Evidence of meeting #4 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 china.
A video is available from Parliament.
7:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken Hardie
Thank you, Mr. Saint-Jacques.
I committed a rookie mistake, and I missed Mr. Fragiskatos.
You have five minutes, sir. Are you ready?
7:25 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
Yes, Mr. Chair. I'm happy to go ahead.
Can I ask Dr. Curtis Wright...? There are a few things, as a matter of fact.
Regarding deterrence, as far as the potential invasion of Taiwan is concerned, is there anything to deter China from that? For example, there's the U.S. policy on coming to Taiwan's defence. Is this something that President Xi rules out automatically?
7:25 p.m.
Associate Professor of History, University of Calgary, As an Individual
The question of Taiwan will, I think, boil down to a matter of regime survival.
If—and this will never happen—Xi Jinping were just to announce “Okay, we're giving up on Taiwan. We're not going to use coercion at all. We're just going to woo Taiwan into coming over and joining with us,” there would be widespread public disagreement and anger. I think that even a division or more of the PLA could get involved.
The second red generation that is Xi Jinping's main pillar of support largely runs the PLA today. The PLA doesn't interfere with politics, but if it came to something like this, I think that the PLA might get involved. Xi Jinping knows this. Giving up on Taiwan would be tantamount to recognizing the possibility of regime overthrow, and when that is a possibility, the regime is capable of doing anything.
That's the message of 1989 with the Tiananmen massacre. Deng Xiaoping said in a key meeting with the core group of the politburo that they would pay any price and endure any hardship to keep their political power.
Taiwan is a core interest, and it's a core matter for the survivability of the regime. I think, quite frankly, there is not a whole lot that we could do militarily. We can make it very clear that there will be an enormous cost, that China will be outcast internationally and that it will face massive world boycotts, but in the end, the CCP won't care.
7:25 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
Just a few days ago, the Asia correspondent for The Globe and Mail, James Griffiths, said that the decision as to whether or not China invades Taiwan lies with one person: President Xi.
Would you agree with that? Does it really come down to what he wants to do?
7:30 p.m.
Associate Professor of History, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Very much so.
The way politics are configured in China right now, the entire state architecture is an instrument for the will of one man. He has more political power gathered into his hands than anybody since Mao.
Just yesterday, the American Secretary of Defense said that it appears to the U.S. defence establishment that he is now ratcheting up the timetable. In other words, the invasion of Taiwan could come sooner rather than later. It's terrifying.
7:30 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
It is indeed.
The final question is what Canada can do in a situation like this. We heard earlier from Mr. Saint-Jacques that we ought to reach out more to multilateral organizations and seek to strengthen them as a middle power.
Do you have any advice? I consult you, instead of Mr. Saint-Jacques on this—no disrespect to him—because you offer a historian's perspective. With that perspective, looking back to the Canadian tradition of being a middle power, are there things we can do within multilateral organizations, to continue to engage allies?
This is something that has been a central goal of our foreign policy, but it's difficult.
7:30 p.m.
Associate Professor of History, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Canada should continue the course that it is on right now with multilateralism. Canada should use its special relationship with the United States to encourage the Americans to continue to become more multilateral.
Maybe doing the right thing is more a matter of not doing the wrong thing. Are there things Canada might do that would provoke or hasten the attack on Taiwan? Sometimes it's better to do nothing at all than it is to do something stupid.
7:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken Hardie
Thank you, Mr. Fragiskatos.
We'll now go to Ms. Kwan for two and a half minutes.
7:30 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
At the beginning, Mr. Saint-Jacques, you raised the issue of the UN Human Rights Council vote. There are, of course, implications with respect to that. The outcome clearly demonstrates, to a degree, China's ability to rally its allies.
In the face of that and in the face of potential threats to our friends in Taiwan and in other situations—the Uighurs, and I could go on—what specific action do you think Canada can and should take in terms of building up the allyship in the international community to address this ongoing and, I think, heightening situation with China?
7:30 p.m.
Consultant and Director, As an Individual
Starting with the Taiwan issue, Canada can do a lot. If we say we support human rights and democracy, we have to translate that into our foreign policy. In that regard, it's important to continue with visits by parliamentarians. We have to support Taiwan's joining multilateral organizations. We should start to negotiate a free trade agreement with the Taiwanese. We should welcome them into joining the CPTPP, and we should work with allies to jointly deliver a message to China that says, “If you dare invade Taiwan”—and I think this could become more likely three to five years from now—“here is the list of sanctions we will apply.” They will then know the price they would have to pay. I already see Canadian businesses starting to adjust their supply chains in order to be less vulnerable and dependent on China.
Turning to the Uighurs, it's a matter of applying sanctions to counter the use of forced labour in China. That will also send a very powerful message. We have had some challenges in identifying shipments of goods that could have been produced with forced labour. I think we have to do more. Again, it's a question of working with allies and developing common strategies and approaches. When you have tough messages to deliver, go as a group.
7:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken Hardie
Thank you, Mr. Saint-Jacques. That brings us to the end of our first panel.
Dr. Wright and Mr. Saint-Jacques, thank you very much for your attendance tonight.
We'll now pause briefly while we get our second hour teed up.
7:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken Hardie
We're back in session for our second hour. Welcome back.
We're resuming the meeting with our second panel—a small panel, this time. Dr. Martel is our witness for the next 40 minutes, I would say, because we have a vote coming up in the House of Commons fairly soon.
I would like to introduce Dr. Stéphanie Martel, assistant professor, department of political studies, Queen's University.
Dr. Martel, you have an opening statement of five minutes or less.
7:35 p.m.
Dr. Stéphanie Martel Assistant Professor, Department of Political Studies, Queen’s University, As an Individual
Good evening.
I'd like to thank the Special Committee on the Canada-People's Republic of China Relationship for inviting me to testify this evening and participate in these very important discussions.
My contribution to the ongoing discussions will be rooted in my expertise in international relations in the Indo-Pacific region and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, in particular.
My opening remarks will focus on China's ambiguous relationship with the liberal international order, commonly known as the international rules-based order. In doing so, I will draw on considerations that are relatively consensual and fairly well established in foreign policy and defence analysis, but which I think are worth recalling because they offer useful insights about the future of our relations with China.
People, including policy-makers, tend to learn from past experience, and this typically informs how they are going to interpret information and events. People basically perceive what they expect, and their expectations—it is important to draw from what we know about the way policy-makers engage in foreign and defence policy—are not necessarily always accurate, especially if they're rooted in misleading analogies. This lesson we can draw from foreign policy analysis has important implications for how we approach our relationship with China.
For example, Chinese policy-makers will tend to expect China to be stigmatized or treated unfairly by the west in international fora, and they will behave accordingly. This means that sometimes we'll see behaviour on the part of Chinese actors in exploiting loopholes or advancing particular interpretations of the rules in a way that is self-interested. This is not particularly surprising behaviour, however, on the part of a great power.
We also see a tendency among western policy-makers to expect China to behave like other states, and particularly Russia, among other revisionist powers with values that have clashed with our own throughout history. Policy-makers in the west also typically expect that what China is doing in areas that it would consider to be its core interests means that it will seek to do the same in other regions of the world—for example, the Arctic—but we should be wary about a number of these analogies and whether they actually hold up.
Another lesson we can draw from foreign policy analysis is that people, including policy-makers, tend to see the actions of others as much more planned, centralized and coordinated than they actually are. That's even more so when reliable information is scarce and in the case of authoritarian states.
There is a tendency to assume that everything China does is part of a coherent long-term plan or grand strategy, when in fact it is as likely to be the result of a disaggregate set of ad hoc uncoordinated decisions from individuals and groups with competing interests, preferences and world views.
While it is obvious that we should be concerned about the growing centralization of power in China, this doesn't mean other interest groups within the domestic politics ecosystem do not have various interests and preferences when it comes to China's pushing for a more assertive position in the international sphere.
People, including policy-makers, also fear what they do not know. Those are typically the unknown unknowns, so the fact that we don't know China's true intentions or China's true motives will typically lead to speculation, to assuming the worst in virtually every domain of China where we observe China's behaviour that can be a source of concern. This can lead, however, to confirmation bias being built into policy and potentially also to implications in terms of self-fulfilling prophecy that we should be mindful of.
I'm not sure we can ever know, to be honest, what China's true intentions are, and this is for a number of reasons. Again, China, is not a black box.
I don't think, either, that the intentions of policy-makers are as clear or coherent as we think they are, and finally, motives and intentions typically change over time according to evolving circumstances.
This underlines the importance of supporting sound country expertise on China and Canada with knowledge of developments in domestic politics.
7:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken Hardie
Thank you, Dr. Martel. If you have further things to say, you can hopefully work them into the answers you'll be giving our committee.
7:40 p.m.
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Studies, Queen’s University, As an Individual
Absolutely.
7:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken Hardie
In fact, we'll start questions now, with Ms. Dancho for six minutes or less.
7:40 p.m.
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witness for being here.
I appreciate your opening testimony. I found it quite interesting. I've been on the China committee before, and certainly it was an issue that we studied at the immigration committee when I was on that panel in reference to Taiwan. We also have studied, at the public safety committee, Canada's security posture in response to Russian aggression, and China came into that discussion as well.
I was a bit surprised, actually, at some of your opening remarks. It seemed like perhaps.... Perhaps “downplaying” is not the word, but it seemed like you were saying that perhaps Canada is...that some folks on the international communications are overplaying the dangers that China has and that they aren't really as coordinated as some of us feel. Can you just clarify or further comment? I may be misinterpreting what you were saying.
7:45 p.m.
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Studies, Queen’s University, As an Individual
Yes. Thank you for the opportunity to clarify.
I think that, when assessing and trying to unpack behaviour and interpret the implications of that behaviour from a particular state, there is a risk of threat inflation that we need to take into account. There is a risk in terms of assuming that speculation about what is going on is evidence that this particular behaviour that we expect is in fact going on. We should be mindful of a tendency to think that there is an analogy, that what Russia is doing in the international stage means that China will necessarily embark on similar courses of action. It is important to consider that China's relationship with the existing international order is much more ambiguous, and it is much less clear that China is aiming to act as much as a spoiler and a destabilizing force when it comes to the international order as Russia is at the moment.
It's about being wary about drawing analogies.
7:45 p.m.
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
Thank you for that.
What do you feel China's goals are on the international stage?
7:45 p.m.
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Studies, Queen’s University, As an Individual
I'm not convinced that China seeks to overthrow the existing international order or to replace the United States as the main driver behind the existing rules. It is important, when it comes to assessing China's behaviour, to compartmentalize the discussion a bit, focus on breaking down certain domains of the international order, and then try to assess whether China's behaviour is merely pushing for a particular interpretation of the rules that doesn't align with our interests or our preferences or, alternatively, seeking to overthrow the rules. I think there is a nuance, and there is a difference. Here, China's behaviour, insofar as I can tell.... It is not as clear that China is pushing for alternate conceptions of the rules the way Russia is doing it.
7:45 p.m.
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
Thank you very much.
It's my understanding that in the last 30 to 40 years we've really provided a lot of our manufacturing jobs over to China, that the western world has really led its foreign policy concerning China with the idea that the more we build trade and relationships, the more China will become like us. I'm sure you've heard this. That certainly has not been the case. We have a lot of vulnerabilities with China, as we saw during the Meng Wanzhou situation and with the canola ban and pork and many others, so we are very vulnerable in some ways with our trade. Of course, China needs to feed over a billion people, so it does need food, and Canada is a large supplier of that, but we certainly saw China take advantage of that.
I'm just concerned that it seems very much that their intentions are not necessarily for our interest and are certainly serving their own.
You may have heard recently that our chief of the defence staff, General Eyre, has said that his position is that China wants to remake the world to suit its needs. It's very much the position of our military, obviously. Can you comment on that? Are they seeing this wrong in your opinion, or do our defence capabilities need to step up to meet this challenge that he sees?
7:45 p.m.
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Studies, Queen’s University, As an Individual
You're absolutely right to point out that our expectations of China's becoming more like us have not materialized, and we need to adjust to that reality. Absolutely.
I don't think, though, that we can derive from that the conclusion that China will behave in particular areas all the time in ways that conflict directly with our interests and preferences. It's important to be able to identify the areas where, indeed, a difference of interests, values and preferences needs to be reacted to or addressed, and areas where our interests and preferences might align in ways that we don't necessarily suspect. It's important to remember that.
The fact that our expectations of China's transitioning into a liberal democracy through its embeddedness in the global economy have not materialized doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to engage China and be able to find ways to convince them to engage in forms of behaviour that align more closely with how we see the rules underpinning the international order in ways that can sustain our interest and preferences in this regard.
I don't think it's a mutually exclusive thing, but I think we need to move past these expectations that we're going to be able to see a transformation of China in a way that China becomes one of the like-minded in virtually all domains. Getting rid of these expectations and reacting to that is important.
7:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken Hardie
Thank you, Dr. Martel.
Ms. Dancho is out of time, but Mr. Cormier now has the opportunity to ask questions for six minutes or less.
7:50 p.m.
Liberal
Serge Cormier Liberal Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Dr. Martel, for being with us tonight. I have a few questions about our trade relations, especially with China. I think you'll be able to answer some of them.
As we know, China is our second- or third-largest trading partner, if I'm not mistaken. I think humanitarian law should always be the priority. Beyond all that, if we think about the trade relationship between Canada and China and everything that Canada imports from China, should we be afraid? Should we be concerned about the future of our companies that do business with China? How do you see the current situation?
7:50 p.m.
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Studies, Queen’s University, As an Individual
Thank you for your question.
The economic aspect of Canada's relations with China is somewhat outside my area of expertise. My focus is more on regional security issues.