Abstract
This paper examines the challenges Canada faces in forging a diplomacy appropriate for the changing power configuration in global politics. The reshaping of the international order—with China pushing for a more hierarchical view of international relations, and the administration of Donald Trump repositioning the USA in global politics—provides Canada with the impetus to rediscover the traditional role that middle powers played as reliable middle managers for the global project. Today, such “middle management” is deprived of a reliable role. Since China has yet to articulate a coherent normative vision of a new global order, and the USA is retreating to a purely transactional view of trade and diplomacy, Canada and other middle powers have few choices other than to try to adapt to the changes in the hopes of sustaining the normative mesh that has upheld the post-war order.
Keywords
After nine years of ideologically-tinged ambivalent relations between Canada and China, Justin Trudeau has embarked on a vigorous effort to restore Sino–Canadian relations to a positive new trajectory. This has been met with skeptical and borderline hostile responses from opinion leaders who not only object to China’s human rights record, but question whether it is even possible to build a relationship with the Chinese regime on a reciprocal basis at all. 1 This paper reviews these arguments in the context of the existing challenges of the bilateral relationship and what this means for Canada to build a middle power diplomacy appropriate for the power configuration of the twenty-first (Pacific) century. The disjuncture between our ambition and the orientation and capacity of our foreign policy and security institutions keeps our engagement at best fragile, and highly contingent. Deepening our institutional engagement runs into problems of capacity on one hand, and the absence of an appropriate normative framework on the other.
Since the opening of diplomatic relations with China nearly fifty years ago, the circumstances of our relationship have shifted dramatically. This paper reviews the premise which guided our relationship, and follows its decomposition in the current era. The premise from the beginning was that we were helping to bring China into the global community, and that this process would have a benign impact on China and enhance Canada’s own status in the world. Moreover, despite misgivings from some quarters at the outset, it was assumed that this would complement our middle power diplomacy anchored in our relationship to our senior ally to the south. Three developments radically altered the premise: first, China’s spectacular growth and expansion of its power in multiple dimensions reversed our positioning in the scales of global influence; second, economic success has reinforced, rather than attenuated the centrality of the Communist Party in its political system, belying assumptions about the corrosive effects of market economics on its authoritarian regime; and third, the rise of nativist and protectionist populism under Donald Trump (partially in reaction to relative loss of US power attendant on globalization and the rise of China) has shifted the grounds beneath our alliance.
This paper will show that Canada built its relations with China without concomitant hard power capacity in the Western Pacific, and largely as an auxiliary add-on to our transatlantic relations. Whatever leverage we had in the relationship was largely determined by an accumulated legacy of good will premised on our self-perception of agents of China’s transformation. However, when that transformation failed to materialize on our terms, and instead China emerged as a powerful influence of its own even on our own domestic markets, that hope became tinged with fear. Growing Chinese power became associated with illiberal government, environmental depredation, and cold materialism. Furthermore, as the USA wavered in its commitment to global leadership of a liberal order, Canada lost a bulwark against which to spread benign influence worldwide, even as it sought to engage China in pursuit of a globalist agenda of multilateralism and global custodianship. Canada’s relationship with China founders on a weak normative and institutional lattice on which to sustain a relationship that is materially rewarding and politically complementary to our middle power ambitions.
Canada’s relationship with China was born of hope and wavers on fear. In between, exaggerated optimism and a misty view of unbounded opportunity succumbed to unrealized dreams and a mix of borrowed and self-generated anxieties. Much of our relationship with China has been characterized by phantom projection joined with absent-minded attention to our self-interest.
Canada built a “special” relationship with China on an understanding that we were destined and uniquely qualified to bring China into international society—both because we were so securely anchored into the structure of global governance that we helped elaborate during the post-war era, and second, because we perceived ourselves as unencumbered by constraints of colonial and imperialist baggage. 2 We projected a special relationship on the conviction of a benevolent mission with a carefree view of a relationship conveniently beyond our core interests and primary partnerships.
Canada was never comfortable in excluding China from international society and particularly from the United Nations (UN). 3 Canada acceded to pressure from the USA only in the darkest days of the Cold War largely because it saw this as essential to consolidating the Atlantic Alliance. With the alliance secure and the threat of nuclear weapons growing, when China emerged as a nuclear power, Canada actively sought to bring it back into the community of nations. 4 In opening relations in the midst of China’s self-imposed isolation occasioned by the Cultural Revolution, we played a vanguard role among Western nations, basking in the afterglow of the euphoria generated by the Kissinger–Zhou Enlai/Nixon–Mao match-up, and unfettered by the strategic complications of abandoning Taiwan and side-lining Japan. We stretched the boundaries of the Western alliance without sacrificing anything in return. We had modest expectations of improved trade, and benign hope for a more inclusive global structure.
Following the death of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping’s embrace of reform and opening changed our calculus of the stakes and outcome. We enthusiastically launched a Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) development program aimed at providing the software of a modern market economy and building linkages with China through educational institutions that we hoped would help to transform Chinese society in our image. Such hopes at the state-to-state level were shattered by the events at Tiananmen in 1989, but our focus on the human dimension of interaction kept our doors open and persuaded us to resume our aid program soon after. For the last quarter of the twentieth century, Canada expended a significant effort into bringing China into international society. Once Deng Xiaoping opened China’s door and began the process of market reform, Canada took a lead in assisting China’s efforts to “link rails to the world,” not just through bilateral and multilateral engagement but through a targeted policy of international assistance. Informally, the initial floating of an aid program was communicated as a return, a kind of kickback on the mounting trade surpluses Canada had accumulated through years of wheat sales. Logically, assistance in developing the infrastructure of a market economy would assist China in developing its own trade and investment strategy to reverse its chronic trade deficit. At the same time, this fit the pattern of Canada’s grand strategy by working to integrate China into the institutional and normative framework of “embedded liberalism.” 5
The bulk of our development assistance was channelled into training, much of it training of officials in managing the market economy, foreign investment and trade, as well as assistance in developing legal codes and judicial systems connected with a market economy. Poverty reduction and gender and minority rights were also a focus, but all of this came in the context of market transition and opening up. The repression of the Tiananmen demonstrators was indeed a shock to bilateral relations, but the general trend of assistance to China’s reform and opening up resumed relatively quickly.
Modest security commitments muddle political ambition
It has long been an axiom of Canada’s middle power role that the Canadian contribution to the major questions of balance of power is marginal. Even though it had the technical means to become a nuclear power, Canada very early on determined not to join the nuclear club, and instead became an early and enthusiastic supporter of non-proliferation and the nuclear test ban. Although the Liberal government of Lester B. Pearson accepted nuclear weapons for the Canadian Armed Forces in 1963, his government also determined that Canada’s contribution to peacemaking was entirely dependent on deterrence and the UN system. 6 What this may mean in contemporary practice is that whatever role Canada may play in the Asia Pacific is dependent at base on a certain modicum of strategic trust between the USA and China. Dating back to the Second World War, and reinforced through its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) commitment, Canada has effectively limited its active defence commitments to the North Atlantic. Canada did not make an active contribution to the war in the Pacific between 1937 and 1945 (apart from a symbolic and ill-fated contribution to the defence of Hong Kong in 1941); the Canadian contribution to the war in Korea was strictly limited to the UN mission; and since the end of that war, Canada has not maintained any military presence in the Western Pacific.
As a result, Canada has no armed forces to add to the evolving military balance in the Asia Pacific. Whatever role we choose to play, we must take into account both the interests of our senior ally and our lack of a clear interest in entanglement in the complex sovereignty disputes of East Asia. In both Northeast Asia and the South China Sea, we did endeavour to carve out a role as a facilitator, in the former case by developing a security architecture through Track II dialogue in the 1990s, and in the latter through seminars concerning the law of the sea and maritime dispute resolution. Those roles are now in abeyance, and arguably have been superseded by events. Nonetheless, they are symptomatic of the kind of role that Canada can aspire to play. However, they require both active engagement and also local partners with whom to weave a multilateral net. China has not seen fit to invite third parties into its new great power relationship with the United States; importantly, nor is Canada likely to elbow itself in.
Canada’s intermittent commitment to the Western Pacific, its absence from the East Asian Summit, and its deference to the USA all inhibit middle power diplomacy in the Asia Pacific region. In complementary fashion, the lack of local leverage and regional alienation disables Canada in Chinese eyes as a partner of choice. China has made its regional priority clear, alongside its ambitions to play a preeminent role in Asia. 7 This set of priorities relegates Canada to a partnership of the second rank—unless the government in Ottawa can articulate a role as a partner at the global level that somehow wields equivalent leverage to the major powers of the UN Security Council (P5), the European Union, or China’s partners within the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and after 2010 South Africa) group.
When Deng Xiaoping turned China decisively in the direction of market reform in response to the demise of the Soviet Union, Prime Minister Chrétien enthusiastically followed with his Team Canada trade missions. On the eve of China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), China’s premier Zhu Rongji could proclaim that Canada was China’s “best friend in the world.”
With China’s entry into the WTO in January 2001, Canada’s role as an agent promoting China’s integration into the institutions of “embedded liberalism” arguably came to an end. Moreover, by the early 2000s, it was becoming increasingly obvious that China’s commitment to economic liberalization did not include political liberalization. With that, therefore, the complementary relationship between Canada’s bilateral relationship with China and the overall grand strategy came under strain. It was sustained somewhat when China’s emergence as a financial power led to the development of the G20. Prime minister Paul Martin, who as finance minister had actively participated in the formation of the G20 in the period after the Asian financial crisis of 1997, promoted the idea of a G20 leaders’ summit, therefore placing a new buttress in the bilateral relationship that connected Canada and China in global governance. Despite the enthusiastic encouragement Martin received from China, in 2005 the US and the other members of the G8 were far from enthusiastic supporters of this initiative. It took the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the global financial crisis of 2008 for Gordon Brown and George W. Bush to revive the idea of a G20 leaders’ summit that Bush himself had earlier rejected. Had Martin survived in office, or had Stephen Harper embraced the initiative, Canada would have reaped extra credit for the G20’s foundation, and possibly had a steering role in its elaboration. Instead, what emerged was the formation of the BRICS group as a counter caucus outside and within the G20.
With China’s rise, the “frame” that guided Canada’s China policy since the late 1960s became radically obsolete. Canadian leaders—and Canadians more generally—could no longer be confident that deeper engagement with China would lead inexorably towards a more inclusive world order organized around core liberal principles. Furthermore, China’s post-WTO development did not sustain our special relationship. Our market share of China’s imports stagnated and fell, while our trade deficit soared. As the US suspicion of China’s rise rose, this rubbed off here as well, especially with the election of Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. Not only did the relationship languish, but the hiatus opened up a space in which fear began to overwhelm hope.
When the Conservatives came to power in 2006, they initially embraced a chilly approach toward China that was gradually replaced by a warily ambivalent embrace of the bilateral relationship in the wake of the global economic downturn. 8 Harper’s approach to China reflected his perception of China as lying wholly outside the Atlanticist parameters of Canada’s traditional grand strategy. His early comments rejecting an embrace of China as selling out for the “almighty dollar” reflected an understanding that the Canadian relationship was transactional, and quite peripheral to our core interests. Harper tried a tack of “cool politics—warm economics,” to the detriment of both aspects. 9 It was not just that we condemned ourselves to reap thinner economic rewards from China’s growing economy, we were also left grounded as China’s boat sailed globally, locked into our G7 corner as China consolidated a global role outside it. These trends became shatteringly evident with the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008. 10
In the aftermath, we were neither essential to the Obama administration’s Asian pivot, nor did we acquire a central stake in China’s own “going out” globalization efforts. We slipped in importance to our senior ally and gained little purchase on the (re)new(ed) global colossus. In tandem, as China’s global presence dawned on our own shores, Canadians were rudely awakened to Chinese influence in their own backyard. China was no longer across the world’s widest ocean, it was present locally. 11 This had an impact on house prices, an environmental footprint in our oil patch and resource sector, and a complex interaction with our immigrant communities, some elements of which urged closer ties to the Communist government, others of whom demanded more protection from it. In short, there was no readymade “Canadian” answer to the China conundrum.
Harper, in general, eschewed celebration of Canada’s “middle power” diplomacy, and preferred to view Canada’s role within the G8 as placing the country at the forefront of the USA’s senior allies. He became comfortable with pursuing more rewarding economic relations with China and other Asia-Pacific partners, but remained wary of any deeper political ties. Ultimately, he felt the need to restrict China’s investment opportunities in the oil patch out of a perceived threat inherent in China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The focus on a US-centered diplomacy inhibited and even blinded him and his government to the structural possibilities inherent in partnerships that spanned the Pacific. While he enthusiastically pursued a free trade agreement with the Republic of Korea (South Korea), he broke relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) over the nuclear issue, without even engaging in prior consultation with the government in Seoul. Whereas South Korea was eager for a middle power partnership—and highly appreciated the strategic partnership talks initiated in 2014—they have indicated that the channel was rather lightly used by the Canadian side.
When the new Liberal government of Justin Trudeau took office in November 2015, it immediately signalled a desire to improve and enhance the bilateral relationship with China. 12 Subsequently there was an important exchange of bilateral visits between the heads of government, and a deepening and enhancement of our bilateral strategic partnership. An annual exchange at the head-of-government level was institutionalized, and bilateral talks at the deputy minister level are to be an annual feature of the strategic economic and financial dialogue between the two governments. Nonetheless, the visit of the Chinese premier in late September was overshadowed by Canadian media coverage of the possibility of an extradition treaty between the two countries, a somewhat spurious and speculative issue. 13 However, by signalling a closer political and economic relationship, and by signing on to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Trudeau clearly signalled his government’s willingness to institutionalize bilateral ties and to seek further partnership at the multilateral level. 14
The election of Donald J. Trump in the USA may give further impetus for Canada to diversify its economic ties. And, with the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in January 2017, there may yet be an acceleration of moves towards a bilateral free trade treaty with China. Nonetheless, these positive bilateral moves alone will not suffice to flesh out a new grand strategy appropriate for the twenty-first century.
While engagement and partnership with China provides an alternative mode to preserving and possibly enhancing an open multilateral trading order, this idea strikes many Canadians as a paradox and a contradiction. 15 Yet, as we saw above, John W. Holmes saw the role of Canada as a middle power as a paradox all along. What remains therefore is to specify the conditions under which Canada can play a middle power role in relation to the rise of China and the restructuring of the international system currently under way.
The government in Beijing is gradually clarifying a hierarchic view of diplomacy and international relations for the twenty-first century to which Canada must be alert if Canadians are to adapt to China’s rise. President Xi Jinping has been clarifying “the Chinese solution” (zhongguofang’an 中国方案). 16 This vision sees China as a great power promoting a state-led order where power and responsibility are allocated proportionately. Indeed, China’s new White Paper on Asia-Pacific Security Cooperation, issued in January 2017, reveals clearly the Chinese government’s view of how non-great powers should regard great-power alignment in the new global order: “Small and medium-sized countries need not and should not take sides among big countries.” 17 For a country like Canada, which has pursued a flying buttress strategy for over seventy years, this call to free itself from the pier that has anchored Canada firmly to the USA will be difficult.
However, the realignment called for by the Chinese white paper is made all the more urgent by domestic politics in the USA. Trump’s unambiguous embrace of a foreign policy marked by “America First” and his deep skepticism about the historical leadership role of the USA signal a radical change. His inaugural address might have had a few words about strengthening alliances, but he said nothing at all about what will hold those alliances together—beyond wiping Islamic terrorism off the face of the earth. None of the USA’s allies were mentioned by name. 18 Comments both as candidate and as president leave no doubt that Trump regards the NATO alliance as obsolete and the USA’s allies as selfish hangers-on who insist on taking advantage of US generosity. His treatment of allies—yelling on the phone at the Australian prime minister, lying about the role of British intelligence in his bizarre claim that president Barack Obama wiretapped his phones, and insulting German chancellor Angela Merkel during her visit to the White House—provide further evidence that the Trump administration has little interest in maintaining the USA’s traditional role as military leader of the broad Western/capitalist alliance. 19
Re-grounding middle power diplomacy
The key problem facing Canada is to reconcile the reality of the current global power structure with Canada’s self-image. The issue is less a self-image out of touch with reality, but rather an identity so ensconced in its history that it has lost touch with the material supports that enabled it to play its historic role. It is more than a mismatch of values and capacity; it is a misplaced belief that values trump capacity, and blindness to the ancillary powers that can enable Canada to play a global role.
Rule elaboration depends on close alignment with those willing and able to enforce those rules. John Ikenberry argues that the order is so robust that effectively the rules are self-enforcing, or rather, that the capacity for rule enforcement can be decentralized. 20 However, the world today belies those assumptions. Both the rules and the willingness to enforce them are being eroded. Europe has proven unable to enforce the post-war order on its own, even on its own periphery in the Balkans and in eastern Europe; the Middle East has neither sovereignty nor the rule of law, with Saudi Arabia and Iran replaying the Thirty Years’ War as though Westphalia never happened. China rejects any multilateral role in the settlement of East Asia’s maritime borders. If Robert Cox is correct and middlepowership is about institutions and rules, 21 the ground beneath Canada’s feet has been sorely eroded.
Canada is back?
Improving the Sino–Canadian relationship was a priority for Justin Trudeau even before he formally took office. 22 Peter Harder, former head of the Canada China Business Council and former deputy minister of foreign affairs, headed the transition team. The new Trudeau government immediately signalled its desire to enhance the bilateral relationship with China. The mandate document issued to the minister of international trade, Chrystia Freeland, specifically mentioned the trade relationship with China. 23 The Trudeau government’s broader positioning on China was part and parcel of its general announcement that “Canada is back” in international affairs. 24 The government made clear its intentions to seek a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council, to resume a significant role in peacekeeping, and to play a positive role in climate negotiations, generally aligning itself with the internationalist orientation traditional to Canadian foreign policy. 25 Improved bilateral relations with China were a key to assuming a more significant place in the world.
Enhanced bilateralism with China
Within weeks of taking office, Trudeau met with president Xi Jinping on the sidelines of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the G20. 26 Trudeau moved swiftly to establish an agenda for improved ties. On a visit by former Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien in April, premier Li Keqiang hailed “a new golden era” in Sino–Canadian relations. 27 The improved atmosphere culminated in back-to-back visits in August and September of 2016. Trudeau also made an official visit ahead of the Hangzhou G20 meeting, and Keqiang made a reciprocal visit, marking the first time in nearly ten years that a Chinese premier had visited Canada. The two prime ministers signed a series of accords. 28 Canada applied to join the AIIB, moved on exploratory talks aimed at a free trade agreement, engaged in a new framework of economic and financial dialogue at a vice-ministerial level, and established an annual exchange of visits at the head of government level. The two leaders agreed to double bilateral trade by 2025. Canadian coverage of the visit of the Chinese was overshadowed, however, by spurious emphasis in the media on a possible extradition treaty. 29 However, signalling a closer political and economic relationship, by signing on to the AIIB Trudeau demonstrated his determination to institutionalize bilateral ties and seek further partnership at the multilateral level. 30 Canadian media largely overlooked the fact that warming and upgrading our relationship with China was only catching up to—let alone outpacing—other members of the Group of Seven industrialized countries.
The bilateral agenda and the broader foreign policy agenda
Improved relations with China were an end in their own right—aimed at improving trade and investment, especially redressing the growing deficit in bilateral trade favouring China, but also at raising Canada’s visibility in the Asia Pacific, as well as providing a platform for improving Canada’s profile in global governance. The Trudeau government signed the TPP to signal its support for multilateral trading arrangements and to signal the priority of the Asia Pacific, and in that context to demonstrate that improved trade relations with China did not contradict continued support for its US ally and other Asia-Pacific nations.
To maintain support for his globalist international agenda as well as his economic agenda, Trudeau needed to manage support from the environmentalist community on climate change as well as support from the business community, especially the resource sector, for improved access to Canadian investment and improved access to tidewater for Canada’s energy exports. Trudeau hoped to accomplish both with a more credible climate plan while promising more stringent environmental reviews, but support for new pipeline access. Working more closely with his US counterpart, Barack Obama, would enable him to balance the economic and environmental agendas, Trudeau thought. To build support for free trade as well as cooperation with China in global governance meant that Trudeau also had to stave off critics of China’s human rights record, and show that he was not selling out Canadian values. Business executives were strongly in favour of a free trade agreement, while Canadian public opinion remained wary and ambivalent. 31
Trudeau’s efforts to re-engage China and move towards negotiating a free trade agreement elicited China’s own list of preferences, some of which would prove politically knotty for Trudeau. China was fairly forthright in desiring less restrictive access to energy investment as well as a firmer commitment to move oil-sands bitumen to tidewater, particularly along Pacific ports. In the Chinese view, energy exports would be the most appropriate and natural way to move towards more balanced trade. 32
Trudeau was caught between furious environmentalists who opposed any further development of the oil sands, and the interests of Alberta, which desperately sought new markets. Conflicting interests effectively pitted Alberta against British Columbia, from whose ports the oil would be shipped. 33 The Province of Alberta as well as British Columbia considerably helped Trudeau’s cause by independently imposing carbon pricing. 34 British Columbia had earlier become the first North American jurisdiction to impose a carbon tax. 35 Trudeau hoped to finesse the issue by pledging a robust climate change program and environmental review while touting oil sands development as part of an “energy transition.” 36 In the lead-up to the Paris climate talks, the Trudeau government therefore announced its intention to impose carbon pricing nationally. 37
Despite forward momentum at the bilateral government level, public opinion appeared to lag, egged on by skeptical and sometimes hostile coverage in English-language national media. Some Canadians worry about coming under the dark sway of a dominant China. 38 In part, this is a legacy of the skeptical outlook sown by the Harper government, and in part it is due to confusion and suspicion born of China’s rise and the eroding self-confidence of the Western bloc. Bucking hostility from some quarters and lukewarm support of public opinion, Trudeau’s government persisted in improving relations with China. In spring 2016, a cabinet document outlining a China strategy was prepared, and the government clarified its intentions to move beyond exploratory talks on a free trade agreement to full-scale negotiations.
Initially, Justin Trudeau’s agenda of “bringing Canada back” was buoyed by the enthusiastic embrace of Obama, who echoed the sentiment that “the world needs more Canada.” 39 Beset by fierce opposition at home, Obama openly admired the values espoused by Trudeau’s government: feminism, internationalism, openness to refugees and immigration, and determination to tackle climate change. These were priorities that both countries’ leaders embraced. 40 Bolstered by similar family values and a common agenda, Trudeau sought to piggy-back on Obama’s embrace to rebuild Canada’s role in the world and give it a central role on the world stage.
The Trump earthquake
The unexpected election of Donald Trump as president of the USA put Canada and the Trudeau government on the defensive. Not only could Trudeau no longer bask in the open admiration of the US president, he was faced with the need to defend Canada’s largest trading relationship against attacks on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the determination by Donald Trump to renegotiate its terms. The foreign policy agenda of “Canada is back” was hijacked to defend existing arrangements rather than to open up new vistas. 41 In January 2017, Trudeau shuffled his cabinet, replacing Stéphane Dion as foreign minister with Chrystia Freeland, formerly the international trade minister, with a priority mandate centred on handling the US file. 42 As the Toronto Star noted, in foreign affairs it was now “America First.” 43
Trump rejected the TPP which Canada had signed. Moreover, Trump also called into question the USA’s commitment to NATO, and challenged US allies to prove their own commitment through their own defence spending. The foreign policy energy of the Trudeau government was therefore pulled into defending traditional interests with less time and energy available to embrace new initiatives. China remained a priority, but protecting our relationship with our nearest neighbour was a matter of survival.
The new reality derailed Trudeau’s careful balancing of the economic and climate agendas. He could no longer count on broad North American support for carbon pricing, and had to worry about laxer US environmental regulations eroding Canada’s trade position once it put carbon pricing in place. Furthermore, any concessions to the US position might erode support at home and tarnish Trudeau’s image abroad as a champion of progressive causes, including climate change, feminism, refugees, and human rights.
Not content with the mandate of the foreign minister alone, Trudeau enlisted a former prime minister, Brian Mulroney, his father’s bitter Conservative rival, to plead Canada’s cause in the USA. 44 Seeking whatever leverage he could, Trudeau also invited Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, to sit with him at the Broadway premiere of “Come from Away,” a musical celebrating the role of Canadians in sheltering US travellers in the days following 9/11. 45 Despite these efforts, on 24 April Trump placed substantial tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber exports. 46 Days later, Canadian officials learned Trump was moments away from scrapping NAFTA altogether. 47 Whether this threat was real or not, officials of both Canada and Mexico had to hastily agree to renegotiate NAFTA. 48
The China alternative
Nonetheless, the strength and persistence of Trump’s challenges to Canada helped to temper the caution and ambivalent suspicion with which some sectors of the Canadian public had viewed our relations with China. 49 In a speech to the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in January 2017, and during a visit to the UN offices in Geneva, Xi Jinping offered his own country as a platform for globalization, global problem-solving, and global governance. 50 Xi was thus placing China in the position of foremost defender of the multilateral rules-based trading order at a time when it was being threatened by Trump, Brexit, and a variety of anti-globalist populist politicians throughout the Western world. Canada barely managed to pull off getting a free trade agreement signed with the European Union, overcoming last-minute objections by recalcitrant francophone Belgians. 51 Canadians not only noticed, but, given the attacks on us by our senior ally, were persuaded that alternative friendships were both possible and vital.
With the demise of the TPP and the gathering clouds around multilateral trade, the Trudeau government saw improved ties with China not only as an end in itself, but also as a hedge against an uncertain relationship with the USA. Canada’s trade minister specifically referred to President’s Xi’s Davos speech as a “positive signal” in the new uncertain environment. 52 However, Canada cannot afford to play one country off against the other. Our relationship with the US is too deep, too ramified, and too crucial to risk. 53 Thus, the Trudeau government must carefully play up the opportunities of expanded ties with China without appearing to snub the USA. Luckily for Canada, the Mar-a-Lago summit between Trump and Xi appears to have blunted the hard edge of hostility that the Trump administration initially brought to Sino–American relations. While Canada still has to deal with an aggressive and damaging assault on our trading relationship with the USA by the Trump administration, at least improved prospects of relations with China are unlikely to exacerbate an already difficult situation. Nonetheless, despite improved support for a free trade deal with China, Canadian opinion remains divided. 54
Some of the underlying obstacles to further improved relations are domestic in nature. While the Trudeau government has signalled its support of energy pipelines to tidewater on the Pacific coast, and initially approved the Kinder-Morgan pipeline, it has placed a moratorium on oil shipments from the north Pacific coast, and is extremely wary of provoking an environmental backlash to bitumen exports. The Trudeau government walked a fine line on human rights and negotiations over extradition. Trudeau himself was forthright in rejecting a trade-off between human rights and trade, and insisted that Canada’s relations with China do not mean sacrificing human rights. “I don’t think you have to choose,” he said. “I think you have to be very up front and frank about doing that in a very thoughtful, respectful way, but in a constructive way.” 55 At the same time, Trudeau has been careful not to raise human rights in a manner intended to embarrass or provoke.
However, the Chinese ambassador’s insistence on full access to Canadian investment, dismissal of human rights concerns, and the push for an extradition treaty despite Canadian misgivings gave rise to negative coverage. 56 In response, Canada’s newly appointed ambassador to China, former Liberal cabinet minister John McCallum, insisted that human rights and labour standards would form part of any potential trade deal. 57 Furthermore, just a couple of days later, he clarified that “we are a long, long way from any extradition deal.” 58
Hovering over the bilateral relationship is an issue that is not quite in the realm of bilateral diplomacy. Rising house prices, particularly in the Vancouver and Toronto markets, play into the mix of issues that sways Canadian public opinion. 59 Moreover, this phenomenon cannot be blamed conclusively on Chinese buyers, let alone the Chinese government. 60 Nonetheless, housing is a pocketbook issue that affects the interests of Canadians directly, regardless of whether it is amenable to diplomacy or is even properly on the diplomatic agenda. Perceptions of diplomatic relations may be affected by issues close at hand.
While Canadian views of China have not improved significantly, Canadian perceptions have been affected by strongly negative views of the direction taken by the USA under Trump. 61 The 2017 Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada poll saw Canadians move more positively in favour of a free trade agreement with China, as well as toward accepting the importance of China for our economic future. This came despite some lingering concerns about potential Chinese influence over our economy and politics. 62
The progressive trade agenda
To navigate a post-Trump world while reaffirming traditional liberal internationalism, the Trudeau government conjured up a positive view of globalization summed up as “the progressive Trade Agenda.” 63 By enshrining labour rights and feminism as part of the Canadian approach to globalization and free trade, the Trudeau government hoped to rescue globalization and free trade from their association with inequality and a regressive income distribution, while reinvigorating support for open multilateral trade. It sought to inject this agenda into its renegotiating of NAFTA and the revamped or rump TPP (now renamed the “Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership”), 64 and to introduce it into a potential free trade agreement with China. In so doing, Trudeau hoped to square a “prosperity” agenda with a “values” agenda. However, this effort also ran into our diminished international leverage. Seeking to shore up support for labour improvements in NAFTA in solidarity with Mexico, Canada pulled out of a signing ceremony for the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) at the APEC summit in Da Nang. 65 This gesture, which angered Japan and Australia, Canada’s leading partners in the rump TPP, also jeopardized Canada’s credentials as a committed Asia-Pacific power. 66
Mr. Trudeau’s clumsy diplomacy may have undermined Canada as an Asia-Pacific nation at a time when it was invited to participate in the East Asian Summit for the first time. Instead of cementing our leverage as a Pacific nation at a time when the global centre of gravity has shifted dramatically to Asia, Mr. Trudeau underlined our ambivalent commitment. This impression was further reinforced in China, when the much-anticipated announcement of opening free trade agreement negotiations in China failed to materialize after last-minute negotiations during Prime Minister Trudeau’s official visit to China on 3 December 2017. 67
Conclusion: Patient progress on a new path
The Trudeau government is keenly aware that political and economic realities require Canada to steer the relationship with China on a steady course and aim institutionalize relations on an incremental basis with a free trade agreement as the initial goal. 68 To do this successfully, the government hopes to keep all the stakeholders onside and move forward carefully and cautiously. 69 The changed atmosphere occasioned by Trump’s election contains both dangers and opportunities. While the government in Ottawa has no choice but to defend our most important trading relationship, the evident capriciousness with which our closest partner engages us can only encourage Canadians to seek a steadying hand and alternative relations elsewhere. However, the energy required to maintain our existing relations may constrain our ability to reach out creatively and invest more fully in an emergent partnership with China. Furthermore, while Canadians are dismayed by the apparent abandonment of many of the values they counted on in Canada’s partnership with the USA, they are not quite sure what values will sustain closer partnership with China. Our interests may drive us closer together, but the leaders of both countries need to find a further basis on which to deepen trust. This is a challenge for our own leaders, but also a challenge for China as it lays out a “China solution.” 70
Andrew F. Cooper, Richard A. Higgott, and Kim Richard Nossal have argued that middlepowermanship cannot be divorced from leadership or followership. 71 The special role of the middle powers—as catalysts, facilitators, and managers—is played usually in between the great powers and lesser powers, and almost always through the exercise of niche diplomacy. 72 The middle power role they identify normally occurs within a bloc, and always within a broader normative frame. That is why exercising middle power roles in relation to China is such a challenge.
Despite the evident differences in form, scope, and historical context, it is worth comparing Xi Jinping’s signature program, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), to the Marshall Plan introduced by the United States after the Second World War, to get a sense of how Xi and China envision leadership. 73 The Marshall Plan revived the European economies, beat the threat of communism back from Western Europe, kick-started twenty-five years of more or less continuous growth in trade and living standards, birthed the European Union as well as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and set the standard for inclusive development. But the success of the Marshall Plan also needed Jean Monnet, Maurice Schumann, and Ludwig Erhard. These visionary leaders put in place the “followership” for the plan to succeed. Can we say the same for the BRI forum?
Xi Jinping himself put forward no institutional mechanism to make the plan work, no standards by which to judge the viability of investment projects and, indeed, no operationalizable criteria of success that could guide the management of the program and its initiatives. He was more keen to stress the plan’s openness and to forswear imposing a Chinese model than to clarify what sort of order this initiative implies. Thus, when we place this beside the objections of the European Union to the absence of a pledge to transparency and open bidding, we are left with a grandiose political program of uncertain aims and goals. Some of this is by design. Xi wishes to keep the initiative “open” not just to beat back suspicions of potential Chinese imperialism and neo-colonialism, but also so he can bend it in a transactional direction to cement political relations as needed. The success and the lingering suspicion behind the Western project of global multilateral governance lay in the capacity of transforming political vision into technocratic pipefitting. Once the project ceased to reliably deliver inclusive improvements in living standards, suspicion of technocratic leadership undermined the legitimacy of the project. In the absence of viable alternatives, global order is eroding. Middle powers like Canada provide reliable middle managers to the global project. Without a coherent vision from the top, however, middle management is starved of a reliable role.
China has yet to articulate a coherent normative vision that middle managers can elaborate to their own advantage and to the advantage of smaller powers, even as it holds out material incentives to participate in its orbit. At the 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October, China’s president Xi Jinping heralded a “New Era” where China “offers a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence; and it offers Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to solving the problems facing mankind.” 74 Suspicion lingers that its commitment to the mechanism that sustained its own spectacular success in globalization is instrumental, with its ultimate vision competitive, rather than complementary with the liberal order. Yet, when faced with a US administration that has retreated to a purely transactional view of trade and diplomacy, Canada and other middle powers have few choices other than to take Chinese commitments at face value, relying on China’s preference for stability and a peaceful environment in their hopes of sustaining the normative mesh that has upheld the post-war order.
In her programmatic speech on foreign policy to the House of Commons on 6 June 2017, Chrystia Freeland reaffirmed Canada’s commitment to the post-war order and to its key stake in middle power diplomacy. China was mentioned by name only once. She identified it as part of the “challenge” of emerging economies: “the rapid emergence of the global South and Asia—most prominently, China—and the need to integrate these countries into the world’s economic and political system in a way that is additive, that preserves the best of the old order that preceded their rise, and that addresses the existential threat of climate change.” 75 While she asserted the need to “work with other like-minded people and countries who share our aims,” China has yet to make it onto that list. Instead, for Freeland, the key is to redouble commitment to the transatlantic alliance.
Our limited capacity forces us to consolidate our past institutional framework rather than creatively reaching out to create a new one more in keeping with a transformed global power structure. Canada’s engagement of China is built on the hope of sustaining an inclusive global order, but also on the fear that a fragmented liberal world will leave us isolated and deprived of a sustaining global platform. Sadly, this position faces skepticism both at home and abroad. The opposition worries about a zero-sum relationship with the USA and China in the context of which Canada must inevitably defer to the USA. Others worry that we will play into the hands of a Chinese regime intent on subverting the liberal order. 76 Our engagement with China in the current era lacks a consistently articulated rationale that ties it to basic premises of our foreign policy outlook, and a consistent and well-articulated set of bilateral and multilateral partnerships and resource commitments in the Asia Pacific that would cement the bilateral relationship with China in a framework that sustains our middle power agenda. Without that framework, the government cannot mobilize domestic public opinion for deeper engagement, nor can it credibly convince the Chinese leadership that we matter. 77 Middle power diplomacy requires us to secure our relationship both to our traditional ally to the south and its emergent rival across the Pacific. Without a well-thought-out engagement strategy, we are condemned to be sidelined as bystanders in the tectonic shifts reordering power on a planetary scale.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Government of Canada Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant 435-2014-1099.
1
The effort to engage China has been consistently and forcefully objected to in the editorial and opinion pages of Canada’s leading national newspaper The Globe and Mail. The principal academic voice of opposition to closer relations has been Prof. Charles Burton, who has frequently been featured on its opinion pages: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/does-trudeau-really-believe-trade-with-china-is-free/article37166201/; 
(both accessed 3 January 2018).
2
For an insistent critique of the benign view of Canada’s relations with China, see Bruce Gilley, “Reawakening Canada’s China policy,” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 14, no 2 (2008): 121–130.
3
See Paul M. Evans and B. Michael Frolic, eds., Reluctant Adversaries: Canada and the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1970 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991).
4
This began with the initiative of Paul Martin Sr., Canada’s foreign minister, to bring the People’s Republic of China (PRC) into the UN in 1966. For the background, see Der Yuan Wu, “Institutional development and adaptability: Canada, Taiwan and the construction of ‘One China’” (PhD dissertation, Carleton University, 2001), esp. 116–128.
5
Jennifer Wilson, “A History of Canada’s China CIDA Program,” (accessed 10 July 2018); see also Ruth Hayhoe, Julia Pan, and Qiang Zha, Canadian Universities in China’s Transformation: An Untold Story (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016); B. Michael Frolic, “Canada and China: The China strategy of 1987,” in Huhua Cao and Vivienne Poy, eds., The China Challenge (Ottawa: Ottawa University Press, 2011), 47–65.
6
John W. Holmes, “Canada as a middle power,” Centennial Review 10, no. 4, Canadian Issue (1966): 443.
7
See “Xi Jinping: Let the Sense of Community of Common Destiny Take Deep Root in Neighbouring Countries,” http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjb_663304/wjbz_663308/activities_663312/t1093870.shtml (accessed 16 October 2017); and Xi’s speech to the Fourth Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia, 20 May 2014, http://www.china.org.cn/world/node_7206254.htm (accessed 16 October 2017). See also Jeffery Bader, “How Xi Jinping Sees the World … and Why,” Brookings Working Paper, 4 February 2016, (accessed 16 October 2017).
8
Kim Richard Nossal and Leah Sarson, “About face: Explaining changes in Canada’s China policy, 2006–2012,” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 20, no. 2 (2014): 146–162.
9
For a detailed view of Sino–Canadian relations in this period, see Paul Evans, Engaging China: Myth, Aspiration and Strategy in Canadian Policy from Trudeau to Harper (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014).
10
Ibid.
11
Paul Evans sought to alert Canadians to the changed environment in “Canada, meet global China,” International Journal 61, no. 2 (2006): 283–297.
12
“Chinese president speaks of Pierre Trudeau’s ‘extraordinary political vision’ at G20,” The Globe and Mail, 16 November 2015.
13
“Is Ottawa playing into China’s hands or vice versa? It’s hard to tell,” The Globe and Mail, 24 September 2016; Doug Saunders “What are Justin Trudeau’s endgame ambitions with China?” The Globe and Mail, 23 September 2016, which informs and reinforces this opinion. See also Terry Glavin, “The high price of our relationship with China,” Ottawa Citizen, 17 August 2016; and Matthew Fisher, “The many dangers of cozying up to Beijing,” Ottawa Citizen, 21 September 2016.
14
15
Doug Saunders, “Thanks to Trump, China is now poised to dominate,” The Globe and Mail, 26 November 2016.
16
Xi Jinping first articulated this concept in his speech on the 95th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, 1 July 2016, http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-07/01/c_1119150660.htm (accessed 16 October 2017); Xi promoted inclusive global governance by China with the Chinese Communist Party at its core exercising leadership through providing public goods. See also Lee Bo, “What on Earth is the China Solution?” http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/2016-07/14/content_38877919.htm (accessed 16 October 2017); and “The tortoise vs. the hare: Is China challenging the US for global leadership?” The Economist, 1 April 2017, (accessed 16 October 2017).
17
18
19
“Merkel, after discordant G-7 meeting, is looking past Trump,” New York Times, 28 May 2017.
20
John G. Ikenberry, “The future of the liberal world order,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 16, no. 3 (2015): 450–455.
21
Robert Cox, “Middlepowermanship, Japan and future world order,” International Journal 44, no. 4 (1989): 823–862.
22
24
25
26
“Chinese President speaks of Pierre Trudeau’s ‘extraordinary political vision’ at G20, ” The Globe and Mail , 16 November 2015.
27
28
“Joint Statement Between Canada and the People’s Republic of China.”
29
“Is Ottawa playing into China’s hands or vice versa: It’s hard to tell,” The Globe and Mail, 24 September 2016; Doug Saunders, “What are Justin Trudeau’s endgame ambitions with China?” The Globe and Mail, 23 September 2016; Terry Glavin, “The high price of our relationship with China,” Ottawa Citizen, 18 August 2016, (accessed 16 October 2017); Matthew Fisher, “The many dangers of cozying up to Beijing,” Ottawa Citizen, 21 September 2016.
30
“Joint Statement Between Canada and the People’s Republic of China.”
31
32
33
34
36
37
38
Saunders, “Thanks to Trump.”
39
40
Chris Hall, “Trudeau-Obama bromance’s real prize comes with the world watching,” CBC News, 11 March 2016, http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/hall-trudeau-obama-bromance-1.3486409 (accessed 16 October 2017); Aaron Blake, Kayla Epstein, and Ryan Carey-Mahoney, “President Obama and Canada’s Justin Trudeau, in 11 great pictures,” The Washington Post, (accessed 16 October 2017).
41
43
44
“Mulroney draws praise for Canada at Mar-a-Lago,” The Globe and Mail, 19 February 2017, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/mulroney-sings-at-trumps-mar-a-lago-praises-canada-and-trudeau/article34085505/ (accessed 16 October 2017); “Mulroney takes on role to help Trudeau despite rivalry with his dad,” Toronto Star, 5 April 2017, (accessed 16 October 2017).
45
46
47
48
49
50
World Economic Forum, “President Xi’s Speech to Davos in Full,” https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/full-text-of-xi-jinping-keynote-at-the-world-economic-forum (accessed 10 July 2018); “Xi urges UN to play central role in global governance,” Xinhua, (accessed 16 October 2017).
51
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55
56
Robert Fife and Steven Chase, “Beijing pressing for full access to Canada’s economy in trade talks,” The Globe and Mail, 24 March 2017, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/beijing-pressing-for-full-access-to-canadas-economy-in-trade-talks/article34412957/ (accessed 16 October 2017). For negative response, see Robert Fulford, “An extradition treaty with China?” National Post, 31 March 2017, (accessed 16 October 2017).
57
Mike Blanchfield, “Human rights on table in any Canada-China free trade deal: McCallum,” The Globe and Mail, 29 March 2017.
58
Nathan VanderKlippe, “Canada ‘a long, long’ way from China extradition deal: McCallum,” The Globe and Mail, 3 April 2017.
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
Xi Jinping first articulated this concept in his speech on the 95th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, 1 July 2016, (accessed 16 October 2017); Xi promoted inclusive global governance by China with the Chinese Communist Party at its core exercising leadership through providing public goods. See also Lee Bo, “What on earth is the China solution?”
71
Andrew F. Cooper, Richard A. Higgott, and Kim Richard Nossal, Relocating Middle Powers: Australia and Canada in a Changing World Order (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1993), 12–49.
72
Ibid., 24–25.
73
74
75
76
Both Conservative leader Scheer and former prime minister Harper spoke out against negotiating a free trade agreement with China for fear of antagonizing the US: https://ipolitics.ca/2017/04/05/scheer-says-free-trade-with-china-is-a-dangerous-idea/; (both accessed 3 January 2018).
77
Author Biography
Jeremy Paltiel is Professor of Political Science at Carleton University in Ottawa. He is author of The Empire’s New Clothes: Cultural Particularism and Universality in China’s Rise to Global Status (Palgrave, 2007), “Mencius and world order theories” (2010), and “China’s regionalization policies: Illiberal internationalism or Neo-Mencian benevolence?” (2009). He co-edited Facing China as a New Global Superpower: Domestic and International Dynamics from a Multidisciplinary Angle with Huhua Cao (published by Springer), and a special issue of Canadian Foreign Policy on Canada and emerging markets with Laura Macdonald in 2016. He has contributed numerous other articles on Chinese politics, human rights and the Chinese tradition, civil–military relations in China, East Asian foreign relations, and Sino–Canadian relations.