UTP Insights. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. xix, 122 pp. US$19.95, paper. ISBN 978-1-4426-1448-2.
Paul Evans has long been a distinguished student of the Canada-China relationship, and his new Engaging China is probably the most important book published about it since Reluctant Adversaries: Canada and the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1970 (University of Toronto Press, 1991), a conference volume he and B. Michael Frolic edited. This brief book is based entirely on English-language materials, but in relating the Canadian side of the relationship Evans makes fairly extensive use of original archival sources.
Most historians will probably come away from this book somewhat disappointed that Evans does not cover in any detail Trudeau’s trip to China in the late 1940s, his subsequent second trip to China in 1960 along with Jacques Hébert during the height of the Great Leap Forward famine (he would later visit China once again in 1973, this time as PM), Trudeau’s lifelong fixation on China, Diefenbaker’s decision to sell wheat to China, and especially Canada’s innovative and influential “takes note” formula regarding the territorial disposition of Taiwan in establishing diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China in 1970.
“Aspirations and tactics from the past offer lessons and cautionary tales,” he writes on page 84, but he does not really elaborate on these lessons and tales very much other than to make the sound observation that “the Canadian approach historically has been built on the idea that China is not a long-term threat” (84). This is somewhat disappointing, especially since Evans clearly believes that knowing the past in order to understand the present better is a sound reason for studying history. But Evans is primarily a political scientist, and it would be unfair to criticize his book for being something it is not and does not pretend to be: a full-orbed monograph on the history of Canada-China relations, one drawn from both Canadian and Chinese sources. Indeed, according to Evans, “What we still need are a full-gauged history of Canadian policy making and a systematic account of the Chinese side of the equation” (xix). He draws attention to the ongoing preparation of the long-awaited full treatment of Canada-China relations by B. Michael Frolic (Bernie Frolic).
Engaging China is a brief survey of Canadian China policy since 1970 and, more importantly, a broad policy recommendation or prescription for the terms of the future relationship. The meat of the book is chapter 5, “Engagement Recalibrated,” in which Evans argues that correcting Canada’s somewhat deficient and evolving China policies can be achieved through understanding and acting on four main points: 1) since 1978 and Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, China has changed immensely and continues to do so, and that this is good news for “engagers,” or people who believe that long-term engagement of the West with China will lead to positive change there; 2) the current dispensation of a multicentric world order has changed China’s international behaviour and will continue to do so, and fears of competing visions of world order (Westphalian vs. Sinocentric) are overstated; 3) while Australia, South Korea, and the United States have formulated long-term strategic visions for their overall engagement with China, Canada has so far largely failed to think in long-term geopolitical and strategic terms and needs to transcend narrowly “transactional and mercantilist” concerns; and 4) national leaders should take the lead in formulating a coherent long-term vision for China policy.
Evans argues that Canadian trade and investment with China can, if “carefully implemented” (87), eventually improve China’s human, social, and economic rights, although possibly in ways not readily foreseen today. He suggests that Canadian leaders can gently prod China to abide by the provisions of its own constitution, which explicitly guarantees freedoms of press, speech, and assembly, among other things. He has faith in the long-term transformative power of “the traditional Canadian formula of direct criticism and expressions of concern at the highest political level, quiet diplomacy in cases involving individuals, and an incessant effort at two-way dialogue, academic exchange, and capacity building” (88), and he wants as many levels and varieties of exchange and contact with China as possible.
He clearly admires Australia’s comprehensive geostrategic blueprint for future engagement with China and observes that “Australia, Canada’s most natural Asia Pacific comparator, is wrestling with the dilemma of having China as its largest trading partner and the United States as its principal security partner” (96). Although Canada’s largest trading and security partners are one and the same country, his argument that Canada ought to have some sort of coherent vision of China policy is sound, as is his contention that Canada should not focus on trade while largely leaving defence matters to the US and its Pacific allies.
Evans is not content to see Canada-China relations develop on an ad hoc basis, as if Canada were travelling through thick fog and could see what lies ahead only as it is closely approached. Evans insists that the fog can and should be penetrated and a way through it found. This important book, which no student of Canada-China relations should neglect and which belongs in all serious academic libraries, ultimately highlights the inadequacy of the ossified Laurentian and Continentalist duality in Canada’s foreign relations. While Canada’s major foreign relationship will very likely always be with the United States, Canada is now more of a Pacific state than an Atlantic one, even though much of Canada has yet to awaken fully to this adamantine fact. Evans’ book is a clarion call for the awakening, one that will hopefully help make unnecessary a future firebell in the night.
David Curtis Wright
University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada
pp. 692-694