A major goal of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), intended to cover about 40 percent of world trade, was to ensure that rule-of-law nations, not China, would write the rules for the world economy in the 21st century.
The administration of former US president Barack Obama concluded that the TPP would spur economic growth and create new jobs, while building US strategic interests in Asia. Former US president Donald Trump saw it as adding to American decline in manufacturing and withdrew immediately on taking office in 2017.
The remaining 11 signatories continued talks, seeking to salvage a pact without the US. Their efforts resulted in the successor Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which had already been ratified by a majority of members, including Canada, and came into force on Dec. 30, 2018.
In February, after its formal departure from the EU, the UK requested membership. Taiwan and China recently applied, further pressuring the administration of US President Joe Biden to join itself as part of his “build back better world.”
Negotiating entry for China would face numerous obstacles. Most democratic governments deplore how Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) increasingly totalitarian regime treats farmers and other workers, Hong Kongers, Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, Uighurs, Christians and other communities. The dystopian police state includes forced labor.
The latest outrage stems from the US dropping extradition charges against Huawei Technologies Co chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). The espionage charges against two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, were obvious retaliation for Meng’s detention — hostage diplomacy of a kind usually associated with terrorist organizations.
The Canadians should never have gone through China’s nightmarish legal system for 1,019 days as pawns in Beijing’s attempt to distort international law. We now have a world where Beijing not only knows it can get away with hostage diplomacy, but that it can secure what it wants via acts of international piracy.
Some governments might now ignore lawbreaking by Chinese nationals, lest their arrest result in the kidnapping of one or two of their own citizens on trumped-up charges.
People such as Meng might be untouchable, immune to Western laws and unaccountable for their actions.
Xi is now also in continuous breach of the international treaty his predecessors signed with the UK in 1984 — the Sino-British Joint Declaration — in which Beijing promised to uphold “one country, two systems” and a “high degree of autonomy” for Hong Kong until 2047. Less than halfway through, Xi tore up the promises.
Unfortunately, with the US trade deficit with China for the first eight months of this year alone being US$75.7 billion, according to Associated Press data, some CPTPP-member investors still insist that goods and services can obtain better access to China’ s market by having China in the pact. The same naivety prevailed in 2001 when China was admitted to the WTO.
Canada alone has since lost about 600,000 manufacturing jobs, no doubt some to thinly disguised slave labor in China.
Most say that Japan, India, the US, Taiwan, Canada and other nations with the rule of law in the CPTPP remain the best trade option in the Asia-Pacific.
Fortunately, Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, is throwing its business, diplomatic and political weight behind India and the CPTPP. India, Asia’s fastest-growing economy, is expected to surpass China in population by next year.
Under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, its increasing self-confidence and need for investment is resulting in falling trade and investment barriers.
While visiting Tokyo, Modi reproached the Beijing party-state on its misbehavior in Asia, alluding to the Chinese military build-up in the South China Sea, its heavy-handedness in Tibet and its territorial ambitions in northern India.
“Everywhere ... we see an 18th-century expansionist mindset: encroaching in other countries, intruding in others’ waters, invading other countries and capturing territory,” he said.
The world economy is now improving overall and unemployment is mercifully falling in some nations despite predatory trade and other economic practices by China and others.
Canada should still trade cautiously with the “Middle Kingdom,” but trade cannot outdo a judicious advancing of its strategic interests in concert with those who share its values.
In short, an enlarged CPTPP without China is undoubtedly the best choice for the democracies in Asia and beyond.
David Kilgour is a former Canadian lawmaker who served as Canadian secretary of state for the Asia-Pacific from 2002 to 2003. David Matas is an international human rights lawyer based in Winnipeg.
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