David Mulroney is president of the University of St. Michael's College and a former ambassador to China
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's promised reset of our relationship with China is off to a good start. If nothing else, his recently completed meetings with China's leaders should help to normalize the relationship, demonstrating through small but important steps forward why talking to the Chinese is better than not talking to them.
It's already clear that the visit has provided some needed momentum. Mr. Trudeau and his officials sat down with the Chinese to discuss cooperation on culture, tourism and the environment. For their part, the Chinese are again encouraging a still-cautious Canada to think about free-trade negotiations. The goodwill generated by simply showing up to talk in Beijing made it easier to defuse a potentially costly trade dispute over Canadian Canola exports. The Prime Minister has also commenced what will be a continuing and very important dialogue on the subject of human rights. Fittingly, this began with him raising the case of Canadian Kevin Garratt, who is inexplicably languishing in a Chinese jail.
Perhaps most important, we've agreed to take up the long-standing Chinese invitation to make these leader-level meetings annual events.
This is no small accomplishment. Before the visit, it wasn't entirely clear just where the Prime Minister's reset would position us. When it comes to the relationship with China, Canada has been all around the dial in recent years.
Almost everybody agrees that we shouldn't revisit the Harper era, which was marked by a degree of built-in suspicion that caused us to shut down lines of communication with China, a country that is our second-most important trading partner, a shaper of the global agenda on the environment, health and education, and a rising power that pays only selective attention to the rules of an international system Canada helped to construct.
Nor is there any returning to the sunny ways of the Chrétien era when we were proud to be China's "best friend," and when an agenda dominated by trade promotion transformed us into perpetual supplicants, which is how China's rulers prefer to see foreign visitors.
The Chrétien era was also defined by a missionary impulse, the Canadian conviction that we are called to change China, which really means to make it more like us. This sprang from our tendency to see China's leaders as we wanted them to be, rather than as they are: highly efficient and occasionally ruthless technocrats who put the interests of China's Communist Party above all else, China's people included.
The missionary impulse hasn't been entirely banished. It was evident in Mr. Trudeau's suggestion that Canada can "help China position itself in a very positive way on the world stage." Nor have we entirely done away with our rose-coloured glasses. We donned them again in agreeing to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in Beijing. The AIIB is the response of a justifiably frustrated China to the fact that many existing multilateral financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary fund, are dominated by the United States and its allies.
The trouble is that China is unwilling to embrace the commitment to transparency, probity and good governance that should distinguish the host of such an institution. China jails lawyers and journalists, places its ruling party above the law and displays a cafeteria-style approach to global rules, selecting only those that meet its immediate needs. Let's not forget that China's current contribution to Asian infrastructure involves the construction of military airstrips on man-made Chinese islands in far-flung parts of the South China Sea.
The Prime Minister has two tasks before him if his reset is to succeed.
First, Mr. Trudeau needs to work with our closest allies to ensure that we aren't competing to curry favour with China, as was the case with the race to join the AIIB, but working together to communicate realistic expectations for China's re-emergence as a global power.
Second, he needs to convince Canadians that he's found the sweet spot between the unthinking antipathy of the Harper era and the unwarranted optimism of the Chrétien years. Our policy objective is not to help China position itself on the world stage, but to help Canada to do so. Participating in an annual, leader-level dialogue with China is about advancing Canadian interests and defending Canadian values.
That's a reset Canadians should welcome.