ENVIRONMENTAL TALK: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao meets Margaret Biggs, Presidentof the Canadian International Development Agency, in Beijing on November 13. During their talks, Wen pledged China's contribution to the international cooperation on addressing climate change (PANG XINGLEI)

Seven hundred and fifty years after Marco Polo, Canada's Conservative government finally appears to have discovered China.

(COURTESY OF FRED EDWARDS)

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will visit Beijing on December 2-6. His trip follows missions earlier this year by four senior Canadian cabinet ministers and a visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi to Ottawa in the summer.

This flurry of diplomatic activity comes after three very frosty years in the Sino-Canadian relationship, a chill initiated by Harper after he became prime minister in January 2006.

"Our two countries enjoy a growing partnership, sharing significant interests in trade and investment, the environment and regional security," Harper said, announcing the visit. "Canada is committed to a strong relationship with China that reflects our mutual respect and the need for practical cooperation."

"Mutual respect" and "practical cooperation" would not have been how the relationship was described in late 2006, when Harper attacked China's human rights record and said, "I don't think Canadians want us to sell out important Canadian values. They don't want us to sell that out to the almighty dollar."

Under Harper, the annual Canada-China human rights dialogue was suspended, as was the Canada-China Strategic Working Group, which had been created under the previous Liberal government of Paul Martin (2003-2006). Harper even refused to allow the term "strategic partnership" to be used in connection with China.

China—and foreign policy in general—had not been an issue in the 2006 election. So many Canadians, to say nothing of the Chinese Government, were surprised by Ottawa's sudden anti-Chinese tilt. In retrospect, three factors played a role.

The first was ideology. Harper's Conservatives, despite their traditional name, represent a new right-wing political force with a strong ideological orientation in favor of free markets, limited government and human rights. Evangelical Christians, particularly in western Canada, are a vocal element in the party. Since these new-style Conservatives—more like U.S. Republicans than Canada's old Progressive Conservative Party—had never held power at either the provincial or federal level, their ideological zeal was undiluted by the compromises that come with being in government. Rather than entering into dialogue with countries with different social and political systems, Harper's first impulse was to lecture and criticize, as was the case with China.

The second factor was geopolitical. Canada's foreign policy—indeed, its identity—has tended to oscillate between a desire for autonomy and a conflicting desire to unite with a powerful ally, originally Britain and more recently the United States. Under the previous Liberal government, the autonomy concept predominated as Canada widened its foreign policy focus from the country's traditional North Atlantic orientation to include post-colonial states in Asia and Africa.

Diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic by Pierre Trudeau's government in 1970 was part of that process. Harper, however, strongly favors a very tight relationship with Washington and has moved to bring Canadian foreign policy into line with that of the United States. Although Sino-U.S. relations generally are constructive, it is no secret that the two sides are rivals and that Beijing is opposed to the U.S. military presence in the western Pacific, particularly the security treaty with Japan and ongoing arms sales to Taiwan. Following the U.S. lead, Harper also tilted toward Japan, while some of his ministers expressed support for Taiwan's continuing separation from China.

The third factor was political. The Liberal Party, which dominated the Canadian political scene for most of the 20th century, pioneered relations with China under Trudeau and then expanded them greatly under Jean Chrétien (1993-2003) and Martin. To Conservatives, China was a Liberal priority, and they had no desire to emphasize the relationship. Instead, they unveiled the "Americas initiative," which involved closer ties with Latin America, including proposed free trade agreements with several Central and South American states. The fact that by 2006 Sino-Canadian trade was expanding rapidly—Canadian exports to China nearly doubled between 2002 and 2006—was less important to the Conservatives than dissociating the federal government from what was seen as a Liberal initiative.