Thursday, November 01

Exchange with Burnaby-Douglas MP Svend Robinson, thanking him for his congratulatory note.

CdaPs&Ms

With Premier Campbell, meeting with Shanghai Mayor Xu Kuangdi, followed by signing ceremony.

Friday, November 02

CdaGov

Letter from RCMP Commissioner G. Zaccardelli regretting the postponement of his planned visit to the PRC because of the follow-up to 9/11. He is considering a return visit in March, 2002.

Échange de lettre avec le Président, SNC Lavalin International Inc Michael Novak au sujet des intérêts de SNC en Chine.

Letter to MFA Vice Minister Wang Guangya regarding the forthcoming Security Consultations with ADM Jim Wright.

Meetings:

  • Media: Paul Mooney/Maclean’s-Newsweek.
  • courtesy call on Canadian Wheat Board’s Beijing office.
  • Call on Singapore Ambassador Chin Siat Yoon.

Hosted dinner for EVP Pierre Hotte, Dessau-Soprin.

The guest list provides light on the clients, actual and potential, for this important engineering-consulting company. In 2007, it became DESSAU.

Monday, November 05

BT&I

Exchange with Michael Wong, Principal of Michael Wong Architects, about his forthcoming visit to China, along with other colleagues, in order to promote their businesses.

CCRels ChinaGov

Meeting with Minister of Public Security Jia Chunwang.

In May, 2000, Minister Jia met with visiting RCMP Commissioner Philip Murray as well as Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan.  Subsequently, Minister Jia visited Canada in August, 2000.

Discussions in Beijing and in Canada dealt with the issue of Chinese criminal gang activity in Canada. I had previously dealt with Japanese police on Japanese drug smuggling in Canada. The bilateral dynamics on issues related to cross-country criminality were very similar. Since catching criminals is of equal interest to both sides, generally speaking, police to police exchanges are informed and practical, thanks to shared objectives. Politics rarely intervened…except when it did, the Lai case being Exhibit A, from the Canadian perspective. 

Ambs

Courtesy call on Japanese Ambassador Anami Koreshige on the Ambassador’s rules of the road in doing our job in China.

I knew Ambassador Anami well from my Tokyo days. A full-fledged China Hand, as was his equally knowledgeable and scholarly American spouse, Jinny. We would later find ourselves together as Ambassador/High Commissioner in India!

Arts&Culture

Dinner for Dr. Maloney, re 4th International Music Festival.

Tuesday, November 06

Exchange with Professor Robert Scalapino of The Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley, re earlier meeting on DPRK and hopes for future contacts.

Exchange with a student from St. Mathew Catholic School in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, about obtaining information on China on the web.

Education

Exchange with Dalian Maple Leaf International School Chairman and Headmaster Sherman Jen regarding the forthcoming English speech contest at the school.

CdaGov ChinaGov Agric

Visit of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Deputy Minister Samy Watson.

The day was largely devoted to the program of visiting Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Deputy Minister Samy Watson, with calls on Vice Minister Sun Zhenyu of MoFTEC, Agriculture Vice-Minister Liu Jian and Minister Li Changjiang, General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine. The level of cooperation and mutual respect among Chinese and Canadian agriculture and supervisory authorities was high during this period, which greatly assisted the resolution of problems that inevitably arise in this sector. Minister Li was the Minister I called on most frequently during my four years in China. The working premise throughout was that problems were to be solved, not erected as barriers. The guest list for the dinner I hosted in Samy’s honour provides a check-list of some of the key players in this important Canada/China commercial and scientific relationship.

Meeting with Beijing representatives of the  Canadian Tourism Commission.

Wednesday, November 07

Note of thanks to PRC APEC Senior Official Wang Guanya for his role in the recent Leaders’ meeting. Attached to the letter is the list of all of the Senior Officials.

BT&I ChinaGov Agric

Meeting with President Liu Fuchun, COFCO: China Oil and Foodstuffs Corporation, the largest food products corporation in China, and an important importer of foodstuffs from Canada.

The first comment made by President Liu was to the effect that China would not forget Canada’s sale of wheat and grains to China during the period of starvation due to the effects of the Great Leap Forward in the 1950s. Given the role of CofCo in Canada/China trade, our paths would cross quite frequently. I don’t recall any issues or problems that would reach the level of serious dispute or disruption of shipments of Canadian grain during my tenure…not that I am claiming credit!

Thursday, November 08

Letter from the President of the Asia Development Bank, Tadao Chino, congratulating me on my appointment as Ambassador.

I knew Chino-san in previous Japanese incarnations.

Exchange with the former Acting Director of the Japan Institute of International Affairs, Ozawa Toshiro, regarding his appointment as Consul General to Vancouver.

Ozawa-san and I were friends over many years and many positions, including this Vancouver ConGen and later Ambassador to Canada. He retired following his assignment as Japanese Ambassador to Austria.

Friday, November 09

CdaPs&Ms

Letter from BC Premier Gordon Campbell thanking me and the Embassy for the support we extended during his recent mission to China, and promising continuing close relations.

Education

Letter to UBC President Martha Piper, informing her of efforts by Secretary of State (Asia Pacific) Rey Pagtakhan, during the recent APEC meetings, to build relations between APEC and the Association of Pacific Rim Universities, to which President Piper gave great importance.

Dinner: President and CEO Ron Nolan, Hatch.

Monday, November 12

Meetings:

  • Zha Peixin, former Ambassador to Canada.

ChinaGov

Minister of National Defence Chi Haotian.

I recall this meeting well. After the ‘politesse’, and before I could raise it, Minister Zha went into a long exposition of the background to the TianAnMen massacre – not his words – and the high cost in human lives …those of military personnel! I replied that the understanding in Canada was to the effect that hundreds of Chinese citizens gathered at TAM Square were the victims. We then discussed international security situation as understood by China.

BT&I

Reception for Canpotex President and CEO, Steve Dechka.

Tuesday, November 13

First of many subsequent meetings with Maurice Strong.

I can’t recall specifically what we discussed – probably his decision to ‘park’ in China – adding yet another residence for his peripatetic lifestyle. More likely, it was very much a session with Maurice educating me about doing business in China, among other matters. Chatting with Maurice was always a pleasure. A man of another era, Maurice was variously – and I’m not making this up: President, Power Corporation; CEO Ontario Hydro; CEO of Petro Canada; Under-Secretary General of the UN; Director of CIDA in its early years; Secretary General of the Rio Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, 1992. I am sure I am missing a few.

Media

Interview: David McGuffin, CTV.

Wednesday, November 14

Meetings:

ChinaMFA

MFA Vice Minister Zhou Wenzhong.

Media

Interview: Céline Galipeau, Radio-Canada

Rencontre: Association des Ambassadeurs des pays francophones

BT&I

TSI Terminal Systems CEO and executives; represent Vancouver ports.

Thursday, November 15

Admin

Letter from UBC’s Professor Pitman Potter, Director of Institute of Asian Research, proposing a student candidate as Embassy Intern.

The issue, as always, was one of budgets for interns. Virtually no funding was available for what should have been an active program of hiring temporary interns as future candidates for the Foreign Service as well as other careers that would help build Canadian diplomatic relations, and not only between Canada and China. Perhaps I could have done more to advance such an initiative. My only excuse…and a poor one…is that I was overwhelmed with work as it was…

Education

Exchange with Guangdong University of Foreign Studies Vice President and Professor Chen Jianping about my interest in learning to speak Chinese.

As I note separately, the will was there. However, I realized later that my approach was incorrect: instead of studying early in the morning in my office at the Residence, I should have devoted a half hour or so with an Assistant teacher who would also be my interpreter on calls, and tasked as well 1) to assemble a summary of domestic and international media reporting in and on China, and 2) report the substance of Chinese think-pieces that would broaden my understanding of China and its place in the world. I could have kept this person busy, and I would have had a permanent teacher on call. I thought of this too late to make a difference.

Meetings:

  • President Bob Francis, Agriteam Canada
  • Zhang Wenpu, former Ambassador to Canada
  • Noranda Vice-President Robert Sippel
  • Bank of Montreal Representative Roger Heng.

Friday, November 16

Call on Russian Ambassador Igor Rogachev.

As one would expect, a fluent and connected China Hand with no doubt many cards up his sleeve. He was welcoming but cautious. Nevertheless, I called on him on a few occasions, because there was always something to learn about the inner workings of the Government and, especially, the Party. 

That said, if there is one relationship that I deeply regret not developing more thoroughly, it was with Ambassador Rogachev. My years in China – 2001-2005 – included those of rapid economic development, a limited degree of political innovation (for example the cautious experimentation with non-governmental NGOs), a small number of village level elections, a strategy of allowing ODA programs from the world’s most developed democracies – notably Singapore in addition to Canada – to address sensitive subjects such as law reform, a willingness to allow foreign donors to address human rights issues, and so forth. It was the experimental and very tentative part of the ‘Reform and Opening’ strategy. Everyone familiar with 20th century Chinese history knew that this guaranteed nothing, but nobody knew how far things would go. Certainly not a Chinese version of Canada. Rather, perhaps a tempered Leninism that would provide the Chinese people with greater freedoms. 

I doubt that Ambassador Rogachev harbored such ‘liberal’ ideas during the 13 years – 1992-2005 – he served as Russia’s Ambassador to China. Born in 1932, Ambassador Rogachev experienced Stalinism, WWII, the denunciation of Stalin by Nikita Khrushchev and the East-West thaw that followed, Brezhnev/Kozygin misgovernance and corruption, the failed coup attempt by communist hardliners in August 1991 and the Belahezva Accords in December which effectively dissolved the Soviet Union later that November. Rogachev began his career as a Russian/Chinese interpreter in 1956, coincidentally the year of Krushchev’s denunciation of Stalin, later transiting to the Soviet Union’s foreign service and became the ‘China Hand’ extraordinaire. 

When we met in his massive Embassy complex, we exchanged thoughts of the day on what was happening in China – I mostly listened – but it was the wrong subject. What I should have asked – what his Chinese interlocutors certainly asked – was ‘how did all of these Russian disasters happen? Going all the way back (and no doubt trashing old debates), see what happened after Khrushchev denounced Stalinism?  Weren’t lessons learned by backing down during the Cuban missile crisis? Look at the results of glasnosts and perestroika! Electioneering and domestic discord. And the worst of disasters: the dissolution of the Soviet Union! What lessons can we Chinese learn from that? 

With the 20/20 vision provided by hindsight, it is evident that the Chinese Communist Party and its leaders from the 1960s onward learned many lessons: how to open the economy while maintaining political control; promoting Chinese nationalism – which is somewhat easier in China than the multi-national Soviet Union: there are fewer nationalites; a foreign policy that focused national interest on economic growth over global ideological hegemony; and stability above all – wending yadao yiqie, one of the very few Chinese expressions I still recall. I expect that the CCP, as it adapted to the transitions prompted by ‘reform and opening’, kept in mind the insights provided by the Russian Ambassador. I wish that I had been equally astute. 

Fellow diplomat and China/Russia expert Leigh Sarty recommended the following article on the breadth and depth of Chinese study of the Soviet collapse:

A Review of Chinese Scholarship on the Collapse of the Soviet Union

Meetings:

  • SNC Representative Scriban.
  • Zhang Yijun, former Ambassador to Canada.

Arts and Culture

Attended a sold-out Diane Reeves concert – not the first time – and she was, as always, sensational!

Sunday, November 18

Arts&Culture

Afternoon: attended a Beijing Opera

Being forever interested in music, not long after arriving in China, I decided to attend a performance of Beijing-style opera. I was told of a small theater that featured Chinese opera, located on a side-street south of TianAnMen Square. I found it without difficulty and thus began an interest in the genre and – if anything, more significantly – a friendship with Ghaffar Pourazar, an Iranian immigrant to the UK who attended a Beijing opera performance in London way back when and was so mesmerized that he quit his job as a computer animator, moved to Beijing, and spent five gruelling years at an opera school mastering its arts – Chinese opera involving not only singing and acting, but also acrobatics, sword fighting and other physical feats not usually required in Western opera. Ghaffar and his Japanese spouse – also a performer – and I became good friends. He was ever entertaining, as one would expect from such an extraordinary person. There is a good deal of information on Ghaffar on line.

Evening: attended Roy Hargrove concert.

Monday, November 19

Courtesy calls on French Ambassador Pierre Morel and, later in the day, Italian Ambassador Paolo Bruni.

Meetings:

  • RCMP Inspector Keith Thorn, Integrated Proceeds of Crime, B.C.
  • Executive VP  Adrien Measner, Canadian Wheat Board.
  • Manulife Asia President Victor Apps.

Tuesday, November 20

Note to Canpotex International President and CEO Steve Dechka covering a news report on Chinese fertilizer quotas.  

Courtesy call on UK Ambassador Anthony Galsworthy.

Media

Interview with Miro Cernetig, Globe&Mail.

Wednesday, November 21

Meetings:

  • Paul Turner, Director, CEC.
  • ADB representative Bruce Murray.
  • Vietnamese Ambassador Bui Hong Phuc.
  • Board Chairman Kombiz Edgdami, Viinx Technologies, with delegation. 

ChinaGov

Hosted dinner for Zhang Chunxian, Vice Minister, Department of Communications.

The invitation list flags the presence of the representatives of the Vancouver Port Authority and Canadian Pacific Railway.

Thursday, November 22

Notes addressed to the Ambassadors of France, Japan and Korea and covering the biography of soon-to-visit Deputy Minister Gaetan Lavertu whose luncheon they agreed to attend.

ChinaGov Agric BT&I

Letter to Vice Minister of Agriculture Liu Jian regarding tariff and VATT treatment for Canadian feed peas, as well as regulations on GMO products.

Letter to the Vice Minister of Communications, Zhang Chunxian, regarding cooperation in the transportation sector, as well as ongoing collaboration through various programs funded by CIDA.

Meetings:

ChinaGov

  • MOFTEC Vice-Minister Long Yongtu.

Media

  • M. Meilleurs, Le Devoir

Friday, November 23

CdaGov

Letter from Health Canada Deputy Minister Ian Green regarding collaboration with China on health matters, including an agreed Program of Work based on an earlier Memorandum of Understanding.

Arts&Culture

Programme de performances en Chine: Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal, Décembre 2001.

ChinaGov HR&RoL

Hosted lunch in honour of Finance Minister Xiang Huaicheng and Ministry colleagues, on his return from a visit to Canada.

Hosted dinner in honour of the Chairpersons of the Chinese Supervisory Panels of State-Owned Enterprises, upon their return from Canada.

These events reflect the degree of engagement on the Chinese side in response to Canada’s concerted outreach strategy with the Chinese government. They are an indication of the breadth of the relationships. The variety of topics and the substance of discussions between and among Canadian and Chinese officials proved that these were not pro-forma exercises, but were substantive. They reflected a response to Canada’s explicit efforts, aimed at the Government and the CCP, to explore options for governance and rules-making in the pursuit of Party and national objectives.

The guest lists for both of these events provide an excellent overview of key players on the issues discussed with both Ministers. For the notes, of course, students and scholars will have to wrest them from Foreign Affairs and Library and Archives Canada.

Saturday, November 24

Off to Macao.

Monday, November 26

Meetings:

Media

Interviews with Bruce Gillies, G&M. Harold Bruning Reuters/South China Morning Post.

BT&I

Calls on Macao Chief Executive Edmond Ho and President Lee Peng Hong, Macau Trade and Investment Promotion Organization.

Off to Hong Kong.

Tuesday, November 27

ConGens

Meetings with Consulate staff and key contacts. Attendance at annual gathering of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council.

GovChina

Complete programs, including for the PECC and Consulate meetings, in 2001 binder. One meeting in HK was with Secretary for Security Regina Ip. I had first met Regina while ADM, when I succeeded in organizing, in 1997, the first gathering of what we called the Victoria Group, a pre-HK hand-over venue for discussion among senior representatives of the UK, HK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the key objective of which was to discuss the implications of this momentous event on our citizens and the future governance of the people of HK. The group met on two subsequent occasions, if I recall correctly. Ms. Ip’s priorities – professional as well as personal – were ensuring a smooth hand-over, one that priorized Beijing’s objectives more than sustaining the democratic rights which Hong Kongers had attained over the years. Her influence is still significant, in 2025, as I write this.

Wednesday, November 28

Attended Pacific Economic Cooperation Council Sessions.

Arts&Culture

Exchange avec le Directeur Général de ‘la la la human steps’ Louis LeHoux au sujet de plans de performances à Pékin et Shanghai l’année prochaine.

Letter of congrats on my appointment as Ambassador from Koike Hirotsugu, Foreign News Editor, Nikkei.

Friday, November 30

Education Agric

Letter from University of Saskatchewan President Peter MacKinnon regarding the university’s activities in China in the field of agricultural sciences.

Letter from Co-Chairman and CEO of JDS Uniphase, Dr. Jozef Straus, regarding his recent visit to China. He thanks the Embassy for its support.

CdaGov Agric

Letter from Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Agri-food Canada Samy Watson thanking the embassy for its support during his recent visit, and, in a follow-up to my letter of October 29, indicating that the Department is looking at posting priorities, including the PRC.