Burton: Ottawa has continued its mysterious deference to China. What happened to the promised ‘reset’?

 Burton: Ottawa has continued its mysterious deference to China. What happened to the promised ‘reset’?

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2022/08/28/ottawa-has-continued-its-mysterious-deference-to-china-what-happened-to-the-promised-reset.html

"Ottawa’s refusal to confront this harassment of Tibetans, Uyghurs, Falun Gong and Chinese democracy activists in Canada is shameful. In 2020, then foreign minister François-Philippe Champagne promised to take action, but nothing happened. Last year Rob Oliphant, parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs, said Canada was “actively considering” a registry of foreign agents (similar to U.S. and Australian measures) to counter China’s malign activities in Canada. But this was evidently a hollow promise to appease Canadians’ resentment over China’s subversive operations here.

Canada seems incapable of doing anything about China, due to the incompatibility of the Ottawa doctrine that we must maintain close relations with Beijing regardless of public opinion. When China’s ambassador in Ottawa threatened Canada about crossing a “red line” on Taiwan, warning officials to draw lessons from the past (read: hostage diplomacy) if our MPs set foot in Taiwan, our prime minister didn’t even condemn the remarks, but simply urged MPs to reflect on the “consequences” of such a visit."

Burton: Pelosi’s Taiwan visit has brought the thorny ‘one China’ debate into sharp focus

Pelosi’s Taiwan visit has brought the thorny ‘one China’ debate into sharp focus 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-pelosis-taiwan-visit-has-brought-the-thorny-one-china-debate-into/

Beijing’s most emphatic criticism of Ms. Pelosi is that she is undercutting the commitment of the U.S. and other Western democracies, including Canada, to “the one-China principle.” The commitment to “one China” made sense in 1970 when Canada switched its formal China recognition from Taipei to Beijing. Back then, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek said his “Republic of China” government was just in temporary exile in Taiwan and would, with U.S. help, soon expel the illegitimate Beijing regime of the Chinese Communist “red bandits.” But Chiang died in 1975, and not long after any claim that his army would “gloriously retake the mainland” was quietly abandoned. So today, everybody agrees that the Beijing government is the government of “one China.” There is no longer any “two China” principle left to violate.

The pivotal issue is whether or not Taiwan is legitimately just a province of that “one China.” Beijing’s claims that the Taiwan government is a rogue regime may be of no direct concern to Canada or the U.S., but the fact remains that an elected, democratic government is in political control of Taiwan and the smaller islands under its authority.

As a sovereign nation, Canada should not be taking direction from China or be intimidated into shunning Taiwan’s democratic regime. Canada must retain its ability to negotiate bilateral trade and other matters of critical geostrategic interest, including global health, airspace, and climate change, with Taiwan directly.