{"id":13481,"date":"2012-02-09T11:22:30","date_gmt":"2012-02-09T16:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=13481"},"modified":"2012-02-09T16:18:11","modified_gmt":"2012-02-09T21:18:11","slug":"paul-wells-harpers-trip-to-china-is-going-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/02\/09\/paul-wells-harpers-trip-to-china-is-going-well\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Wells: Harper’s trip to China is going well"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his Maclean’s<\/em> column, Paul “Inkless” Wells<\/a> talks about the state of play in prime minister Stephen Harper’s visit to China:<\/p>\n

\n

The old-timers in the press gallery know how to defuse an announcement like this. We dust a toolkit from the early Chr\u00e9tien 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, \u201c$3 billion.\u201d But if we subtract the deals that would have happened anyway<\/em>, and then subtract the deals that aren\u2019t really deals<\/em> — then we can wear that number down to some innocuous nub.<\/p>\n

But while individual elements of Stephen Harper\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The first source of the morning was the semi-official English-language China Daily<\/em>, which reserves real excitement for vice-premier Xi Jingping\u2019s upcoming trip to the United States but which has been respectful, and a little more than that, toward Stephen Harper all week.<\/p>\n

Later in the day came Harper\u2019s bilateral meeting with Hu Jintao. Here, no trace of scolding for time spent posturing in the early years of Harper\u2019s term as prime minister. Now, Hu said, \u201cMr. Prime Minister, you put a lot of value on Canada\u2019s relationship with China and are strongly committed to promoting the practical cooperation between our two countries. I appreciate your efforts.\u201d Translation: You\u2019re out of the doghouse. Come here, ya big lug.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Update<\/b>: David Akin<\/a> contrasts the glowing reviews Harper is getting in the Chinese press this time with his 2009 visit:<\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019ve travelled to a lot of spots around the world covering Prime Minister Stephen Harper\u2019s international travels and I cannot recall him ever generating the kind of positive press he\u2019s getting in this morning\u2019s China Daily, the English-language state-run daily newspaper here.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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\u2019s two other pieces involving Canada and Harper.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

Read between the lines here and China\u2019s government is approvingly showing Canada\u2019s prime minister to be a decent, pious individual deserving of China\u2019s friendship and support.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a sharp contrast to the China Daily<\/em>\u2018s coverage of Harper\u2019s 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 \u201cof a strong delegation of five ministers and 40 business leaders\u201d who, along with Wen, witnessd \u201cthe signing of nine deals.\u201d The reader of the China Daily<\/em> on this Harper visit is meant to be impressed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 Chr\u00e9tien days off. A Canadian prime minister shows up in a fancy Beijing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,22,25,28],"tags":[432,320,213,258],"class_list":["post-13481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-china","category-economics","category-media","tag-diplomacy","tag-freetrade","tag-newspapers","tag-stephenharper"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3vr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13481"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13485,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13481\/revisions\/13485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}