Evidence of meeting #33 for Canada-China Relations in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was japan.
A video is available from Parliament.
NDP
Heather McPherson NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Thank you.
As I am the last person asking questions of this panel, I think I will end by asking you both how you valuate our Canadian Indo-Pacific strategy and the implementation of it. Is there anything else you'd like to share with this committee?
Perhaps, Ms. Goto, I could start with you.
Director, Asia Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, As an Individual
In a nutshell, it's a great plan. We want more of it to be implemented.
NDP
Heather McPherson NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Very quickly, can I follow up on that? Does that mean you feel at this point that the implementation has been slow, or is it just that you're eager for more?
Director, Asia Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, As an Individual
It's a combination of the two. On the security front, certainly Canada could do more to commit on the defence side. On the economic side, again, tapping into Canada's natural resource assets and making those available as an integral part of enhancing global supply chain resiliency is a key role that Canada could play.
NDP
Co-Director, East Asia Program, The Henry L. Stimson Center, As an Individual
I agree with Ms. Goto. The Canadian Indo-Pacific strategy is a great plan. The Canada-Japan action plan is very much consistent with the Indo-Pacific strategy. I would say that, even if it's symbolic, the demonstration of a bilateral, joint gesture to elevate the security side of the relationship—for example, “two-plus-two”, which is currently at the vice-ministerial level but which could be elevated to the ministerial level and be made a full-fledged “two-plus-two”—would speak volumes to both countries' collective will to elevate that relationship.
I also mentioned, regarding both countries, the conclusion of the general security of information agreement negotiations and bringing those to signature. I also think the Japanese would love to see more Canadians showing up as observers or active participants in the bilateral, trilateral or multilateral military joint exercises that Japan conducts with the United States and other countries.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken Hardie
With that, we'll thank you, Ms. Tatsumi and Ms. Goto. We appreciate your input and wisdom this evening.
We will now suspend and set up for our final panel.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken Hardie
We're back in session.
I would like to welcome everybody, including our next guest, Rory Medcalf, professor and head of the National Security College, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, who joins us via Zoom.
Surprisingly to us, you don't appear upside down, so I think all of the adjustments have been made.
We will have five minutes from you, sir. Then, we'll open it up to our crew here for some questions. The next five minutes are yours.
Rory Medcalf Professor, Head, National Security College, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, As an Individual
Thank you, Chair. It's a real privilege to join this conversation with the committee.
I want to provide, really, two sets of observations to assist your inquiry. The first is to speak a bit about Australia's relationship with China, particularly the very difficult experiences we've had over the past eight years or so. This is something of a parallel to the Canadian experience. It would be useful to draw lessons from that for both sides.
Secondly, I want to situate that relationship within the Indo-Pacific strategic context, which I know has been somewhat discussed already today. I'd like to add an independent Australian perspective on that, because, of course, our bilateral relations with China, just as your bilateral relations with China, are not in isolation. They intersect with the great power of politics of the Indo-Pacific and the world. They intersect with China's strategic ambitions with regard to many other players in the international system.
It's a mistake to be measuring the success or the stabilization of the bilateral relationship in isolation. It's certainly a mistake for a middle power like Australia or Canada to effectively be blaming itself every time it has a problem with its relations with China.
A factor across all of these conversations, of course, is the authoritarian nature of the Chinese party state, and the particularly hardline positions that the Chinese leadership has taken over the past decade.
To begin with, here are a few thoughts about Australia-China relations. I'm speaking to you in February 2024 at a time when the Australian government, and really Australia as a nation, has been going through, for more than a year now, what I would call a stabilization process in relations with China.
It's really important to emphasize the qualified and limited character of stabilization. It is not a reset. It is not about strategic trust. It is not about anticipating a glorious future for the relationship. It's really about limiting and managing the damage we've had in terms of economic coercion, in terms of self-defeating Chinese policies toward Australia and in terms of a freeze on diplomatic dialogue, but we are in a stabilization phase.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken Hardie
Mr. Medcalf, I just need to ask you to lift your microphone boom up just a little bit.
You're speaking in French on another channel. You probably didn't know that, but you are.
Thank you.
Professor, Head, National Security College, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, As an Individual
Okay. I hope my French is excellent.
Australian stabilization with China, which is really important to understand at this moment, has now been interrupted, of course, by a really terrible recent development, and that is effectively the death sentence on an Australian citizen who is detained in China, Dr. Yang Hengjun.
The stabilization moment is one bookend, and the other bookend is the Australia-China relationship about eight years ago. Just to summarize what's happened in that intervening period, until around 2016, I think, there was a degree of overconfidence and naïveté in the Australia-China relationship and a view that our very strong economic relationship with China could be managed without a fundamental security risk. That relationship included our massive reliance on China as an export market, particularly for iron ore, and our growing relations with the PRC across a number of economic and societal dimensions, including in terms of migration and education.
The reality check that we went through from 2016 onwards, culminating in 2020 with the application of coercive economic measures against Australia by the People's Republic of China, put paid to that naïveté and brought the issue of strategic risk to the foreground in understanding the bilateral relationship.
There were a few key markers in that journey. One was the revelations about foreign political influence, interference and espionage activities by the PRC or by entities linked to the Communist Party and the United Front Work Department in 2016 and 2017 that lead to, among other things, the resignation of an Australian senator who had been implicated in a lot of this unpleasantness.
As well, there were the introduction of laws criminalizing foreign political interference in Australia, laws requiring a transparency register of agents of influence, laws limiting foreign donations to Australian political parties and laws requiring subnational governments, states and territories as well as institutions such as universities to consult with the federal government when forming formal international partnerships. There were other elements involved as well, but the foreign interference issue was a major first part of that reality check.
Another really important development was the decision by the Australian government in 2018 to ban non-trusted vendors from the 5G network, which of course was, in effect, code for Huawei and ZTE, and obviously there was great unhappiness caused to the PRC and discomfort caused to the bilateral relationship.
From a strategic perspective, more importantly, this was an example and a signal sent to many democracies around the world about the need to take a close look at who or which institutions were effectively being trusted with providing the nervous systems of their economies.
Foreign interference and critical technology—
Liberal
Professor, Head, National Security College, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, As an Individual
Do you want me to wrap up?
Professor, Head, National Security College, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, As an Individual
Thank you. That's fine.
I have two last points before we go to the conversation.
The other issue that's really important to understand, of course, is the economic coercive measures, which, as members of the committee would be aware, were imposed on Australia after the then Australian government called for an independent international inquiry into the origins of the COVID pandemic. Although the Australian politics of much of the management of the relationship may have been clumsily handled at times and the relationship may have become overpoliticized, the national interests and values at stake in this confrontation, I think, were recognized across the political spectrum.
To wrap up, in the last 18 months or almost two years, we have a relatively new government, a Labour government in Australia, which, although it has taken a more careful approach to diplomacy with China, has not retreated on any of the fundamental national security commitments made by the previous government. In fact, has been more forward-leaning in some ways in competing with China's strategic and political influence in our neighbourhood in the south Pacific part of the Indo-Pacific region.
I'll pause there. I would like to find an opportunity to talk to the committee a little about the broader Indo-Pacific geopolitics, but I'm sure some questions will open that conversation.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken Hardie
Thank you very much, sir.
We will have one round. Six minutes go to each of the groups here, followed up with five, five, two and a half, and two and a half—the usual.
We will begin with Mr. Kmiec for six minutes.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I actually wanted the professor to talk about the case of Yang Hengjun. I understand that he's an Australian writer, a pro-democracy blogger, and he's been jailed since 2019.
Can you tell us more about the case and what the impact has been on Australian foreign policy?
Professor, Head, National Security College, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, As an Individual
Yes, I can speak to that to some extent, but also bear in mind that there was one other instance of an Australian citizen being arbitrarily detained in China in recent years—Cheng Lei. She was released late last year, I think after very extensive interventions and negotiations with the Australian government.
Tragically, we have one good news story and one bad news story. Going to Dr. Yang Hengjun, it's very clear from the Chinese government statements in the last week or two that there is absolutely no intention of releasing him. In fact, he has been convicted in the very opaque and arbitrary way of the PRC system.
He's been convicted of an alleged espionage offence and formally given a death sentence which, as we understand it, has been suspended for the time being. Now, part of that tragedy is that the suspension of the sentence may be quite meaningless, because it's understood that he is very ill and that his health condition could well be a consequence of medical neglect during his detention. His family in Australia, his friends, supporters and, I think, Australian society generally are facing the prospect that he may never return to this country.
He is an Australian citizen and has been for quite some time. The coverage of his case increasingly now refers to his earlier status not only as a PRC citizen but as an employee of Chinese government agencies. Reportedly the foreign ministry and the ministry of state security are not in a position to comment with any kind of expertise on that, one way or another.
However, it's been argued in the Australian media coverage that perhaps one reason the Chinese state is so insistent on holding onto him is a sense that he is effectively one of their own, effectively someone who was within the Communist Party security apparatus, who later in life became convinced of the virtues of democracy and has been fearless in campaigning for that. Therefore, in that sense, he's being used, perhaps, as a really ruthless example.
There's also a context and a question as to whether his continued imprisonment and the shadow of his death sentence are some form of continued signalling of coercion to the Australian government, effectively a kind of good behaviour bond for Australian diplomatic respect for China.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Professor, I'd just follow up regarding what Canada has experienced with the two Michaels. We just call them the “two Michaels” now; we don't even call them by their last names. That's how famous they've become.
However, there's also the case of Huseyin Celil, who has been in prison for, I think, a decade now. It's a very similar case. He was a Uyghur activist as well. It's the same claim you make—because he's a national, and the country refuses to recognize him as a national of our country, they treat him differently from others. This is a repeat behaviour by the PRC.
What kind of message do you think it sends to western countries? What should we learn from this, as western countries, and how should we be addressing it? Our countries—Australia and Canada—nationalize lots of citizens of other countries, who are extended our full protection and full rights. I'm one of them. I'd like to know what our learnings should be from it, from the Australian perspective.
Professor, Head, National Security College, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, As an Individual
Of course, Australia and Canada are more alike than almost any two other countries in the world in the multicultural nature of their national identities, and in that cherished relationship we have with citizens who joined us from all over the world.
There is a fundamental affront to what is really the core of Australian national identity by treating someone who is an Australian citizen as, effectively, not an Australian citizen, and to the treat them as the property, in a sense, of a foreign authoritarian state. It is very challenging.
The response from the Australian government has been, so far, a case of doing what they can, but that response has to work at two levels. I think there's a parallel here for Canada. One level, of course, is diplomatic, in a consular sense, but also in coordinating with other countries and building coalitions of solidarity. We do need to treat this as important. As with any Australian citizen, irrespective of background, this needs to continue to be a diplomatic priority. I think, with respect to the current Australian foreign minister, she has been very serious about this issue. You can even tell from her response last week to his death sentence that she not only treats it as a national priority; she takes it very personally.
However, domestically, we have to redouble our efforts to build cohesion among communities of diverse origins, to encourage and empower their identification with our state and our collective values—our liberal democratic values and sense of community—and to ensure, through our own government's agencies, that Australians of all backgrounds are equally protected from foreign interference or intimidation on our soil as well.
Liberal
Liberal
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
Okay. We're proposing to do one tour de table. We'll split our time, and we won't need another time after this. If we take six minutes now, we'll take three and three—