By JOHN IBBITSON
Paul Martin, that most decisive of men, still can’t make up his mind whether to see the Dalai Lama, who is visiting Ottawa in the third week of April.
“The idea has an enormous amount of interest,” he told reporters yesterday, “but we’re in the process of seeing if the logistics can be worked out.” Working it out has been taking Mr. Martin’s organizers months.
The Chinese embassy, according to a CanWest news story, decided to issue some advice. No federal official should meet with the Dalai Lama, the embassy stated in a fax, “in any capacity and in any form, so as not to upset or damage the bilateral relations” between Canada and China. In other words, if Canada doesn’t want to see trade with China suffer, our leaders should ignore this interloper.
That fax is why Mr. Martin should agree immediately to meet with the spiritual leader of Tibet.
There are good reasons for Western governments to make extraordinary concessions when dealing with China. Demographics, economics and geopolitics suggest that, some time in the second half of this century, China will surpass the United States in power and influence. One of the most important unanswered questions of our time is whether the West, in the years still left to it as the globally dominant culture, can instill in the Chinese a respect for rule of law, democratic institutions and multilateral engagement.
Western governments have no choice but to engage with China, even though it is obvious Beijing plans to curtail any attempt by the people of Hong Kong to establish local democracy; threatens to annihilate or invade Taiwan if its people insist on deciding their own future; and continues to oppress the people of Tibet, who struggle for some measure of local autonomy and personal freedom; and prohibits any meaningful action against North Korea, which is a mortal threat both to its own people and to the safety of the world.
But as Chris Patten, who was the last British governor of Hong Kong, warned in his book East and West, engaging China does not mean kow-towing to it. It especially does not mean Western governments betraying their own solidarity and moral sense by competing against each other for often-illusory access to Chinese markets by ignoring human-rights outrages.
Canada wants to double its $20-billion in trade with China over the coming decade, which is fine. But if the price of that increased trade is to ignore human-rights violations and to submit to Chinese interference in our own foreign policy, then that price is too high.
In this instance, we don’t even need to worry about being put at a competitive disadvantage. U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have met with the Dalai Lama. Both countries compete with Canada for Chinese business; seeing the Tibetan leader would only even the playing field.
Finally, to succumb to threats from Beijing, in the pathetic hope that maybe one day they’ll buy a Candu nuclear reactor, is to surrender both our sovereignty and our pride. Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien — who was positively sycophantic toward China — refused to meet with the Dalai Lama. It’s time for this to stop.
Chris Patten, who is now the European Union’s external-relations commissioner, remains bullish on China. It crackles with energy, he said after a visit there two years ago. Its young people openly question authoritarian assumptions. Growth, while uneven, is still miraculous, although serious environmental threats accompany it.
But Mr. Patten warned against paying too much respect to the old men who still clutch at power in Beijing. “We must continue to talk about human rights and the rule of law in China,” he said in a speech. “We do China no service when we blow hot and cold on these issues. Better for us to raise our human-rights concerns consistently and openly, controlling passing convulsions of commercial ambition.”
Paul Martin must meet with the Dalai Lama, because it is the best thing he can do for those energetic young Chinese. It is also the best thing he can for Canada.
John Ibbitson is co-host of the CTV program Question Period, Sundays at noon.
