Canada needs to review its China policy, panelists say

Canada should pursue an independent foreign policy based on co-existence, rather than be caught between the super-power competition between China and the United States, the participants of a virtual panel discussion hosted by the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy said this week.

"This is ultimately about great power competition between China and US. Whatever the merits of the Chinese or American actions, we were caught in between," panelist Senator Yuen Pau Woo said Monday.

"We will pursue a policy on China yet to be determined, but which is based on coexistence rather than elimination of the threat," said Woo, who is the former president and CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation.

Following the release of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, there has been calls for a clearer articulation of Canada's policy towards China, Woo said. However, he is not enthusiastic about doing so now, because what he called "the fever "in relations between Ottawa and Beijing for the last three or four years has yet to break.

The past three years have witnessed a sharp downturn in Canada-China relations, most notably due to the arrest of Meng at the behest of the United States.

Webinar participant Henri-Paul Normandin, former Canadian Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, suggested Canada cannot fall entirely in line behind the US if it wishes to preserve an independent foreign policy.

"American foreign policy is not always in our best interest. Obviously, the US is a close partner, and is a good partner, but sometimes they make choices, which are not in our best interests," Nomandin said.

Woo stressed that the most important thing Canadians need to do on China policy is "to change the narrative on China in the media" and in all the influential sectors of society and the public.

He said Canada can express its disagreement with China, "but if we continue down the path where our national security agencies, universities, and private sector companies essentially stay away from China because if somehow every Chinese entity, individual or immigrant is suspected as being connected to the state, we no longer can have a China policy of any sort."

According to Woo, Western countries believe they were "unwitting dupes" of China, who made them captive to Chinese cheap goods and services.

"That's a gross misrepresentation of the story, we were willing partners in all of this and not only that, but we also prospered on the backs of cheap Chinese labor," Woo said. The Chinese have been producing cheap goods for the West, "earning cents on the dollar", he said, "and we were very happy for that to take place because it gave us an era of low inflation, high productivity growth and rising standards of living."

Woo warned that it is a "misrepresentation" and "very dangerous to suggest that China tricked the West into the world it is in now." The reason why the West has an economic conflict with China is because China wants to produce high tech goods, and wants to compete in the market, Woo said,

"If we fail to see that, I think we fail to understand the very fundamental aspiration of the Chinese people, which is to break out of the 40- year trap of producing cheap stuff at very low wages," Woo said.

In terms market competition, Normandin said: "It's understandable that the US wants to get tough on China in the context of global competition, he added, "but I'm afraid that the US may be overdoing it."

Normandin, who was a former Counsellor at the Canadian embassy in Beijing, quoted a recent article in Foreign Affairs Magazine, The Age of America First by Richard N. Haass, who said that "competing with China is essential, but it cannot provide the organizing principle for American foreign policy in an era increasingly defined by global challenges."

"I think a little recalibration may be necessary on the side of the US," Normandin continued. "You know, the US is not always right and sometimes they will get things wrong. We just have to think about Iraq… I think we'll have to navigate this and not simply stick on one side."