"China and Canada's "Pacific 2000 Strategy

Q INCE 1989 the Canadian government has attempted to articulate Pacikfic 2000 Strategy. At the same time, there has been related substantive change Canada's China policy which reflects recent and wide-ranging challenge to the underlying assumptions of Canada's foreign policy tradition. Canada's pre-recognition China policy focused on China's stability and normal participation regional and international affairs as being vital to regional security and world peace. In the post-Cold War era this perspective no longer holds. Canada's recognition of the People's Republic of China (PRC) no longer enjoys special significance. There is no longer dear policy focus on China the Asia Pacific, and this article questions whether the current dimensions of Canada's 2000 Strategy are sufficiently comprehensive to meet the challenges of the year 2000. Pre-recognition, or pre-October 1970, China policy was often complicated by sensitivity towards the priorities of the U.S.-Canada relationship, but, persistently attempting to coopt the PRC into regional and international political frameworks, Canadian policy resisted the extremes of containment. This was consistent with distinctive diplomatic rationality which sought to accommodate the principles of national self-determination, sovereignty and non-interference the tense East-West ideological context of decolonization. In his May 29, 1968 statement regarding the search for a new foreign policy based on fresh appraisal of this rapidly-changing world, Prime Minister Trudeau placed Canada's aim to recognize the PRC and to support its claim to the U.N. China seats in the context of new interest Pacific affairs generally. ' External Affairs Minister Mitchell Sharp later regarded the 13 October 1970Joint Sino-Canadian Communique, establishing diplomatic relations, and the related U.N. China seat decisions as ''among the most important developments Canadian foreign policy of the last two decades. 2

Asia pacific · China · Ethnology · Geography · Political science · Canadian Policy and Governance · History · Law

• The Asia‐Pacific policy network in Canada

  Lawrence T Woods•The Pacific Review•1994

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