In this episode, I talk about why it's time to go back to basics and start asking some 101 questions about China, about who leads them, about what they want, about where they want to go, and why they do what they do.
00:00:00.000It's time to go back to basics and start asking some 101 questions about China, about who leads
00:00:11.700them, about what they want and how is it that Canada has found itself in the situation it's
00:00:16.800now in. We're now at the one-year anniversary of the arrest of Meng Wanzhou here in Canada
00:00:21.960and then the arbitrary hostage-taking of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in retaliation. Now
00:00:28.340Canadians have been watching a whole bunch of things happen in those past 12 months a
00:00:31.880lot of a lot of odd other hurdles comments from John McCallum our former ambassador comments from
00:00:37.700their ambassadors calling us outrageous things saying Canadians are white supremacists we had
00:00:42.840the pork ban we're having the broader question about whether to ban Huawei or not and the way
00:00:47.920that this is being discussed by a lot of politicians is if well here's these events and they just kind
00:00:53.900of flare up here and there and they die down and hopefully we'll resolve this issue then we'll go
00:00:57.680back to normal hold on a second no timeout there's something else going on here and the origins of
00:01:04.440that the cause of that is that there is a fundamental difference between our country's two systems and
00:01:10.640the way we think about things and I'm not just talking about the sort of obvious fact that we
00:01:15.020are a Western capitalist democracy and they are an authoritarian Chinese communist state they call
00:01:20.720themselves socialism with Chinese characteristics that's how they describe it no there's something else
00:01:26.220going on that's very different and unique to the Xi Jinping era and I think Canadians would be would
00:01:32.700be well advised to study a document now known as document 9 in 2013 the senior leadership in China
00:01:41.120disseminated distributed this this memo to all sort of Communist Party functionaries all different
00:01:46.920politicians at various different levels and people who end up making decisions all across the country they
00:01:52.860didn't want this document to get out in fact one journalist who released it a 71 year old woman she
00:01:58.020was imprisoned in China for releasing this document what document 9 does is it says hey guys we just want
00:02:04.980you to know there's been this whole chatter about Western ideals in China both Western people trying to force it
00:02:10.980upon us and then some people in China who are getting interested in these ideals and we just want to talk to you about why these are terrible
00:02:17.820things and why we should smack them down and they talk about democracy they talk about press freedom they talk about the idea of universal rights and they talk about an independent judiciary and not in these sheepish ways you can find it online their translations available they don't talk about it in sort of coded ways and this is my kind of interpretation of it no they actually use those very phrases and they say those things are hogwash
00:02:44.820so when we see that they're randomly holding Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor and say well what do we do oh well maybe if our allies go and talk to them about the importance of liberal values maybe if we hashtag this and that maybe that'll get them in board maybe they'll be embarrassed that they're not living up to our idea of these values of you know press freedom and human rights and so forth and they'll go okay you got us there and they'll release the guys
00:03:07.820no they won't do that because they are fully aware they're not ignorant at all they're very well aware of things that are going on in the world and they got brilliant minds throughout their government they're fully aware of how we roll of what we do and why we do it and here's the thing they reject it they absolutely firmly reject it as nonsense and they talk about the superiority of their own system and I think before we really understand that
00:03:36.820that by we I mean everyone I mean of course the public I mean people in the media I mean people in big business who think oh what's the big deal let's keep doing deals with China so we can keep making our money and most importantly our politicians and our policy makers who don't who don't even not answer these questions but refuse to even ask the questions to themselves until we can understand this I think our relationship with China is only going to continue to be rocky learn this understand who they are what they do
00:04:06.800why they do it and then adjust adjust our plans and our path accordingly