Commentary
Harper’s
Visit to China
Stephen Harper’s four-day visit to China, which began on December 2, got off to a bad start as he was chided by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao for not visiting China sooner. Harper’s sanctimonious preaching to China about “human rights” was also blunted by the revelation just days before the visit that his government had ignored warnings from its top intelligence officer in Afghanistan about the torture of detainees transferred by the Canadian Armed Forces to Afghan authorities. In the end, Harper was relatively quiet about human rights and the Chinese government rewarded Harper’s visit with some trade concessions on tourism, pork and canola, making it clear just who is in the driver’s seat of Canada-China relations these days.
China is currently Canada’s second largest trading partner, next to the U.S. and China recently surpassed Canada as the largest trading partner of the U.S. Furthermore, despite repeated claims to the contrary, the American economy is in deep trouble, with 10 percent unemployment rates and millions of mortgages in default. As a result, Canadian exporters are in equally deep trouble and are looking for alternate markets. China, while also hurt by the economic crisis, is one of the few countries whose economy is still expanding and is a growing destination for Canadian exports of energy and natural resources. Clearly, both Harper’s visit and the dropping of his usual Cold War rhetoric were the result of pressure from Canadian business interests to try to further penetrate the Chinese markets. Despite Harper’s numerous protests to the contrary, he apparently will do anything for “the almighty dollar”.
While China’s human rights record is hardly stellar and its attitude towards its national minorities is no more enlightened than the U.S. and numerous European countries, Harper is hardly qualified to instruct it. Quite apart from the colonial attitude of the Harper government towards Canada’s aboriginal peoples, an attitude it shares with all previous governments, the Harper government has distinguished itself as one of the governments least concerned about the human and civil rights of its own citizens. It has continued the previous liberal government’s policy of rendition of Canadian citizens to other countries to be tortured. It handed over prisoners to Afghan authorities knowing that they were likely being tortured, blocked efforts by the International Red Cross to check on their wellbeing and lied to parliament about the whole affair. It is one of the few governments in the world which refuses to protect its citizens charged with offenses in other countries and the only western country that did not request the U.S. government to release its citizens being held and tortured in Guantanamo. At the same time, the Harper government has been quick to come to the defence of Canadian companies operating abroad that are violating the human rights of the citizens of those countries, poisoning their environments and murdering trade union officials.
In addition, the Harper government has not said a word about the human rights abuses of tens of thousands of people by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan and various other countries. It said nothing about Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, choosing to condemn the victims instead. It did not criticize the coup in Honduras, even after U.S. President Obama indicated that it would be acceptable to do so. In other words, Harper maintains a blatant double standard on the issue of human rights, choosing to criticize countries, such as China, which he views as rivals to U.S. hegemony, while remaining silent on the human rights abuses of those he views as allies.