Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife Laureen pose as they tour the Great Wall near Beijing.JASON LEE
And we thought the Harper Tories played hardball. We had no idea what hardball really is.
After the pomp and circumstance of a marine band playing the national anthems and a guard of honour presented for inspection in the cavernous Great Hall of the People, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao repaired to a side room for private discussions, with pool media listening in on the opening remarks.
But instead of the boilerplate that invariably accompanies such grip-and-grins, the Premier lectured the Prime Minister on his long absence from visiting China.
"Five years is too long a time for China-Canada relations and that's why there are comments in the media that your visit is one that should have taken place earlier," he said, as jaws dropped. Everyone knows that the Chinese media say what they're told. But who thought the Premier would shove their editorials in the Prime Minister's face?
When Mr. Harper decided in the early years of his prime ministership to cool Sino-Canadian relations, he had no idea what he was about to reap.
From the 1930s, when Norman Bethune died treating the wounds of Mao Zedong's beleaguered army, Canada has had a place in the hearts of the Chinese people. Mao elevated him to martyr; his birthplace of Gravenhurst, Ont., became a shrine in the eyes of the nation.
Our country was never quite the running dog that the Americans were portrayed as being. This made it possible for Canada to establish diplomatic relations nearly 40 years ago, well before Richard Nixon paid his famous visit.
Subsequent prime ministers carefully tended that relationship. Brian Mulroney nurtured it; Jean Chrétien obsessed over it; Paul Martin made it a priority in his brief tenure. The Chinese came to see Canada as an amicable if junior courtier in the Middle Kingdom's relations with the concert of nations.
What a rebuke it must have seemed to them, when the new Conservative government embraced the Dalai Lama, railed against the imprisoning of Chinese dissidents, stoutly defended the rights of Taiwan. These were the tread-on-the-Reds sentiments of the Reform Party, and the new government was heir to its simplistic world view.
Certainly, it was a principled stand, given the cowering of previous governments in the face of what was, after all, the heir to a regime that killed millions of its own people. But in the 21st century, the only question was: How can we keep our workers in jobs? And for many observers, including many former prime ministers, the answer was: China.
Then the American giant stumbled, and suddenly China Rising was the story. It was our second-largest trading partner; its economy was growing at three times or more the rate of Western nations; its middle class numbered in the hundreds of millions.
Mr. Harper attempted a subtle sidestep. Without disavowing his earlier sentiments, he kept quiet about them. He sent diplomats and cabinet ministers to repair relations. And then he visited himself, declaring to President Hu Jintao that "I've been wanting to visit China since I was a small boy."
The Conservative government would ease itself into a new and revitalized relationship with China, while not acknowledging its earlier misdirection, and counting on no one to notice.
But China has memory. Yes, we have things they need: Energy and minerals and maybe financial services, one day. President Hu and Premier Wen were willing to forgive, but not to forget. Stephen Harper could have his deal, but he would have to pay a price. The price was a public flogging.
The Prime Minister stoically bore it. And well he should.
The Sino-Canadian relationship matters. A little raking over the coals is the least the Prime Minister should be prepared to pay to repair the damage he has done.
John Ibbitson