This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 13, 2012
An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect tally for China’s foreign exchange reserves. It is $3.2 trillion, not $2.3 trillion.
Thứ Tư, 15 tháng 2, 2012
Talks With Canadians Test China’s Policy of Noninterference
But as China’s global commercial and diplomatic interests mushroom, it is being confronted with decisions that are drawing it ever more steadily into internal disputes in other nations. Events of the past week underscored that. Even as China opposed intervention in the conflict in Syria, Premier Wen Jiabao stepped into Europe’s debt crisis, offering to stake more of its $3.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves in bonds to help prop up the European Union, its largest trading partner. Then there was the visit to Beijing this week of Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada — and the attempts by Canadian aboriginal groups to lobby Chinese authorities over his head, seeking to halt a project under discussion or at least be considered for jobs if it goes ahead. The centerpiece of Mr. Harper’s visit was negotiations over a pipeline project that would run from the province of Alberta west to the British Columbian port of Kitimat. The project has taken on added importance since the Obama administration vetoed the Keystone XL pipeline that would have run from Alberta to Texas. The port at Kitimat is set amid fjords, and while desirous of the trade, many tribes see the project as environmentally reckless. This week, tribal leaders fired off an open letter to President Hu Jintao of China, a major investor in the project, warning that they could seek to block the deal if their views were ignored. “We’re saying to China that if you’re coming to our territories, you better knock on our door,” said Grand Chief Ed John, one of the leaders of the First Nations Summit, an alliance of indigenous groups in British Columbia, where some of the crucial deals are located. “If you don’t knock, the answer will be no.” No aboriginal delegates were invited during Mr. Harper’s visit this week, spurring anger among the tribes and prompting the letter, and Mr. John was interviewed by telephone from British Columbia. Chinese officials said they received the letters but declined to comment. A spokesman at the Canadian Embassy in Beijing said the issue of the tribes was not raised during the summit. Nonetheless, the case has become an example of how China’s economic might is drawing it into even seemingly arcane domestic disputes in other countries. Aboriginal rights in Canada are constitutionally protected. Although treaties have yet to be established for many of Canada’s more than 630 indigenous groups — known as First Nations — a 2004 Supreme Court ruling held that the government must consult with and accommodate aboriginal peoples when territory that they have a claim to is being mined, fished or otherwise exploited. With China now Canada’s second-largest trading partner (to the United States), aboriginal leaders like Mr. John have made several trips here to make sure that Chinese business and political leaders get the message. They emphasize that they welcome development, especially if it helps reduce unemployment — which often is over 50 percent in many aboriginal communities — and is environmentally friendly. Last fall, Mr. John was in Beijing to meet the head of the China Investment Corporation, a sovereign wealth fund that controls more than $200 billion in assets. He and other leaders have also met Chinese natural resource companies to make their pitch. Chinese companies have already pledged seed money for the pipeline project. “Their message is they are part of the equation, too,” said Jiang Wenran, a political scientist at the University of Alberta. “They feel there is a lack of respect.” Chinese business leaders say they are learning. “We know we have to take them into consideration,” said Yang Zhongcheng, chairman of Beidahuang Xinfa Economic and Trade Company, a major Chinese natural resource company, who met the First Nations trade delegation last October. “We can provide jobs for them.” Nonintervention remains a pillar of Chinese foreign policy — in part, analysts say, because China’s own history of foreign occupation is at the core of its national identity, an unhealed wound. Beijing also worries that abandoning its hands-off policy could encourage other nations to meddle in Chinese trouble spots like Tibet and Xinjiang. But the Canadian case shows the pull of domestic disputes, some of which have uncomfortable parallels to China’s policies toward its own minority groups. Tribal leaders say they are aware that China has serious problems in its own minority areas. One reason for their activities, they say, is that they do not want Chinese companies to bring over their own workers — as they have in many other projects around the world and in China’s own minority regions — leaving little economic benefit for locals. “We understand all about human rights,” Mr. John said. “We know it better than the politicians in Ottawa who go to China.”
