 percent of its aluminum.3
Third, the environmental damage China has sustained during the
industrialization process is becoming a global problem. Beijing’s
modernization efforts involve a heavy industrial structure, a fast-growing car
industry, and many polluting industries set up by US and other western
multinationals in China, all of which have caused severe damage to the
country’s ecosystem. Today China is one of the worst polluters on earth. It is
the largest consumer of the world’s construction materials, expends the most
energy in unit-GDP production, and ranks first in air and water pollution,
with 70 percent of its rivers and 90 percent of its city rivers polluted.4 China
is also home to 16 out of 20 of the most polluted cities on earth. While the
US and other industrialized countries remain the biggest producers of
carbon-dioxide emissions on a per capita basis, China is catching up fast; it
became the overall largest CO2 emitter in 2007.5 Being a signatory to the
3 “World coal consumption rises 3.1 percent in 2008: BP,” Reuters, 10 June 2009,
http://in.reuters.com; Joe McDonald, “Rio detentions complicate China iron ore talks,”
Associated Press, 14 July 2009, www.wtopnews.com; “China’s steel use to go down
five percent: World Steel Association,” Xinhua, 28 April 2009; “2009 global cement
consumption stabilization followed by 2010 recovery,” Portland Cement Association, 30
July 2009; “World cement consumption contracts,” Portland Cement Association, 9
July 2009; Frank Holmes, “China assumes copper crown,” Resource Investor, 9 July
2009, www.resourceinvestor.com; “China copper imports at new high, aluminum
surges,” Reuters, 22 May, 2009.
4 “Jingji fazhan yu huanjing baohu” (“Economic development and environmental
protection”), speech by Pan Yue, China’s minister of environmental protection, at the
21st century annual conference on China’s economy, 20 December 2006,
www.sepa.gov.cn.
5 “Global fossil CO2 emissions for 2006,” Netherlands Environmental Assessment
Agency, 21 June 2007, www.mnp.nl.
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| Seeking a strategic vision for Canada-China relations |
Kyoto protocol but, as a developing country, not subject to its emission-
reduction standards, China is releasing ever-more...
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