Trudeau was leading us into China, even before he was picked to be PM

 

Decision to recognize China a watershed moment for Canada and the People's Republic

Aileen McCabe, Asia Correspondent, Postmedia News

Published: Saturday, October 09, 2010

SHANGHAI - Daily news trumped history at the crucial moment in October 1970 when Canada established diplomatic relations with China.

The night before external affairs minister Mitchell Sharp rose in the House of Commons to announce the country's newest embassy would open in Peking, troops flooded into the nation's capital to guard the Parliament, the politicians and the embassies. The October Crisis was in full flight and while the agreement between Canada and China to exchange ambassadors has since been deemed "a foreign policy coup," it certainly didn't get the attention it deserved that autumn day.

Participants wave Chinese national flags during a rehearsal of celebrations to commemorate the upcoming 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, at a stadium in Shenyang, Liaoning province.

Sheng Li

Forever the master of understatement, Sharp remarked 25 years later: "Seldom is Canada in a position to give international leadership. This time we did so."

It was Pierre Elliott Trudeau's policy push in 1968 that led Canada to pursue recognition of the People's Republic of China. "It is a fact that there is a very large and populous country which is governed (from) Peking," Trudeau wrote. "To recognize that government does not mean that we approve of what it is doing."

His decision meant riling Washington, something Trudeau seemed to enjoy, and renouncing Taiwan, an unavoidable consequence no matter how deeply regretted.

The new prime minister's big idea met little resistance either in the corridors of External Affairs, as the Department of Foreign Affairs was called at the time, or on the streets of Canada.

Since the late 1950s, Canada had been selling surplus wheat to China and in 1961 granted Chairman Mao Zedong's calamitous government generous credit in exchange for long-term contracts. Overnight, China became Canada's ninth largest trading partner.

At External Affairs, the debate over recognition was led by a group of foreign service officers, sons and daughters of Christian missionaries, "China Mishkids," who were born and schooled in China and spoke fluent Mandarin.

What opposition Trudeau encountered came from within the Chinese community in Canada, where there was real fear of Mao's brand of communism and from Red-under-every-bed Cold Warriors.

On Trudeau's initiative, negotiations with China began soon after the New Year in 1969 in Stockholm.

Only 50 countries officially recognized China and Gong Yan, director of the Canadian Studies Centre at Beijing Foreign Studies University, explained that China was "looking for a breakthrough.

"At that time the United States obviously was putting a lot of pressure on its allies not to establish diplomatic relations with China," she said.

She easily listed the reasons why Peking was intrigued by Ottawa's interest: The wheat deals, a pre-disposition to respect Canadians because of Dr. Norman Bethune's celebrity in China, and a chance to crack U.S. opposition to China.

In his memoirs, Huang Hua, China's first ambassador to Canada, discussed the influence Canada had in the world at the time and said it "played a positive role in promoting the establishment of diplomatic relations between the overwhelming majority of Western countries and China, thus ushering in the third tide of China's establishment of diplomatic relations with foreign countries."

Former Liberal senator Jack Austin was deputy minister of Energy, Mines and Resources in 1969 when talks with China began, and he sat on a small committee that was briefed regularly on the negotiations and advised the cabinet and the prime minister on their progress. His reading of why China was interested in courting Canada is not so different from Huang's, but comes from another angle. China was in the throes of the chaotic Cultural Revolution and "for its own reasons" wanted to test the waters to see what reception it would get if it opened its doors to the world, Austin said. "China recognized that it needed a symbol, a formal acceptance in the global community by a developed country and Canada was by far the best candidate to make that test."

The "on-off, up-down" negotiations, as Austin described them, lasted 21 months and did not run particularly smoothly. The sticking point was Taiwan, but it wasn't the only problem.

In a paper published in the London Journal of Canadian Studies 2002/2003 when he was Canada's ambassador to the European Union, Jeremy Kinsman wrote about his cameo role in the historic talks.

"I was sent in the summer of 1969 from Brussels as an extra body for our tiny resident diplomatic mission in Stockholm, specifically to help determine who was trying to subvert our negotiations, from circulating false Canadian reporting telegrams that denigrated the Chinese, to professionally beating up a Canadian diplomatic-passport holder . . . who had just landed from Ottawa. Was it the Taiwanese, the Russians, the Japanese, or even Americans? The answer remains a mystery."

The breakthrough in negotiations came with the so-called "Canadian formula" on Taiwan. It looks simple, but was such a perfectly nuanced phrase that some 30 countries used it afterwards to cement their own agreements with China.

The magic words were "takes note of," as in: "The Chinese government reaffirms that Taiwan is an inalienable part of the territory of the People's Republic of China. The Canadian government takes note of this position of the Chinese government."

For Peking, according to Gong, the Canadian formula was "definitely not the best choice in China's interests," but it was, evidently, the best available.

With the deal done and just a day before Sharp was due to stand in the Commons to announce the terms, Taiwanese ambassador to Canada, Hsueh Yu-chi, pre-empted the news, broke off diplomatic relations with Canada and tearfully left Ottawa. It was high diplomatic drama, somewhat lost on a country consumed by the October Crisis.

China and Canada were both anxious to put their words into action and, by April 1971, Ralph Collins became the first in the series of External's "China Mishkids," to take up the post as Canadian ambassador in Peking.

Close on his heels came the first Canadian trade mission, ready to explore the commercial benefits of Trudeau's bold move. Then Industry, Trade and Commerce minister Jean-Luc Pepin arrived in the Chinese capital in June with officials from key government departments, including Jack Austin from Energy, Mines and Resources.

"We stayed at the Beijing Hotel. We were the only foreigners and pretty well the only people in the hotel," Austin said from Vancouver.

On the streets, "people were on bicycles everywhere, in blue suits. At any distance they were almost indistinguishable as to gender."

"Beijing now is a different planet," he marvelled.

Premier Zhou Enlai was their host and Austin remembers how impressed the Canadians were that after years of isolation, how knowledgeable Zhou was about world affairs.

"He was as well-briefed I would say as any leader in any country on political, economic and global affairs."

Huang Hua, the distinguished diplomat whose appointment as ambassador was seen as proof of how highly the Chinese valued the new relationship, was slated to arrive in Ottawa concurrently with Collins' arrival in Peking, but events intervened.

"One day in April premier Zhou informed me that Chairman Mao had appointed the premier, Marshal Ye Jianying and me to form a three-member team for the work of receiving (U.S. secretary of state) Dr. Henry Kissinger who was coming on a secret visit to China," Huang wrote in his memoirs.

Excuses were made and it was July before Huang arrived in Ottawa for a stay that lasted just one year.

There was nothing in the agreement Canada and China signed on Oct. 13, 1970, that committed Ottawa to lobby in support of Peking's bid to be seated at the United Nations in place of Taiwan. But after two years of hard bargaining, Austin says he believes there emerged an unwritten "postscript" to the accord - "Canada's undertaking to lead the process at the UN of winning the seat for China."

Gong Yan claims no knowledge of a back deal, but said, "Canada did play a part."

"China wasn't actually expecting to be accepted by the UN back in 1971. It came as a surprise because at that time the United States was lobbying very strongly against it because of the Taiwan issue," she said.

Where Canada helped, Gong said, was "with taking the lead, and with the Canadian formula," which broke the recognition logjam and allowed other countries to quickly follow suit.

In October 1971, after 21 previous attempts, the People's Republic of China took up the "China seat" at the UN on a vote of 76 to 35 with 17 abstentions and resumed its membership in the Security Council.

China formally returned to the world community.

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