Foreign Affairs committee  When we read Deng Xiaoping's speeches, at the time he said, “I'll give you 50 to show I mean business”. He had this long-term plan that in 50 years China would develop and modernize enough to converge to the level of development of Hong Kong. That was his big idea. He also said s

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you. You raise a lot of tricky questions. Let me just add a few words about the previous question. A book entitled Experiences of China by Percy Cradock explains a great deal about that. Percy Cradock was one of the British advisors in 1984. In his book, he explains that t

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, the game is open in the long term. In the short term we have to remember that Xi Jinping is somewhat in a fight to the death right now. The real “top top” in his mind is to move forward with economic and social reforms to get out of the so-called middle-income trap and the

Foreign Affairs committee  Right.

Foreign Affairs committee  That's a great question. I'm an optimist on this because already I've seen good quality dialogues happen at UBC, for example. We have students from both, Hong Kong and the mainland, and we have all kinds of diasporas, alumni, and all this. Clearly what Simon and Alan described i

Foreign Affairs committee  Okay. A final point is to have open-ended, low-key discussions, probably, but high-level discussions in Beijing from the Canadian side to encourage flexibility and innovation, while not triggering the button of the more conservative members in Beijing.

Foreign Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen of the committee, it is indeed a pleasure and an honour for me to appear before you today. I will give you the essentials of my comments in English, but I will be delighted to answer your questions in French if required. Just to make a happy litt

International Trade committee  What I've often heard on the Japanese side is that this is an interesting trade deal. There is not strong opposition in Japan—unusually—because there is this complementarity in agriculture. There is no major risk for Japanese agriculture, but there's a lack of strong backers. So

International Trade committee  It would be seen as an advantage, right? Having the NGOs backing it and sending support would move politicians. So it can work in different ways.

International Trade committee  It's a big story, but very quickly, the Japanese public mistrusts GMO. They are not sure that we know all the long-term health hazards, and they're worried about environmental contamination. So there is a general unease among the public, like in Europe, and they don't call it a s

International Trade committee  First we have to separate short term and long term, because it will evolve over time as you will spin out all kinds of outcomes. On the winners side, we should expect agriculture, beef, seafood, etc., education services, and then it's a matter of specifics. Everything will depen

International Trade committee  This is always a difficult question. There's no magic recipe. What we seem to see from some countries that are quite successful with this, that manage to keep a strong manufacturing base even with high labour costs, say Japan, or Korea, actually, is they keep moving upwards in th

International Trade committee  Beef is an interesting issue, because it's quite sensitive in Japan. It's not just the government negotiating and giving something in a strategic way. It's more the bureaucrat thinking how the politicians are able to handle the public. So it's a bigger game. Ultimately, the way

International Trade committee  That is right.

International Trade committee  The Post is a more sensitive issue. It's politically salient. It's probably more difficult. Under Koizumi, in 2005, they went through a liberalization of the Post that would liberalize it for the private sector in Japan and also for international insurance companies. It just we