Thank you very much for those two questions.
The minister is right in the sense that it does appear that other countries are having a disproportionate success with China. However, I wouldn't be quite that negative perhaps, because I do think we have to take to heart some of the lessons of my submission--for example, that trade has become triangular, that the bilateral relationship is not a good way necessarily to summarize the total relationship.
For instance, a smaller Canadian company might have a great deal of difficulty breaking into the Chinese market directly; however, it may be quite a global company by breaking into the supply chain of a major American company that is actively exporting to China. Some of our trade with the United States may actually represent global trade, because we are one of the links in the supply chain. In fact, I'm certain that is true, because we actually speak to those companies. So that's one thing to bear in mind.
I see China at the moment, of course, as the major opportunity for us, but also as an important place for us to use the integrated trade model to supply ourselves. It may be that China is one of our biggest suppliers today, as it is for the United States, for instance, a supplier of low-cost inputs to some of our products, such as this one. And then we export those things everywhere...whereas five or ten years from now China may become our biggest customer.
I would remind everyone of our experience with Japan. Back in the mid-1980s people were sending people to Japan to find out what the secret was. How was it they were taking away all of our business? That was very instructive, but by 1992 or 1993 that story had gone away, because Japan had reached its full maturity and now was one of our biggest customers as opposed to that ultra-competitive manufacturing machine. They have moved decidedly up-market. And of course they compete with us on those fronts, but it's not like it seemed back in those days.
Coming around to how EDC can help, first of all, I hope I've helped you to understand some of those numbers, but how can we actually help to develop trade? We have our feet on the ground. We have two representatives in China, one in Beijing and one in Shanghai. We expect that is going to grow over time. We of course collaborate directly with our trade commissioner colleagues from the embassies and consulates. As I said in my presentation, that's exactly how we need to grow those things. It's that face-to-face nature of the business that is very important. It isn't just people buying something over the Internet and ordering it; it's a relationship business, especially in the services end of the business, which is growing so rapidly. EDC helps in the form of facilitating. In the past year, for example, EDC did facilitate $1.3 billion worth of transactions in China. It's not insignificant, but we know, of course, there is a great deal of potential for growing that.
Turning to the branding question very briefly, I think the representation is the way to do that. I think the Canadian success stories are starting to get around. It's amazing just how widespread this one is, and when people see that as a Canadian story of a global company, that is the kind of success story.... And there are others: Husky, Nortel, Bombardier, and SNC-Lavalin. Those kinds of companies have gone global and are right in the actual trenches where the transactions occur creating that Canadian brand.