Pinguoyuan, and keep walking!

I went to a wonderful lecture last night, given to Canada-China Friendship Society members in Ottawa by a former diplomat, banker, financial expert and business consultant, Lars Ellström. He told us that on retirement in 2009, he decided to take one last good look at China, a country he'd loved since the age of 10 and where he'd lived in for most of his life, by going for a walk. He said, "I decided to get off at the last station at the western end of Line 1 on the Beijing subway––Pinguoyuan zhan––and start walking west. I had no definite plans as to where I was going." He finished his walk a couple of years later on the borders of Kyrgyzstan, in Kashgar.

I just love that kind of story, and Mr. Ellström told it very well, showing slides for illustration. The first few slides included two famous Chinese proverbs, 百闻不如一见 bǎiwén bùrú yījiàn: Seeing it once is better than hearing about it a hundred times! and 实事求是 shí shì qiú shì: Seek truth from facts. 

Beyond the edge of Beijing, with no particular lodgings in mind, Mr. Ellström wandered into the Xishan (西山, western hills), often following traces of the Great Wall, sleeping where he could, either in ¥10-¥15 guesthouses or under the stars, and so continued into Hebei, Shanxi and inner Mongolia, which was a "centre of contention". Here he came to Ordos where he met migrant workers building a new city that seemed as yet deserted. Since then Ordos has become inhabited. Three Mandarin-speaking sisters that he met told him they were direct descendants of Genghis Khan, of the 30th generation. Aristocratic ladies, he called them.

Most of his encounters, though, were with poor and often illiterate people. He showed us a photo of a kind, welcoming man, head of his household, who had been born in 1960 and who'd had no proper schooling because of the Cultural Revolution. Mr. Ellström's conversations with local people (speaking Mandarin with strong regional accents) were over and over again the same: Where do you come from? Ni na'r lai? Where are you going? Ni qu na'r? The people he met often had no concept of Sweden or even of Europe, only vaguely aware that it was somewhere far away to the west. They asked him about his rulers in Sweden. Were they corrupt? Here, they told him with bitterness, in a sort of refrain, all officials are corrupt. "Do Swedish farmers own their own land?" Mr. Ellström did his best to explain and was met with incomprehension. The frustration of the Uyghur peasants, nomads forced to be farmers under bureaucratic control, was expressed by a tearing down of public notices and a strewing of litter, including dead animals, all over the roadsides. Mr. Ellström saw this as a form of civil disobedience, subversion.

Thence into Gansu and along the He Xi Corridor (aka Silk Road ... although that is a western concept) that stretches between the Tibet Autonomous Region on one side and the Gobi desert on the other, to his destination, the province of Xinjiang––the Uyghur Autonomous Region, where the wooden gates in the towns are decorated with beautiful patterns. They had no cemeteries in these faraway places; their dead simply lay under mounds by the roadside, in "auspicious" spots.

He was fascinated by the place names on the way, often having something to do with the Wall or a defeat of The Others. He showed us how the village names were written in large Chinese characters (hanzi) with their original names above, in smaller, Arabic font. He saw many women wearing burqas, as a sign of defiance, he thought, clinging to their Muslim culture. There's a growing sense of defiance among these people, although the minority languages are diminishing in use. The Han Chinese have traditionally seen outsiders such as the Uyghurs as barbarians. Now, their homes have touristic value. He mentioned a place not so far west, where (migrant) construction workers were tearing down ancient, Ming dynasty houses and building replicas of them in their place, so as to create a tourist resort. "Like it or not" (quoting another Chinese phrase) their owners had had to leave. In another location, an unhappy family was being evicted into the desert so that their home and land could be flooded and a new reservoir built.

His conclusions? Modern China is agro-industrial, despotic, expansive, militant. It is a "Realm of Walls" and at the same time, when he thinks of the individuals who welcomed and fed him along the road, "a Realm of Human Warmth." His final conclusion is that it is a Realm of Contradictions!

China comes first

It is no accident that the Chinese word for China is 中国: Zhong guo, the Middle Kingdom, i.e. centre of the world. That is how they still see themselves, and another significant word in the language is 家人: jia ren, the household, family people. They are the ones that matter most.

This week I attended a lecture in the Canada China Friendship Society series by Howard Balloch, Canada's longest serving (former) Ambassador, his subject being Xi Jinping As Helmsman: Course Changes For China. He has given this talk before and knows how to enthral his audience.

He said that Xi Jinping is the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao. He is popular and likely to remain in power until 2022. He consolidated his position very quickly, and has amassed strong men around him. The Vice President Li Yuanchou, for example, is a "tremendous reformer" and "irreversible and transformative" changes are certainly coming soon, but they will be "quiet" and "gradual." Xi's anti-corruption drive goes deeper than just getting rid of his opponents. There is a new sense of urgency: 38,000 cases of corruption were investigated last year. No longer can an ambitious man aspire to a high status if he has family members living abroad or in the entertainment business.

What we are starting to see is an "imperial China redux," said Mr. Balloch. Xi Jinping won't be willing to attack other nations but nor will he be pushed around. The dialogue between China and the USA is no longer so crucial to China's interests. What is more important is China's relationship with its immediate neighbours. There's talk of a New Silk Road these days and of a plan to build railways from China to Europe. Chinese companies (in which the state will continue to be a major shareholder) are making huge investments in the extraction of oil and minerals from the former Soviet states in the southeast where Russian influence is dwindling because of China's rise. In the race against Russia, "China has won," he said, and now it is making its presence felt in Africa too (for the sake of Africa's resources") and is "getting better at it." It is as well to remember, though, that China's leadership is not internationalist in its outlook. China's own economic interests always come first.

They have now relaxed the one child per family policy, although local authorities are still applying the policy in "reprehensible ways" and, interestingly, upwardly mobile professionals often do not want more than one child these days. English is now the second language used in China, particularly by the younger generation, and this is encouraged. It will be interesting to see if Chinese script survives or whether it will be superseded by Pinyin. Up to 18 million people per year are moving into the cities––this is encouraged. The buildings that went up in the 80s and 90s are of such poor quality that they need to be torn down and replaced, but house prices are presently coming down. For the present leaders of China, the improvement of the environment is a high priority, the citizens being particularly aware of the dangers of air pollution, and expressing their opinions in demonstrations, to which the government is responding. There's a feeling that they "must get it right" and again, Mr. Bulloch used the phrase "a deep sense of urgency."

He said a good deal about the Chinese economy: its growth is being kept to 7% and a "rebalancing" of the economy is taking place. In the financial sector private banks are forming, although in general the bias is towards state owned enterprises. Up till 1978, only 0.05% of the world population were poorer than the average Chinese citizen, based on per capita income. Now, the percentage is 50%, and China contributes 25% of global growth. In the not so distant future the RMB (renminbi) will become "fully convertible."

Social reform is a fragile process but it "really is happening," as is land reform, farmers now starting to own their own properties. A more western style of taxation is being introduced (VAT, property tax, etc.). In the late 1990s CIDA initiated a major program for the training of Chinese judges from China’s Senior Judges College, which has borne fruit, and from now on there'll be a more vertical (less local) structure to the Chinese legal system with circuit courts and appeal courts, and the public reporting of judgements––all new concepts. But Mr. Bulloch kept stressing that China's well established infrastructure and culture takes a long time to change, that there is resistance at first and that the final results of the drive to reform things are likely to be compromises. The law is still subservient to the Party.

China in the '70s

Last night I went to a CCFS lecture on China––"Before and After the 1978 Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee"––which was not as tedious as it sounds. The lecturer was Professor Charles Burton of Brock University, a specialist in Chinese history. In 1978 he was a student studying ancient Chinese thought in Shanghai but also taking in the mood and manners of his fellow students, mainly older than he. They were the first class to graduate from Fudan University (in 1981) after the Cultural Revolution had come to an end.

We heard a few of Mao's sayings, e.g. Let the past serve the present and Let foreign things serve China. Dr. Burton's comrades in those days had little or no experience of foreign things and he told how they hung his cheese (sent from his family) on a pole out of the window because it smelled so suspect. The students had all been in the Red Guard at one time or another and were supposed to report on the foreigner's behaviour. They knew he listened to American jazz on his headphones but they protected him, claiming that he was listening to China Radio news instead.

"I loved those guys!"

Children learned about the British and the Japanese incursions into China, so humiliating to the Chinese national pride. The lecture seemed to imply that the Chinese are still suffering from this "defeat at the hands of barbarians," even now. The point / theory of the social revolution led by Mao was that it would make China dominant again. It was largely a peasant revolt, at first. Landlords would be done away with, and not only landlords but also rats, birds, flies, prostitutes, petty criminals and so on. There were campaigns of wilful destruction against all of these groups. The attacks on birds, though, led to an unfortunate proliferation of insects.

After 1949 the Stalinist model of a planned economy took shape. Steel was the main thing, the product that would transform China. Every household was registered, so that the government would know whom they were controlling and where everyone was. Farmers (the impoverished class) were prevented from entering the cities, therefore there were few slums. University graduates were deliberately sent away to the borders of China to develop these regions and traditionalist thinkers were insulted and demonised (called "cow spirits" and such). Food and cotton were rationed and of course intellectual types were permitted less than the workers. Not until 1979 were the academic youth of Shanghai allowed to return to the city for its May Festival, after 13 years in exile. Their banners made a big impression on the young Charles Burton. "Give me back my youth!" one said.

In the 70s, Volume V of Mao's thoughts appeared including his list of the Nine Stinking Categories of people to be hated:

Landlords
Rich peasants
Counter revolutionaries
Bad elements
Rightists
Renegades
Enemy agents
Capitalists
Intellectuals

At 5:30am every day, a "sunrise song" was played over the loudspeakers at the university––The East is red! First it was played on xylophones, then by an orchestra, and the third time around by the full orchestra and mass choirs, by which time the campus was thoroughly awake. This would be followed by compulsory physical exercises. One day, that usual music was suddenly replaced by the broadcast of a tango, and The East is red! was never heard again.

Seek the Truth from Facts read the next slogan (i.e. facts, not Marxist ideology); this was the period when the Gang of Four was tried and condemned. Mao's wife claimed not to be so rich as she was accused of being, but simply living on Mao's royalties, so to speak. When Dr. Burton arrived in Shanghai two portraits hung in the classrooms, those of Chairman Mao and Chairman Hua Guofeng.

The lecturer commented that his contemporaries in China had so little control over their jobs, their homes, what they could buy, that this led to a psychology of passivity and a dispirited outlook. Nowadays, they are nearly all civil servants living and working in Beijing, and rich.

China's cities

That's my grey hair in the picture (taken by a member of the CCFSO last night) just beneath the board on the left. The slide was a map of the metro stations in Shanghai and the circles represented the proximity of homes and businesses to each stations, each circle having a 600m radius. The lecturer was making the point that in China, most people use public transport because it's been made accessible. The myth that every Chinese person who used to ride a bike now drives a car is not true, he said. These days, they mostly take the train.

Dr. Ben Gianni is from the Department of Architecture and Urbanism at Carleton University and his lecture was entitled Urban Planning and the Challenge of Sustainable Cities in China. Last summer he took forty of his students to visit China (Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Hong Kong...) who were duly flabbergasted and impressed.

There are 40 times as many Chinese people in the world as Canadians, and China is more like the Netherlands than the USA or Canada as regards population density, despite the fact that 80% of Canadians live in urban environments, as opposed to less than 60% of Chinese people. The density of a city determines its environmental sustainability, because the closer we live together, the less energy we consume. Had you realised that? I hadn't. "Grey is the new green," grey meaning concrete. Asian cities such as Shanghai or Tokyo, with ~14,000 people per square kilometer, are four times as dense as Toronto and nearly three times as dense as London.

Recently there has been a huge investment in mass transportation (since the year 2000, 400 km of lines have been added to the metro system in Beijing, for example) and because of the pollution problems, people who live in China are being discouraged from using cars. Traffic jams in themselves are an antidote to car usage, said Dr. Gianni; a license plate in Shanghai costs as much as a car, and the petrol costs as much as it does in Canada.

The only city in the world more polluted than Beijing is Mumbai. In China they lack the forests to offset their carbon emissions. For every single tree in China, there are 120 in Canada, but the Chinese are now reforesting and are planting trees along roadsides in the midst of their cities. The prof. reckons we are being hypocritical when we criticise China for its level of pollution. It is largely caused by factories and that's our fault, because it's we who demand the "cheap stuff" they manufacture in China.

Consider energy usage: the truth is that, per capita, the Chinese consume far less than we do in the west. An average Chinese person consumes 1806 kilowatts per year, and a Canadian 7379kW––that's a revealing statistic!

Hong Kong skyscrapers (Wikipedia)

"We need to learn from them," said Dr. Gianni. He also spoke of social interaction being essential to human survival and how people who live in high rise buildings are thought to have "no connexion with the street." In the USA, building monster housing blocks many stories high is considered to have been a "failed experiment," but a visit to China makes you question these assumptions, because in China, people do come down into the street; he reminded us with a smile how often you see Chinese seniors singing and dancing on street corners and doing their tai chi together in the mornings. Therefore the high-rise lifestyle "may work in China." In a certain Hong Kong district is a cluster of forty apartment blocks up to 40 stories high (some of those condos sell for $1million)––he called them "graceful" buildings, with through-ventilation, i.e. windows on both sides of the unit, architecture that is scientifically designed to allow adequate sunlight throughout the year. The high-rise is ubiquitous in China because the cost of land is the biggest factor in urban planning. You aren't going to get urban sprawl there as you do in Sydney, NSW, for example.

"China has created a middle class overnight," he claimed, and it is significant that a Chinese person is assigned a status and location at birth, so that families cannot move around the country at will (there wouldn't be a place in school for the children or access to healthcare if one broke the rules). This to some extent controls the pace of urbanisation, but migrants, not being part of the Hukou system, complicate matters. This month, there's been trouble with the Uyghur migrant community in Kunming, a city that contains districts that are "ghost towns" waiting to be inhabited, but not by the migrant workers who have built them. The PRC is now thinking of creating social housing (rented accommodation for the disadvantaged) in Chinese cities, another experiment like the planting of trees. Will it make a difference?

The lecturer recommended the book Arrival City by Doug Saunders.

Being in China "blows your assumptions out of the water." Dr. Gianni didn't want to dwell on politics but mentioned that the PRC being a one-party state does help to move developments along quickly––there's no opposition! All land is state owned; the government offers lease contracts for 70 years. Where properties are concerned, the one child per family policy means that the one child will inherit everything. A married couple could therefore eventually own five apartments––their own, their parents', and their grandparents'! The buildings may have been shoddily constructed (no one can inspect the rebar inside a block of concrete) but might well be upgraded in the future. Or might be knocked down. Chinese buildings currently have a lifecycle of 15 years.

At the Asian supermarket

In 1993, a rather homesick Taiwanese lady in Vancouver called Cindy Lee started a business in that city, opening a grocery store called T&T. There are 22 T&T supermarkets in Canada now, most of them in Vancouver and Toronto. Today, with some other people from the Canada-China Friendship Society, I joined a guided tour of the much talked about the new Ottawa T&T on Hunt Club Road. We had some very enthusiastic young people as guides, employees of the store, who allowed us to sample quite a few items of edible produce, baozi stuffed with tasty roast pork, for example, xiao mai, and tender slices of Nanjing salty duck, but fortunately we weren't encouraged to nibble at the barbecued cuttlefish or the chickens' feet.

Jimmy, the manager, met us at the front door and showed us a map of China, explaining that the Chinese visualise their country as being north and south or between the great rivers, the Yellow River and the Yangtze. North is the wheat country (noodles and baked baozi) and in the south it's rice (and steamed dumplings). Then we went straight to the "Kitchen" or dim sum corner for some sampling. Dim sum are southern snacks, typically eaten "with chicken tea" for breakfast by groups of old people after they've done their morning exercises. We witnessed these physical exertions in Hangzhou!

The groceries at the T&T supermarket are impressive in their variety. At the barbecue counter is a display of roast chicken and whole roast ducks, hanging from hooks in their necks, the heads still on, of course and coloured red by virtue of the sugar used in their coating. A pig's carcass hung there too, with the roast pig's head on a tray underneath, and the cuttlefish with its dangling tentacles. If you don't fancy slicing up these meats yourself you can choose from 23 ready meals neatly packaged ("BBQ Meal Combo"), or from a selection of ready-to-fry meals with labels to tell you what they are: "spicy pork stomach" or "salty mustard greens" (very popular).

To the bakery corner, next, where we met bakery manager Raymond who let us try a piece of pork filled bun and then announced, "I have some dessert for you ladies!" handing out pieces of egg custard tart with  miniature cups of a mauve coloured drink called "taro tapioca"––the taro had a sweet flavour, rather like sweet potato, but I'm afraid the tapioca reminds me of frog spawn. They had a purple-frosted taro cake there too and some cakes for children's birthday parties that looked like cats' or pandas' faces.

In the main part of the supermarket we were told that the sauce aisle is the "most busier aisle;" it had a large variety of soy sauces and marinating sauces, among which was an enormous jar of pat chum "for pork's feet"––good for new mothers, apparently. We paused at the noodle section too. I hadn't realised that some noodles are made from calcium rich, low calorie tofu. When buying the ready-shaped dumpling dough, don't forget that "round is for dumpling, square is for wonton."

I think that the fishmonger, wearing a yellow apron, was the most enthusiastic of the T&T department managers; he told us he had the biggest seafood sales in Ottawa. Lolan commented that fish is a must for the Chinese New Year because the character for fish, yú, (鱼) also means "abundance." Many live creatures were swimming, wriggling or otherwise still alive in the fish tanks. At the opening of the store, they had 10,000 lobsters available. Yesterday a few of us were struck by a large, live clam that according to one of our group "looked vaguely obscene": the geoduck. "Vaguely" may be an understatement.

Asian shoppers prefer their meat and fish as fresh as possible, and I suppose that is why the meat still looks like what it really is in their displays (such as the large tongue of beef and the tripe). We heard the word "nutritious" used a great deal. The free range, black chickens, for instance, were more nutritious than the conventional sort: the butcher waxed quite lyrical when describing them. He also told us about the communal meal that consists of dropping thin uncooked slices of beef into a consommé soup for a short moment before picking them out again to eat (i.e. the Chinese fondue or "hot pot" custom). "Every people like this one!" he exclaimed.

Cruise ships, hydraulic excavators and the people themselves

Last week I went to a CCFS lecture on China's economic relations with Canada. The gist of the young speaker's message was that China is no longer seen as the source of cheap labour in the world and should be taken (is being taken) more seriously by Canadian policy makers; in fact more than 7% of our international trade is now with that country (the statistics quoted on this link must be out of date). Incidentally, 37% of Canada's trade with China deals with small businesses. Canada still imports more than it exports to Asia in general but is now exporting more than it used to in the way of oil, other minerals and agricultural products, especially to Japan and Korea. Aerospace products were mentioned too.

Meanwhile, Brazil's exports to China have increased by more than 40,000%!

A typical construction site in Hangzhou, summer 2011

Traditionally, western and Japanese companies were the ones who designed things (electronic products, say) the production of which typically took place in Taiwan using cheap assembly lines in China. Actually China has been importing its components from South East Asia lately and furthermore China itself is now competing worldwide in the production of cruise ships, threshing machines and construction equipment like cranes and excavators. The top firms in China (e.g. in the steel industry) are government backed and the demand for China's heavy industry products is largely domestic, though they are selling abroad as well. Huge government subsidies are on hand for renewable energy initiatives, so long as the equipment required for these projects is manufactured in China.

Some interesting points were made comparing the West with China:

• In the West, the markets are an end in themselves. In China, they are the means to an end; there's a great desire to catch up technically.
• The West has floating currencies. China has its currency fixed.
• In western countries, consumers tend to consume more than they save, generating a deficit. In China it's the other way round, with a surplus as the outcome.
• Western companies aim to "do what they're best at," whereas the Chinese deliberately invest in order to achieve a greater range of products.

Towards the end of the gathering I heard (from David Rothwell, an entrepreneur selling wastewater treatment technology to China) the recommendation that Canada should be using the Chinese expats now living here to set up "marriages" with more companies in China. The best import we have from China, he said, are the Chinese themselves.

"China changed us"

I joined the Ottawa Chapter of the Canada-China Friendship Society last week and at their October meeting heard an engrossing lecture by a former Ambassador to Japan, China and Mongolia, Robert Wright. In the Liberal Government of the 1990s, as Deputy Minister for Trade he had organised Team Canada trade missions to China, so was already well prepared, and the opportunity to have front row seats for the Olympic Games in Beijing was another ("fabulous!") incentive to accept this job offer.

Mr. Wright and his wife represented Canada in China from 2005 to 2009. "To quote an old adage," he said, "China changed us."

He confessed that living in China was more difficult than he'd expected. He found the polluted air and the crowds in the big cities "physically demanding," the language-barrier frustrating and the bilateral relationship between China and Canada not as strong as it was when the Liberal Party had been in power, the political atmosphere "cooler ... more hostile."

One day, the Ambassador was arrested for walking his pet dog in the city! Dogs that size (dà gǒu––it was a labrador) were not allowed in Beijing. However, when the authorities realised who the culprit was, a diplomatic embarrassment was avoided.

In Mr. Wright's favour was the fact that his staff belonged to the biggest Canadian embassy in the world––320 strong––and that the Chinese government made no objections to his visiting every part of the country while he was in office, including the politically sensitive Autonomous Regions. "It was good to get out of Beijing for a change." Although he suffered badly from altitude sickness in Tibet, he was able to enjoy some "frank exchanges" with students at a Tibetan university before fleeing from the thin air.

Stressing that these were his personal views, he said he had learned ten lessons while living and working in China:

1. It is a self-confident and optimistic country. Unlike the conservative Japanese, the Chinese do not fear outsiders taking an interest in them. Japanese families would tend to resist the idea of their adult children marrying foreigners; attitudes in China seem just the opposite. 
2. On the other hand, the Chinese government seems surprisingly insecure, afraid of instability. The government feels it should be autocratic in order to keep such a huge country safe and sound, therefore it cracks down on subversive elements and covers up its weaknesses. Mr. Wright felt that the next generation of leaders would be different in their governance, more flexible, because younger people in the Party have a better understanding of different cultures.
3. Since China wants a fair share of the world's wealth for its people, the government hopes China's status will return to what it was at the beginning of the 19th century, not wanting to be seen as a global superpower so much as a major power within Asia, with a high-ranking GDP (it seems the Chinese have achieved that already). 
4. Canada is respected for being the only developed nation that has not invaded China! The Chinese like Canada's fairness towards immigrants, and our civilised way of doing business. We should nurture the trust between our respective leaders because, in Chinese culture, this is very important.
5. Canadians in general don't understand the Chinese very well. We still tend to see them as they used to be in the 1970s. (Only British Columbia, where Mandarin is now being taught in the schools, is an exception.) We're therefore missing our chances; if we're not careful, Canada will become irrelevant.
6. We mustn't assume that the Chinese or would want to share our values priorities (he corrected himself there). To them, debates about democracy or human rights are lower on the agenda than how to tackle economic growth, education, environmental concerns and corruption in high places. They believe that, in order to keep their enormous country stable and secure, (in Mr. Wright's words) they want "autocratic control.") If we find fault with China, we should voice our criticisms politely and in private, advised Mr. Wright, then we might be listened to. Strident condemnation splashed all over the media can only have a negative effect. They detect a certain amount of hypocrisy and self-interest in criticism from the west; i.e. they are suspicious of our motives. 
7. The Chinese are not easily classifiable. They don't think of themselves as communists any more. They are in fact "ferocious capitalists." Clearly they no longer want Soviet style labels. On the other hand, how can the door to a more liberal régime be opened? Slowly, cautiously, is the answer. If change is to come, whatever should be done about the giant portrait of Chairman Mao in Tiananmen Square, for example? How can they eliminate the huge gap between their rich and their poor and the consequent threat of instability? Political evolution has to happen gradually or "uncontrollable forces" could be unleashed. The future of the Communist Party is being debated within its ranks, and that's a healthy sign, but it may take half a century, perhaps a whole century (say some) before China completely changes.
8. Never underestimate the capacity of the Chinese to solve enormous problems, fast. Mr. Wright predicts that in 10 years time, China will lead the world in environmentally friendly technologies. Re. Lesson 6, above, the mess that the U.S.A. made of dealing with the devastation after Hurricane Katrina (2005) raised Chinese eyebrows. They were not impressed, especially in comparison with the "tremendous" way they themselves responded to the victims of the Sichuan earthquake (in 2008). 
9. Nor should we underestimate the risks inherent in Chinese nationalism. The instantaneous reaction of the Chinese to attacks on their Olympic torch bearers before the start of the 2008 Games obviously rather scared Mr. Wright. They are a fiercely patriotic people.
10. Despite the gaps between our cultures, there's an enormous reservoir of goodwill and commonality between our two countries.

Robert Wright remains optimistic for the future of the relationship between China and Canada. China being our second largest trading partner, he feels that trade will take care of itself. They buy potash, coal, wheat, transportation products and engineering expertise from us. He hopes that our influence in the world of engineering and science will bring about an increase in trust. We should continue to invite Chinese people to visit Canada as tourists, students, colleagues and friends. Likewise young Canadians should go to China as students, and we should "put more Canadians on the ground in the provinces of China," not just in Beijing and Shanghai. We should make efforts to learn the language.