B.C. Premier David Eby plans to visit China and promote B.C.-China trade, said Chinese-language media
It looks like 'friend-shoring' is not working here in B.C.
The premier of British Columbia, David Eby 尹大卫, is going to visit China to strengthen the province’s trade relations with China, according to local Chinese-language media in Canada.
Eby’s China trip plan excited many in the Chinese Canadian community.
Eby’s statement was made during the Lunar New Year season when he visited the office of Sing Tao Daily 星岛日报, a Chinese-language news outlet. During the Jan.23, 2023 visit, Eby told Sing Tao staffers that in the robust year of Rabbit, he would lead B.C. to the world with full throttle, and he plans to visit China in the near future.
Eby believes China’s lifting Covid lockdown measures is great news for B.C. He said,
"BC and China not only have economic and trade exchanges, but also have close interaction between the people. Many BC families have deep ties with China, so the opening of China's borders means that economic and trade interactions and people-to-people exchanges can get back on track, so that family members who have not seen each other for a long time can reunite. BC is an important gateway to the Asia-Pacific market, so in the post-Covid era, we should actively go to Asia. We are making arrangements to lead a trade mission to Asia in the following year, and I'm looking forward to visiting China."
Eby added that there would be a lot of opportunities for B.C. to work with China in the energy sector because China has a huge demand for B.C.'s copper and coal mines.
Eby’s China trip plan received great acclamations from the Chinese Canadian community when he met them at the new year dinner party on the following day (Jan.24, 2023).
The party was held at the Continental Seafood Restaurant 幸运海鲜酒家 in Richmond, which attracted about 200 guests. A handful of BC MLAs were also present at the event, including George Chow 周炯华, the former Minister of State for Trade of BC.
There were also members from the Taiwanese Canadian community at the party. The Taiwanese representatives showed confidence in Eby’s economy-boosting plans, but Premier Eby didn’t mention whether he would visit Taiwan.
Eby’s China trip plan was further confirmed by a commentary on Rise Weekly, a Beijing-friendly Chinese-language publication in B.C. In the article headlined “Breaking: in the wake of the wandering balloons fiasco, can he be the largest drive of Canada's Asia-Pacific trade and economic development? ”, author Ding Guo 丁果 said,
“Thankfully, BC Premier David Eby has said he wants to actively promote Asia-Pacific trade in BC and is already preparing internally to visit key Asia-Pacific countries, including, of course, China. In my interview with him, he emphasized that Canada is positioned as an Asia-Pacific country, and there is no reason not to promote Asia-Pacific trade moving forward.”
Ding Guo, a Chinese community leader who often sides with Beijing, passionately analyzed the significance of Eby’s China trip.
Ding said,
“Originally, in the past two years, despite the "political coldness" in Canada-China relations, the amount of bilateral trade and commerce has grown. This is partly due to the complementarity of bilateral trade between Canada and China, and partly due to the deterioration of relations with China and the United States and with Australia. In particular, the deterioration of Australia's relations with China has led to a significant decline in Australia-China trade, which has allowed Canada to take advantage of the fact that the various natural resources exported by Australia to China overlap greatly with those exported by China to Canada.
However, this situation will change significantly this year. The new Australian Labor government, which is close to Canada's federal Liberal Party on the political spectrum, has already begun the process of repairing relations with China, and the Chinese-American background of Australia's foreign minister, Penny Wong 黄英贤, has made it easier for Australia and China to engage in dialogue and communication.
This would suggest that in the next two years, Australia's bilateral trade with China would pick up dramatically and the bottleneck in Canada's trade with China would increase. Plus, if Russia and Ukraine move to the negotiating table this year and the war comes to an end, then the resource export dividend that Canada has received because of the Russia-Ukraine war will also be drastically reduced. Once the Russian-Ukrainian war is over, the United States will focus on dealing with China, and Canada's federal political parties' policies toward China have ironically followed the United States, making it more difficult to improve Canada-China relations.
Under such circumstances, BC may have to play a role in Canada's trade with the Asia-Pacific, especially with China, which is difficult to be replaced by the federal government and other provinces. This is not only because BC is more dependent on Asia-Pacific trade than other Canadian provinces, but also because as the gateway to the Asia-Pacific, BC has the history, contacts and talent to trade with East Asia. In other words, BC will play the important role of maintaining and expanding trade with the Asia Pacific in the midst of deteriorating Canada-China bilateral relations.”
It seems that in Ding’s eyes, China is a supreme prize that Canada, the U.S. and Australia have to compete for. If Canada, or at least B.C., could luck out in the competition by taking advantage of other countries’ trade reductions with China, it would be a huge success that Canadian politicians should earnestly seek.
English media are unaware of Eby’s China trip, busy discussing “friend-shoring” with democratic allies.
But Eby’s China trade mission plan is not disclosed to the English media or does not attract enough interest to produce a news story.
In a piece published on the Business in Vancouver (BIV) website on Jan.30, 2023 (7 days after Eby told the Chinese community about his China trip plan), the author said “China won’t actually be a destination for the premier” in his Asia trade mission before the fall of 2023 citing geographic and safety reasons.
No other English media report on Eby’s China trip. Instead, another piece on BIV claimed that Eby’s Asia trip would be an opportunity for B.C.’s diversification away from the U.S. and China in favour of growing new markets.
In the fall of 2022, Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and some U.S. leaders repeatedly promoted “friend-shoring”, a business model that Canada must prioritize trade with countries that share our values and reduce economic dependency on authoritarian regimes.
In November 2022, Canada released its Asia-Pacific Strategy, which takes a tougher stance towards China and explores expanding Canada’s trade relations with India, ASEAN, and other entities in the region.
In December 2022, B.C. Premier Eby appointed Jagrup Brar to be the Minister of State for Trade of B.C., replacing George Chow. As Brar was a Canadian of Indian origin and Chow was born in China and had built extensive trade relations with China in his term, some analysts claim this minister switch signals B.C.’s transition in trade strategy to emphasize India, which is in alignment with Canada’s federal strategy.
In a recent interview, Laurel Broten, CEO of Canada’s global investment promotion agency ‘Invest in Canada’, said the agency is currently not proactively soliciting business from China and Russia in order to best protect Canada’s national security.
Human rights groups assumed Eby to be ‘anti-CCP‘ during the 2020 election
During the 2020 B.C. provincial election, @alliancecanhk @VanCAHK and a few other pro-democracy groups launched a movement “#NoBCForXI”, calling on British Columbians to vote out candidates that are close to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
They started an online spreadsheet that listed all the candidates’s basic info, inviting voters to contact the candidate in their own riding and ask the following two questions,
1. Will you pledge to decline any gifts or donations from the Chinese Communist government and its affiliates or any other foreign governments that abuse human rights? This includes, but is not limited to, monetary donations, and paid-for trips.
2. Will you reject the CCP’s ‘Belt and Road’ initiative and other economic development initiatives in BC that are promoted by authoritarian governments or enterprises with ties to authoritarian states?
After writing down the candidates’ answers in the spreadsheet, B.C. voters would be able to have a general idea of the candidate's stance before they cast their ballots.
Data on the spreadsheet shows that David Eby, the then-candidate for the provincial electoral district of Vancouver-Point Grey, was marked as “Against CCP interference (Likely)” .
It said “likely” because it was merely a reasonable guess as Eby’s office didn’t answer people’s phone calls. Why did people believe Eby would be against the CCP? Because google said Eby combatted money laundry and believe it a national security issue.
Whether Eby will reject economic development initiatives in BC that are promoted by or with ties to authoritarian China during the trade mission to China remains unclear.
Hopefully with this piece, the English media will wake up and ask how David Eby is going to deal with the human rights violation committed by CCP while doing trade with China.