CANADA's SEE-NO-EVIL POLICY WITH CHINA

  The usual diplomatic, trade and security response has been, over 50 years and supported by all parties of different political stripes: nothing. About the Chinese regime being a tyranny, only a little is grudgingly said, and even less done. Presidents and prime ministers the world over have made sure that whatever Beijing does, it will be business — and above all, business — as usual.
    The biggest challenge to the global see-no-evil policy on China was the massacre in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. The scale and brazenness of the atrocity meant that Beijing had broken its implicit promise to Western leaders, namely to keep its repression sufficiently hidden as to make the see-no-evil policy plausible. Something had to be done. Condemnations were made, arms sales and World Bank loans to China were suspended, as were high-level ministerial meetings between G7 countries and the Chinese regime.
    As for any supposed “caution” in “fully engaging” China, that was thrown to the wind by Mulroney’s successor, Jean Chrétien. Within a year of taking office, Chrétien launched his “Team Canada” initiative and arrived in Beijing himself, accompanied by all the premiers save for Quebec’s Jacques Parizeau, and some 400 of Canada’s richest business leaders. Canada would reluctantly murmur about human rights, but it was not to be taken seriously. There was “another signal” to be sent, to be announced with trumpets and fanfare. Chrétien would return in 2001 with another trade mission, this one even larger, impossible as that might be to imagine, than the first.