Canada China Relations: John Baird Seeks To Improve Strained Relationship With Superpower

THE CANADIAN PRESS — OTTAWA - Call it going back to the future instead of a great leap forward.

John Baird's first trip to China as foreign affairs minister later this week will continue the Conservative government's efforts to improve strained relations with Beijing. The situation has improved in the last two years, but analysts say that progress has simply healed the wounds inflicted by the Tories between 2006 and 2009.

"We're basically back to where Canada was in 2005, trying to make sense of what a strategic partnership with China might be," said Paul Evans, an Asian issues expert at the Liu Institute for Global Issues in Vancouver.

Two weeks ago, Baird referred to the China relationship as a strategic partnership and declared to the business audience in Toronto that visiting there was a "huge priority."

Wenran Jiang, a China expert with the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, said Baird's speech set a positive new tone that will resonate well in Beijing. But the strategic partnership designation is something former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin set in motion in the dying days of his government in late 2005 when he hosted China's president.

"Everybody begins to talk about the golden age, everything is normal. It's not normal when you bring a relationship back in 2010 to the level of 2005 because in those five years the Chinese economy has grown by 60 per cent," Jiang said.

Baird will be in China from July 16-20. He'll also be tilling the ground for a second trip to the country by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, perhaps before the end of the year.

Baird will also attend a meeting of the ASEAN regional security forum on the Indonesian island of Bali following the China trip.

Evans and Jiang agreed that Sino-Canadian relations are back on a much more solid footing, but there's still much more work to be done. Unlike the Liberals before them, the Harper government has no overarching strategic plan on engaging China, whether on economic matters or pressing human rights.

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Source: Huffington