In his Maclean’s column, Paul “Inkless” Wells talks about the state of play in prime minister Stephen Harper’s visit to China:
The old-timers in the press gallery know how to defuse an announcement like this. We dust a toolkit from the early Chrétien days off. A Canadian prime minister shows up in a fancy Beijing ballroom with a bunch of business executives wielding Montblanc pens. A big number is being tossed around — say, “$3 billion.” But if we subtract the deals that would have happened anyway, and then subtract the deals that aren’t really deals — then we can wear that number down to some innocuous nub.
But while individual elements of Stephen Harper’s signing ceremony Thursday night in a fancy Beijing ballroom may not pan out, at some point the weight of evidence starts to suggest something real is going on. The evidence at hand comes, not just from Canadian sources, but from Chinese.
The first source of the morning was the semi-official English-language China Daily, which reserves real excitement for vice-premier Xi Jingping’s upcoming trip to the United States but which has been respectful, and a little more than that, toward Stephen Harper all week.
Later in the day came Harper’s bilateral meeting with Hu Jintao. Here, no trace of scolding for time spent posturing in the early years of Harper’s term as prime minister. Now, Hu said, “Mr. Prime Minister, you put a lot of value on Canada’s relationship with China and are strongly committed to promoting the practical cooperation between our two countries. I appreciate your efforts.” Translation: You’re out of the doghouse. Come here, ya big lug.
Update: David Akin contrasts the glowing reviews Harper is getting in the Chinese press this time with his 2009 visit:
I’ve travelled to a lot of spots around the world covering Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s international travels and I cannot recall him ever generating the kind of positive press he’s getting in this morning’s China Daily, the English-language state-run daily newspaper here.
A picture of Harper chatting with Chinese chess players during a visit Wednesday to the Temple of Heaven is the front-page top-of-the-fold main art here with a generally positive article about the two countries improving trade relationship. Inside, there’s two other pieces involving Canada and Harper.
[. . .]
Read between the lines here and China’s government is approvingly showing Canada’s prime minister to be a decent, pious individual deserving of China’s friendship and support.
That’s a sharp contrast to the China Daily‘s coverage of Harper’s 2009 visit. There was front-page coverage then too — of how Premier Wen dressed down Harper for letting the China-Canada relationship languish. The narrative in 2009 was that the Canadian prime minister was a wayward supplicant coming to China to seek forgiveness for his sins. Not this time: He is being profiled in the press as the leader “of a strong delegation of five ministers and 40 business leaders” who, along with Wen, witnessd “the signing of nine deals.” The reader of the China Daily on this Harper visit is meant to be impressed.
And this is what passes as reporting in Canada:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/brewing-scandal-in-china-could-be-a-reality-check-for-harper/article2334141/
Read the comments, what a bunch of morons (for the most part). Headline and story, no real match. Waste of newsprint/electrons.
I am still trying to figure out how our PM figures into this story, other than the visit with the pol.
Comment by Dwayne — February 10, 2012 @ 16:25