Genuflecting to Economic Power

Jean Chretien had it right. Trade delegations to China. Selling China on investing in Canada. Selling Canadian corporations on investing in China. Improved trade, money to be made, and connections to be burnished. The IOUs to be picked up another day, post-Prime Ministership. That's thinking of the future. Nothing to tarnish the goal of establishing a personal presence and unctuously presenting as a personage of note.

And Jean Chretien went out of his way to sneeringly accuse Prime Minister Stephen Harper of wasting the opportunities that his previous trade missions had opened for Canada, within China. Mr. Harper wanted to consider carefully whether that represented the well-chosen moral route for Canada, taking into account China's blemished human rights record. And where his Liberal predecessors failed to formally meet with the Dalai Lama lest they give offence to China, Mr. Harper did just that.

It just doesn't seem right for Canada to have a Conservative-led government. Their secret agenda, you know. And Michael Ignatieff, Leader of the Official Opposition, is determined to oust the Conservatives and lead the Liberal party back where they belong in the House of Commons. Inspired by his predecessor's success, off he's gone to Beijing. And there is Michael Ignatieff, the academic whose speciality is human rights, courting China.

Addressing Chinese students at Tsinghua University, just as he lectured university students while a professor of human rights at Harvard as a director of the Carr Center for Human Rights. A prestigious position, and a highly respected academic. That's our boy, the sometimes-Canadian, no longer just visiting, but prepared to take the helm of the country. Those Chinese students can be forgiven for experiencing some confusion at the address. They must be agog with incredulity, let alone the insult to their intelligence.

Inspired by President Barack Obama who apologized to the world, and particularly to the Muslim world, for America's past, soon-to-be-corrected malfeasance in international behaviour, Michael Ignatieff relieved himself of his personal opinion that China could teach Canada some great tricks in support of human rights. Doubtless, Iran is watching closely and hugging itself with joy, picking up new points to express at the United Nations in condemning Canada's human rights record.

Mr. Ignatieff waxed eloquent, deploring the Western world's cultural insensitivity, responsible for any standoffishness in relations with China. "Western illusions and Western fears have often distorted our image of China." And then the revelation that:

"In October 1966, as a young student, I helped organize a teach-in on China that attracted several thousand people to the University of Toronto to study the unfolding crisis of the cultural Revolution... I learned from that experience how difficult it is to understand China from the outside."

Oh. The cataclysmic political-social upheaval that resulted in the untimely deaths of millions of Chinese; the Cultural Revolution - and what precisely was it that Mr. Ignatieff learned from the experience? Not to judge too harshly, reflecting the Western world's 'distorted' view of China. This was a revolution of the cultural kind, bearing no resemblance to a cruel and dreadful imposition upon the people of China of the barbaric reality of fanatical Communist rule.

But this is the new China, the economic powerhouse of the world, one that has even America quaking in its financial boots, indebted in every conceivable way to Beijing, with Washington putting on a brave face of new, practical engagements. This is also the China of Tibet, of the Falun Gong, Taiwan, North Korea, Burma, Uyghur Muslims, and the upheaval of its own heritage and traditions.

What, precisely, is Mr. Ignatieff proposing to facilitate in an exchange of human rights points between Canada and China?