Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Foreign Affairs
Issue 24 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Wednesday, March 11, 1997
The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs met this day at 4:03 p.m. to examine and report on the growing importance of the Asia Pacific region for Canada, with emphasis on the upcoming Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference to be held in Vancouver in the fall of 1997, Canada's year of the Asia Pacific.
Senator John B. Stewart (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable senators, we resume our work on Canada's relations with the Asia-Pacific area.
I have been asked by the leadership in the Senate not to proceed with the meeting which we had scheduled for tomorrow because the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce has reported the bill on the harmonized sales tax and it is hoped that senators will be available in the chamber to deal with that bill tomorrow. Therefore, the meeting for Wednesday, March 12, is cancelled.
I wish to call your attention to the program for next week. I do so because there is a rumour that the Senate might not be sitting next week. Nevertheless, we have commitments which will have to be met in this committee.
Notice that there is a meeting at 4 o'clock on Tuesday with officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. That will deal with the APEC Conference and the Manila Conference.
Senator Corbin: Could you give us the date?
The Chairman: Tuesday, March 18. The following day, Wednesday, March 19, at 12:00, and I expect you have already received an invitation from the Speaker, a delegation will be here from the Parliament of the Republic of Ireland. Later that day, at 3:15 p.m., we have a meeting with the delegation from Ireland in this room.
On the following morning, Thursday, March 20 at 9 o'clock, in the West Block, we will have a joint meeting between this committee and the committee of the other place with Mr. Axworthy on the question of NATO enlargement.
It is our privilege to have as our witness this afternoon Dr. B. Michael Frolic, the Director of the Joint Centre for Asia-Pacific Studies, University of Toronto - York University. Dr. Frolic has a long career related to this area. He was the first Secretary of the Canadian Embassy at Beijing from 1974 to 1975. He was the Director of the Canada and Pacific Program at the University of Toronto - York University Joint Centre for Asia-Pacific Studies from 1981 to 1986. He served as the Chair of the Department of Political Science at York University. He has been a visiting Professor of Government at Harvard University. He has written extensively relative to China, and he has work in progress on China.
I am happy to have Dr. Frolic as our witness this afternoon, and I invite him to make an opening statement.
Professor B. Michael Frolic, Director of the Joint Centre for Asian Studies, York University: Thank you for inviting me, Mr. Chairman. I will discuss China mainly. There may be broader questions of Asian-Pacific interests as well. I do not have a prepared statement; however, I have some comments, and I will try to keep my remarks to a reasonable length.
I always thought China was a hobby of mine; however, after 33 years, it has become more than a hobby -- it is a career. I was a student doing a Ph.D. in Moscow when I first went to China. This was under Canadian government auspices. I saw a big, poor, agrarian, communist country. It was quite different from the communism that I had seen in the Soviet Union at the time. I became quite interested. I realized that there were other kinds of communism out there, and I decided to learn Chinese and eventually spend more time there, which I did.
I worked in the Canadian Embassy in the 1970s. I have taught in China. I have done research there. I have worked with businessmen who trade with China. I suppose that means I am an expert on China, although I do not feel confident in giving you definitive answers about China even after all these years. It is a controversial subject to many people.We may discuss some of those issues today, particularly with respect to human rights, civil society, and democracy.
The Joint Centre for Asia-Pacific Studies, of which I am the director, consists of two universities in principle. Five or six others are associated with us.
I read the transcripts of your Vancouver meetings. There is life after Vancouver. In Central Canada, we do a great deal of work on Asia-Pacific and China, especially in Toronto. Toronto has the largest Asian community, substantially larger than in Vancouver.
We focus on such projects as Chinese regionalism; the development of civil society in China-Taiwan-Canada relations; the question of Hong Kong 1997 and Toronto's Chinese community; India-China relations, which is a new project; and Canadian-Chinese relations, an area in which I am particularly interested in working. We also do work on Asia-Pacific, security in the region, regionalism, APEC, ARF, and two-track diplomacy. We look at democracy and human rights in Asia-Pacific and are putting together a big conference on that, and we work on the new Japan.
One of the materials I brought for you concerns a major conference we are having in Toronto on March 26 on Team Asia. We expect over 400 business people. Government officials, people from the region, and ministers of this government will be spending the day in Toronto. A whole range of issues will be considered with regards to doing business in Asia-Pacific and China.
I should like to begin by mentioning seven notable numbers. The first number is 30 million. That happens to be the population of China's largest city, Chongqing. That is equivalent to the population of Canada. It is important to remind ourselves of the size and the scale of the enterprise, trying to manage the affairs and government of a country of 1.2 billion people, when one city is equal to this whole country.
The second notable number is two, and that is the number of Chinese communist party members per Canadian citizen or inhabitant of Canada. There are 58 million members of the Chinese Communist Party. What do all these people do? Can you imagine a party with 58 million members? What are they likely to do? That has been a subject of speculation for all political scientists. We should be aware of the enormity of this organization.
The third notable number is 500. That is the average annual income of a person living in China in dollars. That is all. China's amazing growth spurt has been mentioned, as has the economic miracle, but the average Chinese annual income might make it to $1,000 by the 21st century, although that is perhaps wishful thinking. Nearly 100 million Chinese are below the poverty line by official Chinese government standards. There were 80 million in the early 1980's, and today there are between 80 and 100 million. There are nearly 150 million unemployed essentially wandering around China. It is a poor country. It is not yet a rich country, but it is on its way to something better.
The fourth figure is 750,000. I do not have the exact number here, but that is approximately the number of Canadians of Chinese origin now living in Canada. There were 2000 Chinese living in Toronto in 1950. Today, at over 400,000, Toronto is the now the city with the largest concentration of Chinese in Canada. Vancouver has between 275,000 to 300,000, and the rest are scattered around the country. In 1995, the last statistics I have, 53,000 people came to Canada from China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan as immigrants in one year. That is quite a few in the context of our total immigration. Approximately 150,000 Canadian citizens are now living in Hong Kong. Our government is concerned about what we will do if there is a problem. How will we protect them? What will they do after June 30, 1997?
The fifth number is 1,500, the number of people who were killed at or near Tiananmen in 1989. That figure has fundamentally changed Canadian relations with China. Tiananmen is the main factor in this change. Those people who were killed on television in front of our eyes are the key element in this change. China has more political prisoners, it is said, than any other country today. I read that yesterday. I should check that statistic.
Sixth is the number nine. That is the billions of dollars in bilateral trade agreements that Canada and China agreed upon in the 1994 Team Canada visit headed by the prime minister. This tells us that trade is important and that the Team Canada approach is a major element in our policy towards China.
The last figure is the annual percentage increase in China's military spending budget in the past three years, which is 15 to 20 per cent. Every year the military spends between 15 and 20 per cent more on its military modernization. China is now spending somewhere between $50 and $80 billion on its military. That is a long way from the United States with $250 billion plus, but it is ahead of Japan.
I should now like to tell you my position on human rights. Yes, universal human rights do exist. I believe that in areas such as dissent, torture, due process, women's equity, the right of association, and that particular abuse in China of forced abortions in the eighth or ninth month which Amnesty International documents, it is clear that universal human rights do exist.
Yes, China is an abuser of human rights by our standards. China does abuse the political process, and there are political prisoners. Arbitrary quick justice is dispensed sometimes within 24 hours, with no defence and no appeal. There is no demonstrating freely. There is no freedom of the press and freedom of association.
Yes, China interprets human rights differently than we do. China has made statements to this effect. There were policy documents in the early 1990's. The Chinese argue that they are a poor country and that, before there is a move to political rights, economic and social rights must be settled. People must be fed, and full literacy must be achieved. There must be an economic bottom line achieved. Therefore, China cannot be placed in the same category as the western liberal democracies.
Supplemental to this, they argue there are cultural and developmental constraints on human rights in China. China is poor and not economically developed; therefore, it focuses on economic matters or, culturally, on collective group rights and the strong authority of the state. Therefore, it is difficult to overcome the habits of the past and move in a "western direction."
Canada must inform the Chinese government of its disapproval of their human rights policies by reminding them in bilateral meetings, international forum, high-level discussions, and low-level discussions of our point of view, but we must not harass them. There should be no pounding on the table or so-called megaphone diplomacy. It is counter-productive. In the early 1990's, I felt embarrassed when some of our Members of Parliament were drummed out of China. It was an awkward situation which could have been handled better. It was well-intentioned but did not particularly make me feel good as a Canadian citizen.
Should there be sanctions? I do not believe sanctions not work on China, and we can discuss that later.
However, Canada must build on constructive programs, and I draw on a range of CIDA programs which have been developed over the last few years. At this point, they are small, $1 million or so, but they are rising to $4 or $5 million. They work at building infrastructure at various points in the process.
For example, there are linkages with universities on human rights and discussions on human rights between Peking University and the University of Ottawa.
The Royal Society has a program about democracy which was sanctioned by the Chinese government. Chinese specialists were, in a sense, ordered or encouraged to talk to Canadians about what we mean by democracy and how this may be useful to them.
As to criminal law reform, a project has led to a new addition to the Criminal Code where the presumption of innocence has now been inserted. In other words, guilt is not presumed and innocence can be presumed. That is a major achievement.
There are programs on women and development, both to encourage women's participation and to develop women's awareness of the law. These are in process.
Several projects are in an earlier stage, some of which are fascinating. One is on village democracy and village governance. China has made tremendous progress at the bottom levels by encouraging elections, some of which work and some do not. I believe Canada is about to become involved in monitoring or promoting or working on this.
Chinese lawyers are linking up with the Canadian Bar Association to talk about common interests. That is interesting since Chinese lawyers are a very new thing. They are trying to establish themselves. As we know, lawyers are the key to all civilization. If they can develop skills in China and emerge as a force, that would be important.
There was an interesting suggestion made when the National People's Congress head Qiao Shi was here last year. He is very powerful. Subsequent discussions were held with the government to develop a program on Chinese parliamentarianism. The Chinese parliament at the national level is beginning to actually vote more critically -- sometimes casting no votes, sometimes asking for extra discussions when it is the Three Gorges dams or political appointments. Canada may become involved in a training program for members of the NPC in conjunction with the Chinese to teach them about parliamentary procedure, parliamentary organization, and how parliaments operate. This is a possible area of democratization in the system.
No, I do not think trade should not be linked with human rights. It is not possible. Linkage does not work. Business will not cooperate, and your competitors will not cooperate. We have faced this problem. It has not worked with any country's policies toward China.
Civil society was mentioned in your earlier testimony. I have been doing some work on civil society and have just finished a book on civil society in China. This is a term which is used quite often now. It used to be "democracy," and now it is "civil society." That is partly influenced by events in East Europe in the 1980's and Havel and the Czech experience.
Civil society, as was suggested in earlier testimony, is a space that exists between state and society. It is where citizens can participate and have a political role as individuals affecting the political process, but not be in it directly. It provides for autonomy of association so people can come together in groups or associations to talk about government and politics but not necessarily actually participate in the political process, as we are doing here.
A recent vote on the megacity in Toronto was interesting. I saw civil society at work. Every day, my computer spewed forth all kinds of material on what was happening, who was voting, who was not, what the citizens were doing, and what the governments were doing. Citizens organized themselves in a remarkable way to come together to try to influence or work with the political leaders.
That is what civil society is, and I do not think you can see that at work in China today. However, a civil society is emerging in China. It is not the western type to which I have just alluded that we now have, nor the type that was in process or transition in East Europe, which is dissent through intellectuals organizing and trying to rediscover civil society that had been taken away from them by the communists and so forth.
I see in China state-led civil society. It is the state stepping in to promote groups, to allow groups to form, to encourage them to take up low-level tasks of management, partly because the state cannot handle this by itself. I will read briefly from The Emergence of Civil Society in China:
In the case of China I refer to the recent creation by the state of literally hundreds of thousands of organizations and groups which serve as support mechanisms to the state. In the old Marxist-Leninist system, officially sanctioned groups and associations such the Women's Federation, the Trade Unions, Youth Leagues, and Writers' Associations functioned as "transmission belts" for government policies. In the new Chinese political system the number and functions of these social organizations have soared. According to White,
they are generally seen as occupying an organizational space between a state organ proper and an enterprise, an intermediate position that gives them, in theory at least, some degree of formally recognized status as a 'popular' -- or 'people-run' organization as opposed to an official organization.
In a city of 1.153 million there were approximately 100 of these social organizations, divided into ten categories.
In the early 1990's there were different categories, including the Old People's Exercise Association and the Dried Turnip Association, sports groups, health groups and business groups, with the new entrepreneurs.
This society is based on a number of assumptions.
First, the new associations and groups are not against the state but are a part of it. Second, they serve as training grounds for the development of civic consciousness. Third, they function as intermediaries between state and society. Fourth, state-led civil society is not riven by any conflict between its civil society components and the state. It is a marriage of convenience, rather than a catalyst for citizen resistance.
It is also a learning process.
Finally, mutual perception of strength and weakness plays a key role. Elements in the state perceive the need for change and that social organizations can be functionally useful, without threatening the state's hegemony.
No one wants the state to collapse. After Tiananmen, no one wants even a threat of the collapse of the state system. They saw what happened. The potential of what could happen in China happened in Russia. Most Chinese I have met and know, both the intellectuals and the government officials, recoil from this. No one wants the state to collapse, and that perspective must be kept in mind. We are discussing a post-Leninist, Confucian, corporatist type of solution to the problems of modernization without threatening the government in power because, at this point, there is no option, no opposition, and no intended opposition except for a small group of people.
We can see this at work in certain areas. Aside from local elections and in the cities, associations of business entrepreneurs form, not to lobby the state to get more money for themselves, but to lobby for more information and to be at the right place at the right time. However, they back away from any confrontation with the state.
When discussing Asia-Pacific, this may resonate with our images as to what occurs in Asia-Pacific. I am not a proponent of "Asian values," but we must remind ourselves of the context in the Asia-Pacific region. According to some Australian scholars, Unger and Chan:
The East Asian states have shared a cultural bias favourable to corporatist structures. In the Confucianist teachings that pervaded all of the East Asian cultures, giving primacy to private interests had been viewed as equivalent to selfishness. The greater good was ideally manifested in a consensus overseen by the moral authority of the leadership, reflected in a moralistic father-knows-best paternalism.
Canada may not like that. That may not characterize all of Asia-Pacific, but it is a value that many people in the region see as existing. Whether it will exist forever or whether it is part of a developmental stage is unclear. Is that transitional, or should we accept the fact that this is an important element in how non-western countries develop themselves? There is change and transformation, but it will be much slower than we think.
The last point is policy prescriptions, to which I also refer in my pamphlet. If Canada wants to influence political change in China, perhaps we should work with the government rather than oppose it, since it is the government which is promoting some of this social change at the local level by developing this civil society and by opening up these groups and so forth through these CIDA projects. Focus should be at the local levels because that is where things are happening, rather than trying to change things at the very top.
Canada should look at the development of law, NGOs, associations, education, and the urban middle class. I do not think we can target China's intellectuals as a class. They have not been reliable as a group, unlike Russian intellectuals, to be autonomous and try to push the government. They prefer to be co-opted by the government. That is the Chinese tradition.
In conclusion, I have been involved with China for 33 years, and the changes have been vast in those years, the changes have been vast. That is an understatement.
Economically, I remember going to these villages when there was nothing there. They were living at the lowest level of subsistence. These villages have been transformed. There are brick houses where there used to be mud huts. That does not mean that China is still not poor. The state-led economy is being replaced by a market economy to a great extent, but not completely, and tremendous changes have taken place. People are much better off.
Politically, if I were to compare China from the 1960s and 1970s to now, just in body language, a good thing to consider is people's ability to talk and relax with each other on the streets. What do they say on the bus? They say many things you would not believe about the government and the officials. They just do not say them in the newspapers. That must be considered.
It is a tremendously mobile society now. It used to be the most immobile place you could imagine. No one was allowed to go anywhere. The changes are vast politically. While it is true that there is still no opposition, people are more mobile. They are able to travel outside the country and see and interact with foreigners.
There is not a single Chinese, and I have asked many, who will say that he or she is not freer now than ever before. Does that mean it is democratic? No. Does it mean they have a western-type civil society? No. Does it mean they have western-type human rights and that they are not abusing human rights? No. All those things still exist. There is tremendous progress, but do not expect miracles. Thank you.
The Chairman: Your comments about civil society have been very helpful to me personally, and I believe they have been helpful to the committee as a whole.
Historically, in our western European political tradition, and I am referring to people such as Adam Smith who have influenced in our economic thinking, society was a form of association between persons, using the term in its legal sense such as heads of families. Those persons had, in a genuine society, a right to property. Having established the right to property, they then had the phenomenon of trade which could be carried out by barter or by contract. Property and contract were fundamental elements of a society. Then comes a government to assure that property and contract rights were respected, and that made it a civil society.
I suspected that that kind of thinking is fundamental to a good deal of western business thinking. When you talk about China, you describe a form of association which is quite different. Do the problems which business people have when they go to China arise from the fact that the presupposed models are entirely different?
We have been told that trust is fundamental. The personal relationship seems to be more important than the contractual relationship. That suggests to me that what the philosophers would call the absolute presuppositions are rather different. I see you nodding.
Mr. Frolic: I am not sure the business people are hung up on these things. They go there and do their business one way or the other, and they do it well. The problem is more from other Canadians. The business people, in my experience, know what they need to do. Civil society or not, human rights or not, they do it, except for several companies, such as Levi Strauss, which may feel they do not want to trade with China because of human rights violations.
The point about property and contract, in theoretical terms, if you are talking as a political scientist, is important. If an individual has a stake in the society, he or she wants to protect it. If that is what property means -- not simply owning but also the right to make wealth and to protect it -- then you have a stake, and you want to protect it one way or another. I accept that, and that must happen eventually in China. I am suggesting it will take some time. It must first deal with this whole other tradition. The overlay of 2,000 years of history is not easy to push aside using cowboy or western capitalism. It does not happen that quickly in China. China, for some reason, seems to be able to resist the things that the Russians could not.
The Chairman: You stated that business people know what to do, but we have been told repeatedly that Canadian business persons going over there must learn, and that implies that it takes a bit of time, that the development of trust is essential. Why are we being told that repeatedly if it is something which business people instinctively know? There may not be a contradiction there, but there is a distinction which needs to be explored, and I ask you to explore it.
Mr. Frolic: To whom are you talking? The businesses I have encountered -- and we do a lot of work with business in Toronto, both myself personally and through my centre -- know exactly what they need to do.
We are talking about just before the 21st century. We are not talking about China in the early 1980s when it was an encounter with an unknown. They were coming out of heavy communism and trying to get used to the outside world. The Chinese have had experience in dealing with us now, and most successful businesses have a fairly good handle of what is occurring in China. Those that do not have made some mistakes because they have not done their homework. My own feeling is that business knows what is going on and is able to deal with the Chinese effectively.
I have read the earlier testimony by some of the companies testifying in Vancouver. They have their problems, but many of them also indicated that they were doing quite well.
Senator Grafstein: I should like to discuss this same topic from a slightly different historical perspective. We will probably get to the same place.
It is easy to say that we should simply divorce human rights from trade, but, having in mind the Canadian tradition, it is difficult to do. In other words, our policies cannot be so divorced from our common value system. We can be inconsistent but not separate. We cannot alienate ourselves from ourselves. We end up with split personalities.
Human rights in the English style, with which we are familiar, not the Western European style but the English common law, developed from two divergent sources or roots. One such root was political rights under the Magna Carta, which was the senior classes wanting to exercise their rights against the King. The other root was a more difficult but much more effective growth of human rights based on commercial law, the common law, and the common courts. This echoes Senator Stewart's point that it was a question of contract or a protection of private rights. However, through both those roots, and they interchanged, we developed our human rights code which was respecting property, the right to mediate, the right to courts, and the right to a judicial interpretation. It was an evolutionary process. When the courts did not evolve properly, there was a political outcry.
We cannot expect China to develop in such a way; however, there was a great attempt at the beginning of the century to do precisely that. When I hear Chinese experts say that the Chinese do not have an interest in these universal rights, I ask, "What was Sun Yatsen all about? What was his democracy movement all about? Why was it that both the communist roots and the democratic roots and the nationalist roots all came from that same source?"
What about the Constitution of China? The Constitution of China is quite a progressive constitution. I hear experts say it can be divorced, but on the ground there is a more complex picture.
What can be done in Canada against Chongqing? Chongqing is the same size as Canada. How does little Canada, which wants to trade and pursue its value system at the same time, do good business and assuage our conscience that we are moving in the right direction?
First, any man or public company that invests must have a right to mediate in the event of a dispute. Would it be inappropriate for Canada to say, as a tied issue, that we will not approve any funding from public sources save and except with respect to a mandatory mediation formula, not unlike our trade formula? Our trade formula indicates that we will have a mediation dispute mechanism between two countries, and, if that does not exist, there is no bilateral trade agreement. You cannot join the WTO unless you join the trade mechanisms. Why not say, on a bilateral basis, that whatever that mechanism is, and it could be different, there must be a quasi-independent mediation mechanism, and why not force-feed that?
Second, where does the government stand when it sits beside Li Peng, "the butcher of Tiananmen?" It is difficult to accept that, save and except if, at the same time, the government officials talk about the Chinese Constitution. For instance, in the Chinese Constitution, there is a right to freedom of religion. Again, government goes, interfaces, and invests. The government asks the Chinese to fulfil their Constitutional mandate. There is nothing adversarial about that.
Third, as a more current issue, several weeks ago there was a movement afoot in China to amend the Criminal Code to remove the offence of counter-revolutionism. That was the law they used against the people who were demonstrating in Tiananmen. That would be a positive change because they would now review and do an entire re-analysis of Tiananmen based on the Criminal Code. Could give us your comments as to whether you see that as a positive change in the right direction? The people who ran Tiananmen will be gone in a year. What will replace them? Canada has a deep interest in that because Canadian business is deeply investing in China. Canada has a stake in continuing stability.
Mr. Frolic: If they decide to remove the tag of counter-revolutionary from people who were involved at Tiananmen, it is a symbolic as much as a tangible removable of the label. The perception will be among the Chinese people that either the leadership could be seen as weakened and is trying to maintain its position or that the leadership has, in general, acquired a consensus to do this. It would be a very successful step forward to bringing back people like Zhao Ziyang who are sitting in internal exile, playing golf, and doing nothing.
It is a delicate political issue because so much has to do with perception of the weakness of the leadership. I am surprised that they would move to do this now unless they were certain that the succession was settled and that there was not suddenly a perception of weakness. There are now bombs detonating in Beijing on the buses. Why is that? Is it because they perceive leadership as now vulnerable? If so, other Chinese would get on the band wagon, and there could be a problem. The leadership is nervous.
I am glad they are discussing this. I would question whether they actually move to do it now. I would like to wait until the Party Congress takes place in November. The Party Congress is a party convention, but it is more important because it sets the authoritative line of the party for the next number of years. Decisions will be made as to who gets the new positions and if there will be any leadership reshuffling. Li Peng must leave his office in China early next year. By constitution, he is not allowed to serve more than two terms. All this will come to head this fall. This may be taken up then, but I would be surprised. However, I have been wrong many times before. I was once quoted in The Globe and Mail as saying Deng Xiaoping was dead. That was in 1989. He outlived that by many years.
Should Canada tell the Chinese that they must fulfil their constitutional mandate? Should we say that we will not approve any funding from public sources -- I assume you are talking about funding to Canadian businesses, not necessarily all our programs -- unless they move to mandatory, quasi-independent mediation? Why should the Chinese agree to this? It sounds great, but what is in it for them? If they do not agree to it, then we are in an awkward situation. They are not the only country that does not follow their constitution. We must determine how to make them want to do this. The Chinese did not listen to us after Tiananmen. Why should they listen to Canada, a tiny country riding on the back of the United States? It would be tough to sell, although it is a wonderful idea.
Many of our key businesses which trade with China do not get funding from public sources. They are very capable, and those are the people I was thinking of when I said they go directly to China. Most of the Chinese ethnic community businesses do not rely on government funding. They do not have any part of government programs, and therefore that will not be relevant to them.
If there was mandatory, quasi-independent mediation, I would support it, but there must be agreement on both sides. Would Canadian business agree to that? If they do, it should be done. How would our policy makers in our Department of Foreign Affairs feel about this? It has never been on the table. However, it is an interesting proposal.
Senator Carney: We are preparing a report in regards to the APEC conference. Do you see a role that can be played by the APEC process -- with all these countries coming together, all the ancillary organizations, all the meetings, and all the attention -- to improve the protection of Asian rights by Asian countries such as China? Is the APEC forum, given the fact that it is an Asian-Pacific summit with many ancillary organizations, meetings and conferences, a proper or useful forum to improve the protection of human rights or to throw attention to the issue of human rights?
Mr. Frolic: This is a very controversial issue, which is probably why you asked the question. If it were up to the Asian-Pacific governments involved in APEC, it is clear that they would not want to have a discussion of this at any APEC meeting. It is the NGO's in these countries which have been marginalized on this issue. They tried to organize in Manila, and they want to organize at Vancouver and to participate.
There is an APEC study centre meeting in which our centre is involved in Banff in May. At first, it was all economics and trade, but now we have managed to get some of the soft issues involved in this, up to a point. The Asia-Pacific countries are quite reluctant. From the standpoint of Asia-Pacific governments, this is not a popular issue. From the standpoint of Canadian media and the Canadian population's perceptions, it is a more --
Senator Bolduc: There is also the U.S.
Mr. Frolic: Yes. The senator made a good interjection about the American influence on this. I always assume we are pursuing an independent policy in trying to steer our way through difficult waters and dealing with a huge country and a huge region. We try to work out or policy as best we can. However, all along, we are subjected to the tremendous influences of the American media. The American policy regarding the region which spills over onto us, and we have trouble disentangling ourselves from it.
Senator Carney: With all respect to the senator's interjection, I was asking whether the APEC forum was useful in this regard, and you have not addressed that. You said that it is not a priority for the Asian countries. Is it a useful forum in which to raise these issues?
Mr. Frolic: Yes, it is useful.
Senator Carney: The Prime Minister has already indicated that he does not give a high priority to human rights at the APEC. We are not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with that stand. At this point, we are simply asking how far we can go in doing this. Can we discuss child labour issues? Can we deal with contract issues? What is your own personal view?
Mr. Frolic: We should try, but we must also be careful. We need to decide whether you want to alienate your government partners. How far can you go with this before your Asia-Pacific government partners will become nervous? I think we can probably go a reasonable distance, and I think you can try that.
Senator Andreychuk: Setting aside perhaps the shrill voices in Canada on human rights, it is a genuine issue for most Canadians. You have forcefully pointed out the Chinese position and perhaps that of some of the other countries. You seem to make a distinction between our Asia-Pacific colleagues and ourselves. We are an Asia-Pacific country. If we are in that forum, surely there must be some room for us to put our positions forward. Therefore, within that, to do business, one must understand both cultures. It seems every time we want to put our attitudes of doing business and our important issues and values, we would be somehow imposing them on our partners. We always seem to go to sanctions, which is not where I think the heart of most Canadians is. It is a question of having some space to put our agenda on the table if we are in fact partners and if in fact we are an Asia-Pacific country.
Senator Carney: As we are.
Senator Andreychuk: Given that, why would we not find some innovative ways to inject that, not just around the periphery but within the context of Asia-Pacific? One starting point is fair trade practices, in which we are all interested. Would you agree with that?
Mr. Frolic: I would agree. As host of the APEC meeting, we certainly have a chance. If you cannot get your position across when you are hosting this in Canada, you are less likely to get it across elsewhere. We must be careful here. There are some problems. We are not dealing with the United States or Western Europe. We are dealing with some very nervous, vulnerable governments which must see this as contributing to the overall collective wisdom of what they are doing.
This is a group of countries that admits Burma into ASEAN when Burma is violating many human rights. They say, "Well, we will work it out." This is a problem, and we must determine how far we can go and test their limits. I am in favour of that, but there may be some limits here.
Senator Andreychuk: It is either a question of demands or information sharing.
Senator Carney: In your discussion to date, you have talked about the values or the approaches which separate us, the issues which are different. What are the values that are the same? On page six of your book, you indicate:
This idea of civil society as good citizenship is at the centre of the Western liberal-democratic tradition.
Good citizenship can be interpreted many ways. Instead of talking about those values which separate us, what are the values as Asia-Pacific countries in this field of human rights or in civil society that unite us? Can you give us some guidance or a framework?
Mr. Frolic: It depends how you approach that. I could approach that from a materialistic point of view and say it is the values of the market that will now unite us.
Senator Carney: We are talking about civil society.
Mr. Frolic: Civil society emerged, in a sense, in the market economy that emerged in the 18th century in the defence of property and contract. Out of that new sense of property and the relations that we have to property, you could argue there will be a common interest here that, in our society, the individual and the state holding may happen in these societies as well. That may be a common interest that emerges as they move in this direction.
If you want me to talk in terms of common values and whether they will move towards western individualism or whether we will move to more collectivist kinds of values, I will pass on that because I cannot deal with that.
Senator Carney: Do you think it useful to pursue those common values and the identification of those common values in this area which we call human rights or civil society?
Mr. Frolic: Any common values that any people have are worth pursuing. My point here today was not to indicate how impossible the task was but to simply indicate the characteristics or the peculiarities, the different ways people do things. My whole idea is to look for commonalities.
The Chairman: This exchange takes me back to the beginning of the 18th century. One view was that the good citizen was the virtuous person and the good citizen was the one who always put the good of the whole ahead of his or her selfish goods. We then move from that to the idea that if you pursue your selfish interests within the bounds of the law, lo and behold, the invisible hand converts your selfishness into the good of the public.
Mr. Frolic: It is amazing how that works.
The Chairman: The model which you are presenting of the Chinese thinking does not embody the market. It does this transfiguration. It is the old style. They go directly for the public good. I see you nodding.
You have used the expression "nervous, vulnerable, governments," and the implication was that we should not push too hard. We should not tread too heavily in advancing our views with nervous, vulnerable governments. Would you tell us a little more about why they are nervous and particularly why they are vulnerable?
Mr. Frolic: There is a host of reasons. If you start with economic forces at work here, there are new elites slowly being created with which we must dealt and which could be a threat to the elites currently in power. There are aging political leaders in a number of these countries. Look at Indonesia. This regime is ready to deal with a major crisis. The forces of globalization have opened up these countries, perhaps too quickly for their existing political systems to be able to keep things under control.
People do not have an alternative -- an opposition that is viable or a government in waiting. In other words, many people simply fear the destabilization of all the forces whizzing around them. They are nervous and vulnerable. That may hasten their change to a more western, democratic kind of government, but I am not saying that it will.
Democracy went through many ups and downs. Future democratic systems and market ties went through stages of capitalism and moved from a grey area into industrial economies. They did not have a nice, smooth, upward line of change. There were crises and civil wars and problems.
These governments may be required to deal with the same. They are nervous. They are vulnerable. They are vulnerable to forces of nationalism. Consider Indonesia with all its multi-ethnic problems. China may have its problems with its regions and so forth. Yes, they need to consider this.
Senator Bolduc: Are you saying this is completely different from India where there has been a parliamentary democracy in some way for many years?
Mr. Frolic: I probably do not want to talk about India because I am still a learner on India. India is in for a rough haul for the next few years. Indian nationalism is rising, and we do not know what will happen. Yes, there is a parliamentary system.
Senator Bolduc: Is it a phenomenon similar to what happened in Iran? It went quite quickly in terms of economic growth. Suddenly, personal income was at about $800 per person and, bingo, revolution. Are you expecting something like that from Indonesia?
Mr. Frolic: I cannot say. Indonesia is at the crisis point of a 30-year regime which has bottled up many forces which now need to get out into the political system, and there may be some major problems. There may simply have a stronger military regime. There is corruption. There is corruption in China as well. Eventually, there is alienation and resistance. Indonesia will be a crisis point. India will be a problem. Having the parliamentary system heritage will not necessarily make the future modernization of India a simple thing.
The Chairman: Should human rights be dealt with prominently at the official level at the APEC summit, or should it be discussed primarily on the margins of the summit?
Mr. Frolic: You could try for prominence, but you may have to settle for on the margins. I am sorry I cannot answer any better than that.
The Chairman: Which is more likely to be useful?
Mr. Frolic: "Useful." There is that same word again.
The Chairman: Effective?
Mr. Frolic: It depends on the moment. If it turns out it is the right moment to be prominent, then you can do it, but it may be a bad time. When there is a crisis in Indonesia or the Burmese situation gets out of control one way or the other, these Asian-Pacific governments are very skittish on this. They may be unhappy with prominence. We may have to accept the fact that we are in this organization with them and that being on the margins may not be a bad thing, depending on how marginal it is. In the Beijing Conference on Women, the good guys who were 40 kilometres away were able to do a great deal, although they were really on the margins. They almost took over the conference. It is possible to achieve things by working on the margins. It would be better to be in the middle.
Senator Grafstein: China has a number of international agreements -- both bilateral and multilateral -- which it has entered into. Up until their recent changes with respect to Hong Kong, I had the impression that China tended to be quite meticulous in its fulfilment of international obligations. It did not sign international treaties lightly, and, when it did, it maintained its word. Hong Kong gives us some concern because they established some principles with England and, on the face of it, it appears that there is some sliding there. I give you that as a preliminary.
My understanding is that China is very close with the United States and probably may, on or before President Clinton's visit, sign on to some of the international codes on human rights, something which it has not to date done to a great extent.
What does your experience say about that? Is that again a useful tack to take -- to make this a precondition for them entering into NATO or the WTO, for example? Is that a good precondition? The Canadian government could say, "Look, we are prepared to support China for the WTO provided they become a member of the international community and sign certain basic international laws." Again, we are not talking about it as a condition of trade but as a condition of entering into a formal agreement.
If that is not a useful avenue, should we be promoting China's entry into the WTO precisely because this is another way of, in effect, attracting the Chinese government to proceed on international rule of law issues? They become enmeshed in the process. It is a process thing.
Would you give us your comments on those issues?
Mr. Frolic: My view is that getting China into the WTO is a positive thing. If you can get them into our clubs or organizations, there is a better chance that they will learn more about our rules and play with our rules, and that is a positive thing. It may be that China will ultimately choose not to come in if they must play by our rules. They are very uncomfortable with some of them in terms of transparency and intellectual property.
If you are talking about linking human rights performance with entering the WTO, there is no way the Chinese would accept that. They would not even talk about it. They have enough trouble trying to link economic performance inside China to the WTO. I would be doubtful they would agree to that, although it is an interesting idea.
Senator Grafstein: I did not think one should be linked to the other. You do one prior to deciding what policy you should take with respect to the other. The linkage is transparent but not concrete.
Mr. Frolic: It is obviously better to get them in. Once you have them in, you can talk to them and go over things. You can try to influence them in a certain direction. I do not see any way to say, "If you do this, we will let you in." I do not think that will work with the Chinese. However, once they are in, if you continue to work on them, we may have some progress.
As to China and international organizations, as you have rightly said, has proved to be both rather predictable but also mature. They do not stand and thump on the table.
Our policy, rightly so, has been to get them into international organizations. Since we helped get them into the UN, that has been one of our policy goals, so I agree we should try to get them in. I am not sure how you can influence them into doing the things you want.
Senator Corbin: You bluntly stated earlier that business is business and human rights are human rights and they should not mix. That statement upsets me. I do not know if you say this purposefully.
Mr. Frolic: I did not actually say business is business and human rights are human rights. I would never say that.
Senator Corbin: In my mind, that is how it gelled.
You have specialized in Canadian-Chinese relationships. I am sure you have the opportunity once in a while to compare notes and evaluate how the European Union and the United States are approaching China on some of the issues we have discussed this afternoon, and particularly human rights.
At the business level or at the government level ,you can make distinctions -- more or less subtle, more or less gross. Nevertheless, within the population, a large segment of people are concerned and feel that they have a personal concern with this whole business of human rights and how Chinese authorities treat their people, or the jurisdictions for that matter.
Many people invest their money in mutual funds, and there it disappears, but then all of a sudden you realize that some of the money is being used to build a railroad which is being constructed by pregnant women and children in forced labour situations at gun point. Does that not bother you?
Mr. Frolic: Of course I am bothered. I am concerned about human rights in China because I have been there and I have seen these things and I know what is happening.
Things are much better now than they were when I first came to China. We must keep this in mind. There have been tremendous improvements all across the board. There are only so many things that we as a government can do to influence China to change. What can we do best to change these kinds of things?
I do not believe that business is business and human rights are human rights. I have worked with the business community. I am interested in business ethics here and how you try to develop a voluntary business ethics program that you might want to apply to work with China. The business community does not respond the way we academics may respond. It may be I came across very bluntly today, but I wanted to put the issues on the table. My personal feelings are more like yours; however, I see the realities of the situation.
What policies could be pursued which would achieve our goals? I do not think you can pound on the table. I do not think you can link trade to aid. I do not think that you can get the Chinese into a room and force them to sign a document, because I believe there will still be abuses even if they you sign a document. We need to work on several different levels as best we can.
The European Union and the Japanese are significantly less concerned in the human rights issue than are we. We tend to be seen as more like to the United States' position on this. I have been to meetings with people from EU and the G-7, and the tendency is to see Canada more on the vanguard, actually, with the Americans, on talking about human rights and attempting to do something. The Americans are the leaders. There is no question about it. However, the Europeans and the Japanese fall behind us in terms of their public commitment to human rights and policies. The Australians are more like the Canadians on this.
Senator De Bané: Consider the Chinese and their history. When you look to that question of fundamental rights, in the west we can say that it has developed essentially in the 20th century. It started in the 19th century, and it has been a long, slow process. The United States abolished slavery in the 19th century, and we can say that perhaps it is only in the 20th century that the concept of equality became more fundamental. Asian philosophers do not talk too much about that issue.
For the Chinese, where does that stand in their own history and culture?
Mr. Frolic: The idea of the western experience?
Senator De Bané: How do they view the issue of individual rights and that finally the states and nations are there to help the individual attain his maximum happiness?
Mr. Frolic: This is not a mainstream Chinese position. Even when Sun Yatsen, who was mentioned here earlier, came to take over the republic in 1911, he was still searching for a way to apply the skill of what they thought was the wonders of democracy to China. It was an organizational skill as a way to organize a new Chinese society, but it was to be done from the top down. In other words, it was to be done in a very Chinese way. It was called tutelage or tutelary democracy. You could bring democracy in from the top down, but it was not seen as encouraging individuals to gain their rights. It was seen as something to be imported from the west that, almost like magic, would help organize a new society.
The Chinese encounter with the west consisted of trying to get Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy. That is what made the west strong. The science gave them guns with which they can shoot and kill us, and democracy taught them to how to organize themselves. We must do the same.
When they had to apply this to governance in the 20th century, it was still very much within a Chinese context. Marxism was attractive because it looked in terms of a group or collective kind of context.
I do not want to overemphasize this, but I do want to suggest that the borrowing from the west or looking at our western experience should be qualified in terms of the historical context. Yes, democracy looked interesting, but not in terms of individual rights. There was always a small group which talked about westernization, just as in Russia a larger group talked about westernization. They were split between the westernizers and the ones who wanted indigenous forms of development.
In China, the westernizers were attractive to us on the outside, and Sun Yatsen was a westernizer, but he did it in a Chinese context, from the top down.
Senator De Bané: Would you agree with those who say that when mainland China takes over Hong Kong, for the masses of the people, not the elites, a clamping down on their civil rights will not cause major problems as long as their economic situation and their earning capacity is not hurt?
Mr. Frolic: I would agree in a broad sense. I am not sure I like the term "masses," but yes, the majority of the population in Hong Kong would be happy if nothing changes. They do not necessarily want any more individual rights for themselves. They want to be sure that they can continue to lead the lives they have now, making money and leading a decent life. Whether that is possible, we do not know.
Senator De Bané: Singapore has proved that you can have economic development without political rights.
Senator Bolduc: It is only one city, not a country. It is a bad example.
Senator De Bané: Hong Kong is a city.
Mr. Frolic: Any of us who think we know what will happen could command a fortune because those who play the stock market would come running to us. We do not know what will happen to Hong Kong.
Senator De Bané: Perhaps there is some justification to those Chinese people I have met in Vancouver who have close contacts in Hong Kong who told me that, for the people of Hong Kong except the elite, even if political rights or freedom of speech is diminished, as long as their job is not affected, they will be happy.
Mr. Frolic: It is possible. It puts us in an uncomfortable position of accepting the fact that this will not be, in the short term, a democratic kind of future by agreeing to this, and that makes us all uncomfortable of course. However, we must look at the reality of the situation.
Hong Kong is not a democracy. The legislature does not control the political system. It is a colony, and we must accept that too. The current elite and the business community will be nervous because they do not know what the transition will bring. It is not a democracy now. It may be on the way to becoming one. Whether the Chinese takeover will stop this for however long is unknown.
The Hong Kong situation is a concern. It is a concern to Canada because of the large numbers of Canadian citizens who will be in Hong Kong and will continue to work and live there until such time as there could be a problem. Then we must determine, if it is a real crisis, how to get them out. I think that is a long shot.
Senator Corbin: We are of the west. We have our values. We go back to the Magna Carta and the UN Charter and everything else. We subscribe to those values.
Are you telling us that there is another world which has existed and operated under a particular set of values, and, as much as we raise eyebrows and frown on some goings on within those societies, we will not ultimately change that set of values? That is another approach to life -- another philosophy. We can only hope for so much. In taking that attitude, we are being realistic.
I do not think I would want to impose my values on the Chinese. I have high respect for their civilization and what they have accomplished in a number of domains. I enjoy the literature -- the translation, of course. Is it your view that we can only go so far and should indeed go that far in terms of basic universal human decency, but then we need shut our eyes on other things which happen, and that that is the only way to hold those groups and that society together, considering the numbers?
Mr. Frolic: By and large, I agree with what you have said. Again, that does not make me a very good democrat. We cannot force our values too far on other people even if they do things we do not like. How far can we force our values on other people?
The problem is not forcing our values on the Chinese. The problem is, if they do bad things, why should we continue to trade with them? That is where many of the people get upset about our human rights policy. "Okay, they are bad, so do not trade with them. The Indonesians are bad, so do not trade with them." Why are the American companies trading with Burma? Look what they do. Then the position is more difficult.
China must be engaged. China is so big. It will be the big player in the 21st century in Asia. We must maintain the connection and continue to open up. This is a long-standing Canadian policy of commitment. No matter how bad you may think a regime is, they will not get any better if you isolate them.
I agree with you, but I want to put it in the broader context that even though there are things we may not like, we may be required to engage them with the hope that eventually this will lead to a better relationship.
Senator Corbin: It will be very much their societal choice, not an imposition.
Mr. Frolic: It is a peculiar thing. There is a tendency to patronize China, especially on the part of the Americans, to constantly tell them what to do. If you go to China for any length of time, the Chinese will tell you they resent the fact that other countries, particularly the Americans, are telling them what to do. "Why should a little pip-squeak country like Canada tell us what to do?" This is a problem.
Canada says, "You are a bully. You put your pregnant women to work on the railroad." "Well, maybe, but we are a big country, and we cannot do everything at once. You must be patient with us. You should not criticize us so much." That is the Chinese perspective.
Perhaps they are trying to make it sound good to us and they really believe in the tough line on human rights, but I think many of these people genuinely say they would like to work this out themselves. It will take time.
Senator Grafstein: Consider Tibet. I look at these things in a sort of analogous way. People now have choices in Hong Kong. They want to leave before China takes over, and most of them can probably leave, but there is not enough places for them to go. Canada is certainly on the forefront of giving people a human right's bridge in Hong Kong.
Taiwan is developing independently. Economically, it is becoming a power, and it is developing a democratization top down, bottom up much faster than China. It has evolved from a military regime to a democratic society.
The thing that bothers me more than anything else is China's relationship with Tibet, which is purely dominated. It is occupied territory. They are being deculturalized. They are taking away their institutions and everything else. What are your views on a Tibet solution?
The Security Council will never deal with Tibet. China will support housing developments in Jerusalem, but they will not talk about dominating an entire nation totally. It is strange but asymmetrical. Where are you on this?
Mr. Frolic: The Chinese in Tibet have pushed hard to limit the Tibetan culture and to stamp out the religion as much as they can. Now, as well, the new capitalists have come in and pushed out the Tibetan entrepreneur. They have taken over all the markets in the towns and so forth. There is an economic resentment as well.
Tibet is important strategically for China to protect its southwest and its relations with the whole of South Asia. There are many abuses by the Chinese, but it is strategically important for them. They will never give it up. We can be certain of that.
I support the Canadian government's position on Tibet. Tibet is part of China. I have always supported it. That is our government's position. For better or for worse, Tibet is part of China. There is enough of a historical claim to argue that it is such, much stronger than Taiwan, and I follow our government's position on it.
The Chairman: Honourable senators, I have been trying to summarize what we have heard this afternoon, and it seems to be that we should remember that in the real world, the perfect often is the enemy of the achievable. Do I see heads nodding?
I thank our witness for contributing greatly to our study of our relations with Asia-Pacific. We are most appreciative.
The committee adjourned.