The minister reflects on the visit to China in 1971: he knew even then that the rise of the ‘sleeping giant’ would change the world and its customs

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The following excerpt is from An Unlikely Informant: A West Coast Advocate in Ottawa, a new memoir written by former Federal Cabinet Minister and Senator Jack Austin of Vancouver and his daughter Edie Austin, a journalist for the Montreal Gazette.

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In June 1971, Canada sent its first official delegation to China under the leadership of Industry Minister Jean-Luc Pépin. I was lucky to be one of the six deputy ministers included in the 24-person group, which also included business representatives. My task was to open the technical relationship in mining and oil and gas between the government of Canada and the relevant departments in China.

We arrived in China by train from Hong Kong, then a British colony. There was no direct train. We were forced to walk across the border with our luggage and then take another train on the Chinese side. At that time, Shenzhen was a fishing village that you could see when the train left. (By 2021, it was a metropolis of 12.5 million people.) We travel in comfortable luxury cars from another era, complete with fancy antimacassars. On the table, there was fruit that I didn’t recognize. It was my first introduction to star fruit and fresh lychee. And the fresh lychee on ice was absolutely delicious.

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We disembarked in Guangzhou (which we then called Canton) and were taken to the airport, where a Vickers Viscount was waiting to take us to Beijing. We could see that it was normally used for cargo: some seats had been installed for us, and there were also three or four common chairs, which were not bolted down. We first flew to Hangzhou, where we stopped for lunch. We didn’t see anything but the airport. There was a buffet of hot and cold foods on a large table in a tent. There were also tables for us to sit and eat. Food was completely new to me. It was nothing like what was served in Vancouver’s Chinatown in those days, which was sort of westernized Cantonese. We were there long enough to eat, and then we boarded the plane to continue for another couple of hours to Beijing, where we were met at the airport by Prime Minister Zhou Enlai himself.

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Zhou was our official host. The deepest impression remains of this brilliant man, an immense figure in Chinese history. I cherish my memory of the three days I sat and listened to the discussions between Zhou and Pépin in the ballroom of the Beijing Hotel. Zhou was well-versed in international affairs and spoke comfortably about global politics, economics, and business. And while he used an interpreter for formal meetings, Zhou was proficient in both French and English and used those languages ​​in informal conversation. He had spent time in Europe before World War II, and during the war he had been Mao’s deputy to the Americans in Chongqing.

Beijing in June 1971 was unforgettable. We stayed at the Beijing Hotel in rooms on the top floor overlooking the roofs of the Forbidden City. The streets were thronged with bicycles and men and women dressed in nearly identical clothing. There was little electricity for light and clearly none for heat. Government offices were dimly lit. Although it was June, the cavernous buildings still held the chill of winter; even high officials still wore long undergarments, which could be seen overlapping the tops of the socks and at the wrists. It was an experience to have a western appearance, with no one else to be found except our delegation and a small team that had just opened our embassy in temporary quarters.

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People were surrounding me in the street and touching me to see if I was real. That China does not exist today, not even close.

One of our visits was to Peking University, where we met with party officials who briefed us on the importance of the Cultural Revolution then underway. They brought in a professor, who had a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and was held up as an example of a bad person. They accused him of having harshly marked his students. When Pépin asked what the professor’s field was, he was told nuclear physics. Pépin commented: “You must have many nuclear physicists to be able to treat one as badly as this.” There was silence. Then all our hosts got up and left. There were no diplomatic consequences. Our hosts pretended it didn’t happen.

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The final banquet was our introduction to the Chinese custom of the host moving to each table to toast his guests. At my table, we were introduced to Guizhou Maotai, and after two small glasses, I had enough. I watched in amazement as Premier Zhou went from table to table, drinking a glass, each served from a bottle of Maotai. This was just a few years after my trip to the Soviet Union with Art Laing, and I whispered to the Chinese foreign affairs officer next to me, “He could drink the entire Russian government under the table.” He whispered back, “Don’t tell anyone, but it’s water.”

It was a remarkable visit. While times were difficult, the restrained energy of the Chinese people was evident. Napoleon once said about China that he was a sleeping giant and suggested that when he woke up, he would shake the world. Even then, I think I saw Napoleon’s sleeping giant begin to rise, and I knew that this rising would change the world and its ways, even in my lifetime. I came away with the deep belief that, one way or another, China would matter, either as a hostile outlier that did not accept global norms of international behavior and sought to establish a different global society, or as a member of the existing system. even if they play on their own terms. Although there would be drawbacks (unfair trade practices, intellectual property theft, China’s human rights record), we believed that compromise was essential and that the benefits of China as a member of the world order would far outweigh the alternative.

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It was clear to me that Canada had to play a key role in China’s rise, both in the interest of the global order and in the interest of Canada. The Americans were also changing their stance on China. Henry Kissinger’s secret diplomatic mission occurred shortly after our departure. It paved the way for the momentous visit of US President Richard Nixon the following year. For me, this trip marked the beginning of a lifetime of working to advance relations between our two countries, balancing the economic goal of increasing trade and investment with the emerging challenge of how to manage our differences over human rights and authoritarian rule. .

I would go back to China many times.

Jack Austin is a proud British Columbian who has been involved in politics and public policy at the highest level for over 50 years. An Unlikely Member: A West Coast Advocate in Ottawa will be published February 23 by McGill Queen’s University Press; Edie Austin is an editorial page editor for the Montreal Gazette.