Mr. Chrétien, speaking at a news conference after addressing the Canadian Bar Association in Quebec City, said he would definitely have gone to Beijing had he still been prime minister.

He said Mr. Harper should have been at the celebration given China’s economic and demographic clout and the mentality of its leaders.

Now Prime Minister Harper might believe he has some legitimate bones to pick with the Chinese government, but at the same time, this attitude is starting to have some real effects on Canada’s ability to adapt to a multipolar future – regardless of some of the moral and ethical questions that many Canadians hold strong opinions on.

Take, for example, the case of the China National Petroleum Company’s planned investment in Enbridge’s Gateway pipeline from Edmonton to  the Pacific Coast.  Oilweek magazine described this week how Canada’s relationship with China is causing many missed opportunities.

China cannot secure Canadian oil supplies as long as the only export pipelines from Alberta lead into the United States. Especially after the two countries announced in 2005 an agreement on energy cooperation, it was therefore astonishing when CNPC announced last year that it had pulled out of an agreement to take a 50 per cent stake in the proposed Enbridge-operated Gateway Pipeline.

Obsessed with diversifying its oil sources and avoiding dependence on a single supplier, Beijing sees Canada as a country in the U.S. sphere of influence, as a country where oil could be held hostage to political concerns. It has little enthusiasm for multi-billion-dollar oil deals in a country whose relations with China have been soured by human-rights disputes. Think Tibet.

“China doesn´t want to make a multi-billion-dollar commitment to a country where the political contacts are constrained,” says Jiang Wenran, associate professor and acting director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta.

Professor Jiang adds that the Middle Kingdom worries about Canada´s business practices. Canadians can´t explain how they will triple production from the oilsands given environmental constraints. The costs of environmental protection seem out of control. Labour costs are reaching the moon.

Canadian companies don’t like to invest in politically unstable areas of the world – well, Chinese companies don’t like to invest in politically unstable places either – but I guess politically unstable is all in how you look at it.  China wants to invest in a place where operations will continue as agreed, not on the whim of environmental organizations, election-seeking politicians or other superpower regimes (such as, in Canada’s case, the USA).  And Canada doesn’t meet these criteria.  As a result, Canada now has to foot the bill for all this infrastructure (which Enbridge is reportedly continuing with), and simply hope that there will be buyers.

It seems to me that Chinese people and by extension companies and China itself view their international relationships based on trust gained not through ability to merely fulfill contracts, but in fact, ability to know and understand the other party, help out when help is needed, to find mutual benefit (even if the financial profits are distributed unevenly), and to overlook some of the other party’s shortfalls.  After all, nobody’s perfect.

Focusing on China’s domestic problems (which I won’t talk directly about here for fear of being even more blocked), as a reason to ignore the broader Canada-China relationship will severely limit Canada’s ability to cope with a multipolar global political system.  Canada is indeed limited by it’s physical closeness to the U.S., but needs to find a way to be independent, to be Canadian, and to build new, non-European style international relationships with rising developing countries.  There may be a lot to learn from Canada’s colonial and resource-rich sister, Australia, which has been highly successful in courting Asia-Pacific markets.

Indeed, ignoring the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games for ANY reason was not the right way to start.

Now if only there were a single political leader in Canada with the skill or finesse to deal with this problem…

Actually, I agree completely with many of the things that he said. We do need to have a wartime mentality to deal with climate change issues. And not a “war on drugs” or “war on terror” kind of mentality, but one that mobilizes all of society to try and deal with this one problem that humans the world over need to deal with in a hurry. Wind power is a great idea, and biofuels are going to cause a whole lot of problems.

Indeed, as he mentioned: Saving civilization is not a spectator sport.  However, I don’t think Mr. Brown’s approach is going to work in China if he continues the way it is.

1. Right off the bat, Lester encouraged everyone to engage their elected officials to prevent coal power plants and support alternative energies.  Um, hello?  We’re not in Kansas anymore, Mr. Brown.
2. After the talk, my colleague (a Chinese girl who studied environmental economics overseas) said to me, “it was alright, but he was so negative.”  I realized after hearing this type of comment a zillion times from all sorts of Chinese people, that Chinese culture doesn’t deal with negativity very well.  People don’t want to listen to it, and don’t want to react to it.
3. China has a whole lot of people that it doesn’t know what to do with.  Digging coal and heaving it around keeps millions of unskilled people employed and relatively happy – or at least distracted.  I’m sure President Hu doesn’t want dissatisfied unskilled labourers with nothing to do on his hands, regardless of the environmental impacts.

I don’t mean to be negative, but I think if Americans or any other westerners with fantastic visionary ideas are going to come to China and hope to have an impact on the public, they are going to have to do better.  They have to realize that there are 4 times more people to convince here than in the US, and all of them have a different way of looking at the world.

Doom and gloom and calling your representative aren’t going to cut it in China.  And Lester Brown should know it.  I hope we can all learn a lesson from this.

In my last post, Stephen Harper was trying to persuade European countries to put more pressure on China and India. Well, seems that Japan has figured out a better way to pique China’s interests that may have Stephen Harper realizing he’s just spewed a lot (more!) of hot air.

The Blog, China Environmental Law, noted last week that China and Japan were cozying up based on a relationship where Japan could start transferring technology and capital to China for the purposes of dealing with CO2 emissions. He quoted Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, who said,

““Technology and finance should be taken up in discussions”

Similar positions have been taken by China in documents on climate change, for example, in iCET’s soon-to-be published Background and Strategy on Low-Carbon Fuel Standards for China report, where China’s Developemnt and Reform Commission notes that China has in fact been promised technology and capital by western countries in order to deal with climate change, and this will be central in future negotiations on climate change.

The Prime Minister, on the other hand, is content to try to use his (in comparison to China) small-time weight to bully China into cutting emissions.  Frankly, it’s just not going to work.  China has hundreds of millions of people still earning less than $2 a day, who need jobs to survive.  Paying big bucks for proprietary technology from the west, or for R&D in new products in China isn’t high on the priority list.

If Prime Minister Harper and his cabinet are truly interested in China cutting its emissions, they had better start, like Japan, at stepping up to the plate and making sure technology and capital for decreasting GHG emissions makes its way to China.  It is politically unpalatable, but in terms of practical solutions, it might just be what we need.

Or how about like I posted before, getting Chinese engineers and labourers in Canada constructing Canada’s GHG emissions reduction infrastructure – i.e. CCS pipelines in Alberta?  Canada gets the cheap labour, China gets free access to technology and upgrades it’s labour skills.

I dare ya, PM Harper!

1. Doesn’t understand the bredth of policy development going on in China right now – is this reflecting on the work of the Canadian embassy in China?  Why can’t he be better informed…unless he’s doing this solely for political reasons.

2.  China and Canada actually have a lot in common, especially dirty energy (especially in Alberta).  China does use a higher proportion of coal to power its electricity economy but…

Anyway, both are interested in Carbon Capture and Storage technology.  Alberta has a long-term plan to develop this - at the same time, Alberta has a huge labour shortage.  China also has long-term interests in developing CCS.  Working together would certainly benefit both parties in so many different ways.  So, why doesn’t Canada invite Chinese companies to come to Alberta, with Chinese labourers, to build massive tracts of the Albertan CCS system?

There are certain benefits and drawbacks to this:

1. Political image in Canada: Chinese are taking our jobs – there is already a huge job shortage.  Chinese workers would be coming to fill surplus demand (how to allow people to see this).

2. Chinese stealing technology:  China has been “promised” capital and technology transfer in the Kyoto process to help them leapfrog old, dirty technologies.  What better way to fulfill that promise, and in the meantime, allow China experience in building technology that could eventually directly reduce their GHG emissions?

3.  Speed of implementation in Alberta:  If Alberta were to use Chinese labour to do this work, it would be done faster and cheaper.  There’s no question about that.  And the quality would be as good.  I know there are lots of political issues surrounding this.  But if our interest is actually in reducing GHG emissions, why would we so vehmently discount this possibility?

Well, it’s just an idea for now.  And what’s wrong with an idea?

Two days ago, the entire country was shaken by an earthquake that originated several kilometres under  Wenchuan county, Sichuan province – over 1500km southwest from Beijing.  Yet even here, around 2:30 in the afternoon, everyone in Beijing office buildings first wondered why felt like their heads were spinning, then realized that their entire buildings were swaying.

It took about half an hour to understand the scope of the event from a trickle of messages on mobile phones as we stood in parking lots scattered around Beijing, waiting for someone to say that it was safe to go back to our offices (of course, this information couldn’t be forthcoming).

I get the feeling now that it wasn’t just the buildings that had shaken across China with this earthquake, though – it feels like the national psyche has also taken a bit of a hit.

It’s the word on the street: 2008, the olympic year, isn’t turning out to be that great for China.  At first, it was my colleagues and friends listing the tragedies: Hand, foot and mouth disease, train collisions, the torch relay protests, Tibet protests, and now this earthquake.  Then I even started to see it in the news.

The casualty list is climbing in this tragedy.  Response has been hampered by bad weather in Sichuan (immediately following the earthquake, heavy rains prevented flying over the region), extreme mountainous topography, a collaposed transportation network and any other bad luck you can imagine.  The army has been reported to be lacking in equipment that can help fish people out of the collapsed buildings.

We have also seen an unprecedented opening of hearts and wallets in support of the people who have suffered the worst of the earthquake.  Reports indicate that hundreds of millions of RMB have already been received by the Chinese Red Cross Society and other responsible organizations.  Significant donations have also been received from Hong Kong and Taiwan companies and individuals.  ”Donation” is a word on the minds of every person in China, it seems.  I expect that support from overseas - and in particular, overseas Chinese - will not be small.

I have started thinking.  It has been an unlucky year so far for China.  But one thing that all these events have accomplished is a “gelling” of Chinese people both in China and around the world.  I think that people who long emigrated from China to the West are starting to get a feeling for what China has become again, and a feeling for being Chinese again.  I suspect that this will have enormous implications in the years to come as all people of Chinese ethnicity find a new identity – particularly in countries that have relied on immigration such as Canada, the US, Australia and others Southeast Asia.

As we watch this tragedy unfold in Sichuan province, and wish the survivors an orderly recovery, let’s start to consider long-term implications of the increasing national feelings that Chinese people everywhere seem to be demonstrating.