John Robson: Trudeau's blithe attitude towards China isn't just naive. It's dangerous

What does Trudeau think about....China’s misconduct abroad and at home, its economic fragility, repression and ham-fisted aggression?

There he goes again. After throwing a monkey wrench into negotiations for a Trans-Pacific Partnership with mostly friendly nations and putting a long list of implausible PC demands on the NAFTA table, Justin Trudeau is very keen to sign a deal with good old Red China. And here his naivete is dangerous.

The story appeared the same day as one saying, “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed Sunday he will offer an apology to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and two-spirited people who were forced out of the military or public service and some who were even prosecuted criminally for ‘gross indecency.’” There is something greasy about apologizing for other people’s misdeeds especially when you seem so blithe about your own. And he has never apologized for blurting out admiration for China’s communist dictatorship, even though it not only harassed but executed homosexuals, bisexuals, the transgendered, queer, two-spirited and on down the list during the 1960s, and still does not recognize gay marriage or transgender rights.

The People’s Republic of China is a menacing strategic presence, claiming waters to which it has no right, building a blue-water navy with no innocent purpose and fomenting noxious economic and strategic relationships around the globe. And while Trudeau may not be in the “#*&( Americans, I hate those %&(*(&*” wing of the Liberal party, the skepticism he and his ilk have shown about America’s strategic goals has been strangely absent when it comes to China.

The skepticism Trudeau shows towards America is strangely absent when it comes to China

 

Forget Donald Trump here, who doesn’t seem to have “goals” so much as attitudes, mostly bad and ignorant. Consider our obstinate virtue-signalling refusal to be part of ballistic missile defence, under Bush Jr., Obama or Trump, despite the active missile and warhead programs in North Korea and Iran, both vicious extreme regimes close to… oh dear. Beijing. Instead we fantasize about selling toques or some such to 1.3 billion Chinese.

China is dangerous environmentally, especially as Trudeau purportedly measures such things. The New York Times reported this summer that Chinese companies are building or planning more than 700 new coal-fired power plants, mostly at home but also abroad. Its cities are choking on smog, its rivers fouled, its disposal of hazardous waste a menace.

China is also dangerous economically. I don’t mean they are “outcompeting” us, which wouldn’t be bad even if true, since economics is a cooperative rather than combative activity when driven by consumer satisfaction. The problem is that China’s economy is a fraudulent house of cards.

The Chinese economy is a fraudulent house of cards

 

People who once believed Soviet economic statistics now believe Chinese ones and say “wooo, it’s the world’s 2nd-largest economy and will soon pass the U.S.’”, often with an undertone of “ha ha, serves those arrogant Americans right.” As if the world would really be a better place if central planning and political repression driven by materialist philosophy actually worked. But it doesn’t.

Partly Chinese statistics should be regarded with suspicion bordering on contempt because they are often deliberate lies. They are also frequently wrong because the Chinese authorities themselves do not know what is going on, a great disadvantage of closed economies and political systems. Finally, as Soviet statistics were, they are wrong because measuring things like GDP depends on market price formation to tell us what a product or service cost and is worth. When command and control is used instead, you wind up multiplying meaningless numbers by unreliable ones and what you get is what you deserve.

Such considerations led Robert Conquest to declare decades ago that, “Strictly speaking, the Soviet economy is not an economy at all.” Neither is China’s. So what is it?

Essentially, it is an instrument of state power. Chinese corporations investing abroad are tentacles of the state while foreign trade is a political activity, selling goods below their true cost in labour and environmental degradation to earn foreign currency for geopolitical purposes.

Chinese corporations investing abroad are tentacles of the state while foreign trade is a political activity

 

The whole enterprise is profoundly misguided, and would be dangerous to the Chinese themselves even without additional problems of excessive debt, fraud, kleptocracy and demographic decline. But China’s cavernous weaknesses are not reassuring for us because the most dangerous combination geopolitically is short-term optimism and long-term pessimism. And China’s leaders have every reason for the latter, even if much Western leadership and punditry doesn’t see it.

How is it that Justin Trudeau is still as starry-eyed about China as so much of the global jet set is about Trudeau? What does he think about China’s misconduct abroad and at home, its economic fragility, repression and ham-fisted aggression? Does he think about it at all?

It might seem we somehow elected Alfred E. Neuman of “What, Me Worry?” fame. But Trudeau’s blithe attitude apparently only applies to enemies of the West. In his upside-down world view, trade with friends is bad while trade with enemies is good.

A goofy grin doesn’t make such naivete cute. Or harmless.