Politics 22 - Canada's Sheepishness

At the 11th annual Halifax International Security Forum held in Canada recently, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan conveyed the strongest evidence yet that after much indecisiveness, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has retreated into the Liberal Party’s traditional normal approach to relations with Beijing — acquiescence, and submission.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan

As Terry Glavin of Maclean’s said:  “The Trudeau government’s newfound faith in ‘appropriate discussion’ is the Canadian equivalent of ‘thoughts and prayers’ — an easy out when dealing with the China lobby”.

While the people of Hong Kong decisively crushed Xi Jinping’s increasingly savage aggression and belligerence by their district elections at the weekend, Sajjan said at the forums opening, “We don’t consider China as an adversary,”.  Well, Hongkongers certainly do. 

Mr. Glavin continues;  “So do the Uighurs of Xinjiang, a Muslim people whose persecution has accelerated to the point that at least a million of them are confined to concentration camps and forced-labour zones laid bare in the greatest detail yet in a trove of leaked Chinese  government documents just released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.  So do Tibetans, whose dispossession and oppression over the past seven decades is now being replayed in Xinjiang — and whose tragic predicament, once a hallowed cause in Canada, is now rarely if ever even mentioned in polite company”.

My favourite quotes from the Maclean’s article are:

• The findings of Canada’s own National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians contradicts the weird claims Sajjan made at the Halifax conference.  Last April, in its first-ever annual report, the committee officially declared China a threat to Canada’s national security, owing mainly to Beijing’s hostile espionage, its cyber threats and its subversive overseas influence-peddling operations.

• Security Forum president Peter Van Praagh, Sajjan’s co-host at the weekend gathering, sees the same too, and he said so. “I think it’s clear that China and Canada do not share the same interests. There is some intermingling on some issues, but China has a very different view of the world than Canada’s view of the world. And so, what are we willing to surrender in terms of our own values in co-operation with China, and where is that line drawn?”

• For several weeks now it has been increasingly evident that Trudeau’s government is willing to surrender a great deal and to draw that line where Beijing has always wanted it drawn — with diplomatic and corporate relations inside the relationship, and all those bothersome “Canadian values” about human rights, democratic accountability, the international rules-based order and the rule of law left entirely outside of it.

• First came the September appointment of Dominic Barton as Canada’s new ambassador to Beijing. Barton took over from the disgraced China evangelist John McCallum, and while Beijing was sad to see McCallum go, Barton was the replacement China had hoped for.  In August, at a multinational summit in Bangkok, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi quietly told Canadian officials as much.  Barton came pre-approved by Beijing, in other words.  Barton had been an adviser to the state-owned China Development Bank, and he’d spent several years swinging big-money deals in Shanghai.  During his years as managing partner of McKinsey & Company, the global consulting giant had taken on several Chinese state-owned corporations as clients.  Just one of them was an enterprise building islands in the South China Sea, which Xi Jinping has arbitrarily annexed in defiance of the United Nations.  Last year, McKinsey held its glamorous annual retreat in Xinjiang, just a short walk from one of China’s several Uighur concentration camps.

• Ottawa still hasn’t made up its mind about allowing Huawei into Canada’s fifth-generation internet connectivity rollout, even though a green light could end Canada’s engagement with the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom in the “Five Eyes” security and intelligence consortium.

• Canada’s new foreign affairs minister, François-Philippe Champagne, a protegé of former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, was again asking China’s Wang Yi for Kovrig and Spavor to be released.   Francois-Philippe Champagne, came straight out of the corporate sector when he was elected in 2015. He is not known to have ever uttered so much as a cautionary word about China. 

• Rounding things off was last week’s elevation of Mary Ng to the post of minister of international trade. It’s a file that’s just tacked onto her previous cabinet portfolio — small business and export promotion.  Hired as an appointments secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office after the 2015 federal election, Ng was a political unknown until only two years ago, when she was elected MP in Markham-Thornhill, the riding held by John McCallum.  There are some interesting highlights in her strangely meteoric rise to the international trade ministry, especially with regards to China.

The full text of the reference article is available at:  https://www.macleans.ca/politics/worldpolitics/ottawa-goes-meek-and-gentle-with-beijing/

World Domination - An Essay

It’s the month of June already ... and I’ve got the classic writer’s ‘block’.

How do I avoid the quintessential rants about politics or religion when they loom darkly over our very existence.  Greece, Iraq, Ukraine, Islam, and the South China Sea (and Canadian politics continues its’ attempt to dumbfound us).  The Solar Impulse 2 is grounded in Japan after an exhausting, but record-breaking, 40-hour flight from China, where it had been resting for a lazy month of “commercial reasons” after a 7-hour flight from Chongqing to Nanjing.  Will it take more than the balloon-inspired 80-days for it to circumnavigate the Earth?

The hard drive on my computer has developed signs of Alzheimer’s disease, and my symptoms of acid indigestion, probably due to the half-chicken that I ate yesterday, would only interest my doctor during his 5-minute annual checkup next week.

Which leaves me to come to grips with my monstrously thought-provoking subject of World Domination.  Ideally, one should obtain a large globe of the Earth (No, Google isn’t good enough) ... I’ll wait.

Since the amazing breakup of the USSR, and the coming into power of the Putin dictatorship, the great Russian bear has demonstrated its’ determination to regain control of those ex-Soviet states by any means it considers necessary.  Thus, although the annexation of Georgia and Crimea will not cause sleepless nights in the ‘West’ as it should, perhaps drawing attention to the alarming increase in military activity on the borders (including international sea and airspace) will. Certainly, ex-soviet states that are not members of NATO, are increasing their defense spending.  It is just a matter of time for acknowledgement that eastern Ukraine has been annexed.  What could they do?  One defensive shot and Russia could take over in a matter of weeks, resulting in feeble diplomatic protests at the UN.  How many people noticed the visits recently by the prime minister of Greece to Moscow regarding financial assistance.  What could Mr. Putin ask for in return, probably, air and naval bases in Greece.  After all, Russians are already the largest tourist groups in Greece.  Thus, that could influence Russia’s southwards strength into the Mediterranean.

Now, spin the globe to bring the Chinese dragon into view.  Inner Mongolia has been taken, perhaps Mongolia itself could be taken in association with Russia.  With Islamic problems as an excuse, the province of Xinjiang would be next, and Tibet is already taken, as is Hong Kong and Macau.  Taiwan will, initially, become another Hong Kong.  There are continuing border disputes with Pakistan and Tajikistan (and India), thus, all the so-called ‘istans could be shared with Russia also.  It is said that Mr. Xi is returning to the strong-arm policies of Chairman Mao and this is quite evident in the so-called South China Sea annexation of the Spratly Islands just 200 km off the coast of the Philippines (but more than 1,000 km from the nearest Chinese land mass) including similar disputes with Viet Nam and other Asian countries.  Soon, China’s strength in the area will be such that the US will be unable to defend a further annexation of Korea.

If we take a large red paint brush and highlight the countries that I have described, the future of our Earth looks quite uncomfortable, and if we imagine the red paint spreading in all directions, then, I‘ll definitely want to get off.

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