Roots of the Sino-Canadian relationship
By VICTOR DEYGLIO
April 27, 2009
The history of Canada’s relationship with China is a cause for great pride and it cannot be forgotten. Three Canadians of heroic significance to the people of China are Norman Bethune, Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Mark Rowswell. Beijing Mayor Guo Jinlong made reference to these three men at a dinner hosted by the Bank of Montreal in Toronto in October.
For the Chinese, much weight is given to the momentous events and actions of these three individuals. In a Confucian tradition dating back 5,000 years, Chinese society involves five hierarchies. At the top is the emperor or political power, second are the scholars followed by the farmers, the workers and, lastly, the merchants.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Even before President Richard Nixon went to China, Pierre Elliott Trudeau was establishing diplomatic relations with the country in 1970. He was the first leader of a Western nation to do so and, three years later, he was the first Canadian prime minister to visit the People’s Republic of China. China’s opening up to the West began with people like Trudeau who, in the face of severe opposition from other nations, in particular the U.S., chose to go against the grain. This act had particular significance in China and is considered heroism at its best for the Chinese people.
Trudeau had a lifelong interest in China. In 1949, he travelled throughout China, returning with his colleague Jacques Hébert in 1959. They later wrote a book, Two Innocents in Red China, chronicling their visit.
Soon after becoming prime minister in 1968, Trudeau launched a review of Canadian foreign policy. A greater priority was placed on Canada’s association with the Asia-Pacific region, which led to diplomatic relations with China, the establishment of a Chinese embassy in Ottawa and the promotion of trade that resulted in China becoming Canada’s second largest trade partner.
Trudeau, as was fitting his position, met Chinese at the top level of political and social power, that is, Chairman Mao and Deng Xiaoping, leader of the Communist Party from 1978 to the early 1997. To the Chinese, this connects Trudeau to the highest hierarchy.
Mark Rowswell
Better known by his Chinese name of Dashan, which means “big mountain,” Mark Rowswell is one of China’s outstanding media personalities. At the Toronto dinner, he was a special guest who was introduced as a modern-day Chinese icon. To the Chinese who are mesmerized by him, he is like a movie star with a following in the millions. During one of my trips to Shanghai, I saw him on TV.
I didn’t have a clue what he was saying, but I was laughing my head off anyway.
A graduate of the University of Toronto’s Chinese language program, on a lark he went to China immediately after graduation – as twentysomethings tend to do. This sense of adventure, accompanied by his incredible facility in Mandarin, catapulted him onto the stage as China’s most popular TV entertainer where he has performed for over 20 years.
During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he served as a Team Canada attaché and ran a section of the Olympic torch relay. The first Westerner to win one of China’s top three dramatic arts awards, he was a recipient of the Order of Canada in 2006. Born in 1965 in Ottawa, Rowswell is now considered a cultural ambassador between China and the West.
Even if television is his medium of communication, Dashan falls into the scholar category. It is not for his traditional scholarship in Confucian or even Western academia; it is a strong admiration for someone who learned their language and culture so well as to be better at it than many Chinese. To the Chinese, it’s an astounding mark of respect shown to them by a Westerner.
Because he is so Chinese, one almost forgets that Dashan is a Canadian living in China. He is idolized for being more Chinese than the Chinese are and because he makes them laugh. What I realize over the past four or five years is that the Chinese laugh easily and laugh heartily and that laughter erases the difference between East and West.
Norman Bethune
A surgeon and inventor, Norman Bethune is considered a hero in the People’s Republic of China. When the Chinese refer to Bethune, they often say ‘the blood of Canadians flows through the veins of the Chinese people.’ During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Bethune rescued lives on the battlefield with a mobile blood transfusion unit, which, on at least one instance, used his own blood. It is this act that stands out in near mythical significance for the Chinese people.
Born in 1890 in Gravenhurst, Ont., to a family of prominent Scottish Canadians, Bethune received his medical degree from the University of Toronto. In 1938, he left Canada for what would be the last time to join Mao Zedong’s 8th Route Army in the Shanxi-Hobei border region. Here Mao’s Communist army was fighting both the invading Japanese and General Chang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang.
Ironically, Bethune died in China a year later from a blood infection he received when he cut his finger with a scalpel during an operation. On hearing of his death, Chairman Mao wrote an epitaph, which to this day is memorized by all Chinese children. Here is an excerpt: ‘Comrade Bethune’s spirit, his utter devotion to others without any thought of self, was shown in his great sense of responsibility to his work and his great warm-heartedness towards all comrades and the people. Every Communist must learn from him.’
He is so revered in China that, during the Cultural Revolution, his body was exhumed and reburied in the cemetery celebrating the heroes of the revolution.
Within the traditional hierarchy, Bethune is not so easy to categorize. He could be a scholar since he taught the Chinese about modern medical techniques or he could be
at the highest level, even though he confessed he was uninterested in politics.
A dyed-in-the-wool socialist and a member of the Canadian Communist Party, he volunteered in the medical corps during the Spanish Civil War. But doctrinaire communism and the politics of the time did not loom large in his life. He was a doctor who gave freely of his skills, which reinforces the scholar classification.
But I also suggest Bethune fits into a unique category beyond the five Confucian hierarchies and much more in sync with post-Liberation Maoist China – that of hero and martyr who, in this instance, literally gives his blood to the people. The symbolism is immensely important and, if we wish to engage more fully in the China experience, we need to understand the relevance of symbolic meaning to the Chinese.
Summa summarum
Canada’s connection to China dates from the time when Bethune was with the People’s Liberation Army in Northern China in 1938. Our relationship grew with the opening of China to the West by Trudeau in the 1970s.
And our relationship blossoms today through cultural connections, namely through Dashan, a Canadian-born Mandarin-speaking superstar, thus ushering in the globalization of communication and a truly international cultural revolution.
The blood of the people, the economics of global trade and the tears of laughter: these are the strengths Canada needs to build on in its relations with China.
Victor Deyglio is president of The Logistics Institute, a Toronto-based non-profit organization that provides training for supply chain logistics professionals. One of its partners is the International Training Center of the Shanghai Foreign Service Company.