It didn’t take long for the Canadian government to show its displeasure with Beijing’s knee-jerk reaction to dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month.
No sooner had Liu’s wife in turn been placed under house arrest by the Chinese security apparatus than Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was telling an audience: “The friendship between Canada and China has ... grown in recent years in the context of a frank and respectful dialogue on the universal principles of human rights and the rule of law.”
Right. Harper also told the conference celebrating 40 years of official Sino-Canadian relations that Canada could now talk to Beijing about human rights in a “respectful” manner that (hold your breath) would not harm trade relations.
It should be mentioned at the outset that Harper’s remarks came as he was hailing the “strategic partnership” (here Ottawa is plagiarizing Beijing’s favorite terminology) that has developed between the two countries — and by this he means Canada starting to look more and more like a source of energy for the Asian superpower.
Not so long ago, Harper was getting heat from the Canadian business community for taking too firm a stance on human rights in China, for vowing, less than four years ago, not to sell out Canadian values to the “almighty dollar.”
What happened, then, to so radically alter Harper’s views? Certainly it wasn’t any perceivable improvement in the human rights situation in China, for had this been the case, there would have been no validity to awarding Liu the Peace Prize. Liu received the prize because the situation remains bad in China.
Was it, perchance, the “almighty dollar”?
China’s “insatiable” thirst for energy and natural resources, added to Canada’s positioning as an “energy superpower,” have put the two countries in a position where they can cooperate to their mutual benefit, Harper said. Sadly, the prime minister doesn’t seem to understand that an improved human rights situation in China would also benefit Canada, as it is becoming increasingly clear that the more powerful China becomes, the easier it gets for it to impose its authoritarian values, the so-called “Beijing consensus,” on its partners — Canada included.
This about-face, furthermore, makes Harper sound like a fraud. “Frank” and “respectful” dialogue on human rights and the rule of law with Beijing means bending over backwards to avoid offending its sensibilities (and thereby hurt trade relations) by pointing out the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) serious shortcomings on both items. Harper’s is a total abdication of his country’s responsibility to take the lead, as a developed liberal democracy, in shaping the human rights dialogue with China.
While it could be said that a confrontational approach over the decades has for the most part failed to bring about hoped-for liberalization in the Chinese political system, even more certain is that not raising the issue with Beijing will encourage its leadership to show even less restraint in the treatment of its dissidents and minorities.
Any country deserving of respect should be able to transcend its economic potential and engage the world in full confidence of its value system. If, as Harper argues, China’s thirst for energy were “insatiable,” wouldn’t it covet Canada’s rich natural resources even if Ottawa continued to criticize the abuses and atrocities committed to ensure the survival of the CCP? Why, then, the unnecessary concession?
Why, then, must Ottawa waste away the country’s enviable reputation on matters of human rights and the rule of law as if it were some stigma to be ashamed of?
Not only has Harper sold out, something he vowed he would never do, but he also appears to be taking pride in it.
Ideas matter. They especially matter in world affairs. And in communist countries, it is communist ideas, not supreme leaders’ personality traits, that matter most. That is the reality in the People’s Republic of China. All Chinese communist leaders — from Mao Zedong (毛澤東) through Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), from Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) through to Xi Jinping (習近平) — have always held two key ideas to be sacred and self-evident: first, that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is infallible, and second, that the Marxist-Leninist socialist system of governance is superior to every alternative. The ideological consistency by all CCP leaders,
The US on Friday hosted the second Global COVID-19 Summit, with at least 98 countries, including Taiwan, and regional alliances such as the G7, the G20, the African Union and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) attending. Washington is also leading a proposal to revise one of the most important documents in global health security — the International Health Regulations (IHR) — which are to be discussed during the 75th World Health Assembly (WHA) that starts on Sunday. These two actions highlight the US’ strategic move to dominate the global health agenda and return to the core of governance, with the WHA
Just as the cause of the Kursk submarine disaster remains shrouded in mystery — the nuclear-powered Russian submarine suffered an explosion during a naval exercise on Aug. 12, 2000, and sank, killing all 118 crew onboard — it is unlikely that we will ever get to the bottom of the sequence of events last month that led to the sinking of the Moskva guided missile cruiser, the flagship of the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet. Ukraine claims it struck the vessel with two missiles, while Russia says ammunition onboard the ship exploded and the ship tipped over while being towed
The war in Ukraine continues, and lines are slowly being drawn in the sand. Nations have begun imposing sanctions; few can ignore the reality of Russia’s aggression and atrocities, especially as it edges to the possibility of making a full declaration of war. For Taiwan, this resurrects a different reality, the tangled web of its own complex past and how as a colony of Japan, it became involved with Russia, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Some role reversals are immediately evident. Taiwan is now an independent nation and the CCP rules China. The CCP indirectly
RSS