Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022. xii, 442 pp. US$33.00, paper; US$33.00, ebook. ISBN 9781487540876.
Michael Frolic’s Canada and China: A Fifty-Year Journey is a powerful work of diplomatic history. Frolic, a professor at York University, has observed China since the 1960s. He has had a front-row seat as the Canada-China relationship has evolved. He has visited China more than 60 times, taught in its universities, and served in the Canadian embassy. Frolic kept personal journals throughout this period and draws on his contemporaneous observations to contextualize the historical events he recounts. The author’s research includes interviews with five prime ministers, 10 foreign ministers, all 15 of Canada’s ambassadors to China, along with many other leading figures who defined Canada’s diplomatic engagement with China. Frolic draws on sources within China to round out the book’s discussion. The book serves as an excellent step-by-step account of the most important moments in Canada’s long history with China, primarily through the eyes of the Canadian government.
The book is divided into 11 chapters, the first of which is an overview and provides the book’s main conclusions. Chapter 1 orients the reader’s interpretation of the Canada-China relationship while the remaining chapters follow a largely chronological account from 1965 to the end of 2021. Chapter 2 traces Canada’s decision to pursue diplomatic relations with China. Chapter 3 explains the one-China policy in the context of Canada’s decision not to allow Taiwan to identify itself as the “Republic of China” during the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games. Chapter 4 explores Canada’s approach to “development assistance” to China. Chapter 5 traces Canada’s trade strategy in the 1980s. Chapter 6 examines Canada’s response to the 1989 “Tiananmen crisis.” Chapter 7 discusses Canada’s resultant sanctions against China, noting the slow erosion of those sanctions. Chapter 8 recounts Jean Chretien’s “Team Canada” approach to Canada-China trade. Chapter 9 steps back to consider how Canada has tried to influence China on human rights to limited effect. Chapter 10 discusses Stephen Harper’s ambivalence towards China. Finally, Chapter 11 discusses the failure of the Justin Trudeau government to truly “reset relations” with China and the reasons for this failure.
The fact that this book is told through the eyes of the Canadian government is a strength and a weakness. By illustrating that Canada’s engagement with China has been superficial, highly reactive, and even paternalistic, Canada’s China policy reflects its approach to Asia in general. Canadian foreign policy is shaped by political leaders whose ignorance of China—with the possible exception of Pierre Trudeau—is palpable, and whose policies unavoidably reflect domestic political interests and pressures. Frolic notes the need for Canadian politicians, media, and the public to have a deeper understanding of China’s culture and history, but this is never displayed during the period he reviews.
Human rights is the constant irritant in Canada’s relations with China. Frolic accepts Canada’s assertions that it represents a human rights standard that China must meet. Yet, in an era of the unmarked graves of Indigenous children in Canada, does Canada really have the moral authority it claims? Frolic discusses the impact of the Tiananmen Square massacre (1989) on Canada-China relations. Tiananmen is followed by the Jean Chretien/Team Canada era, when Chretien led Canadian political and business leaders to China in the quest for improved economic relations. The fact that China undergoes an incredible economic and technological transformation during the period that Frolic describes merits much further discussion and analysis. Yet the book, in focusing on Canadian foreign policy, largely overlooks the reasons for these developments and their deeper political, and even philosophical, significance.
Does Canada really have any lessons to teach China? Certainly, this is the view that Canadians take, as the book makes clear. Canada has an inflated sense of its relationship with China. Does Canada really understand the challenges involved in governing a country like China? Frolic implies it does not, but the narrow scope of the book prevents this from being developed. The critical role of the United States in shaping Canada’s policies towards China runs through the book and become especially important at the end. Frolic notes China’s disappointment with Justin Trudeau’s failure to “reset” the relationship after the difficult Harper years. Chapter 11 touches on Canada’s conflict with the US during the Trump era, but the connection needs to be stronger. Trump is the first US President to openly attack China during the period covered by the book. This attack is continued and amplified with the Biden administration. Trudeau’s hesitation on getting any closer to China is directly connected to Canada’s fear of offending the US. The Meng Wanzhou/Huawei crisis, for example, spun directly out of this, leaving Canada caught between the US and China. Frolic expresses Canadians’ outrage over China’s hostage-taking of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig in 2018; however, he leaves it to quotations from Jean Chretien to suggest that Canada did not have to go along with the US in the related arrest of Meng (398) in 2021.
For most of the 50 years of Canada-China relations, the US was content to allow Canada to follow its own policies with respect to China. That is no longer the case. Today, the US has defined China as its major strategic, technological, and economic competitor and is therefore doing all it can to undermine China’s development. Canada, apparently feeling it has no choice, has signed up for this conflict. China’s depiction of Canada as a small, vassal state of the US, while offensive to Canadians, seems appropriate.
The book needs a final chapter that draws together all the lessons Frolic has learned during his study of China and that more directly reflects on the future of Canada-China relations, given the US’s hostile approach to China. Is there any possibility that Canada’s relationship with China will ever be anything other than superficial? The book does not give much reason to hope.
Shaun Narine
St. Thomas University, Fredericton