Canada's China re-set: Strategic realignment or tactical repositioning? Re-energizing the strategic partnership

Abstract

The “reset” in relations with China executed by the Harper government is gratifying yet incomplete. While a “strategic partnership” has been revived, the relationship has not been placed in any strategic framework in Canada's overall foreign policy and hence may run into problems of sustainability, some of which have already been encountered surrounding Chinese resource investments such as the CNOOC purchase of Nexen Energy. The relationship needs to be put in a context broader that trade and investment in resources with due acknowledgement of environmental sustainability rather than demonizing environmental opposition. Furthermore much more acknowledgement and emphasis needs to be placed on the human ties binding the two countries together as a sustainable basis for a long term relations.

Keywords:

• Canada-China Relations
• sustainability
• strategic partnership
• resource diplomacy

Notes

Prime Minister Harper renewed Canada's commitment during the visit of President Hu Jintao to Canada in June 2010 (Harper 2010; Jiang 2011). As late as the joint Statement of 9 December 2009 issued during Prime Minister Harper's first visit to China, Mr Harper had declined to characterize the relationship as a “strategic partnership” (Harper 2009a, 2009b).

See also Nocera (2012), directly linking the Keystone pipeline rejection to Harper's February visit to China.

For the status of China's “going out” strategy see (2011).

Despite extreme efforts under former Australian PM Rudd to improve relations with China, the relationship hit rocky shoals over the Rio Tinto affair and the visit of Rebiya Kedeer. As an example of Chinese ambivalence towards Australia's efforts see Global Times earlier this year http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/647470/647470.aspx (accessed September 28, 2011).

As of 2009, North America as a destination accounted only for 2.7 per cent of China's outward investment (2011, p. 24).

The China Investment Corporation opened its first overseas office in Toronto this year (Hoffman and Perkins 2011).

For a good overview of how human relationships provide a potential basis for enhanced ties, see Zhang (2011).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jeremy Paltiel

Jeremy Paltiel was visiting professor at the department of international relations at Tsinghua University, Beijing (2009). He coordinated the Chinese domestic background theme of the CIC's China Working Group and authored two of its papers. He recently published “Reimagining Canada's Present and Future in the Shadow of China's Rise”, The Empire's New Clothes: Cultural Particularism and Universality in China's Rise to Global Status (2007), and “China and the Six-Party Talks”, “Mencius and World Order Theories”(2010). Email: [email protected]