Canadian-Asian Affairs

I'm on vacation and uninclined to keep up on my posting. But here is a short news round-up of interesting stories for the day.

China has suggested that Canada's plan to bestow honorary Canadian citizenship upon the Dalai Lama may hurt relations, including valuable trade ties. Link Here.

The Vancouver Sun (subscription required to read story) suggests that the hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese/Chinese with Canadian citizenship may pose a huge problem in the case of war with China. The panic and resultant huge effort required to extricate Canadian-Lebanese from Lebanon, has led people to consider other large groups of overseas Canadians.

The Toronto Star has a soft news story about China's growth, language learning, and increasing trade ties. These stories seem to crop up almost on a weekly basis. They have asked the important question though: where is Tim Horton's in Asia?

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Canadian representatives have signed a co-operation pact at ASEAN's annual meeting. The pact will see Canada and ASEAN member countries formalize intelligence and resource sharing in their anti-terror inititatives. Agreement signatories are encouraged to conform to UN standards in the fight against terror.

Southeast asia has been home to numerous terrorist related incidents including a number of bombings in Indonesia, a barely avoided attack in Singapore, and the actions a number of political-Islamist movements which since 2001 have drawn increasing attention as "terrorist" organizations.

Link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060724.wasean0724/BNStory/International/home

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A hockey team of young Canadians of Japanese descent is headed to Japan to face off against Japanese hockey teams. The event is billed as a cultural exchange and a way for the Canadian youths to get in touch with their Japanese roots.

LInk: http://www.richmondreview.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=45&cat=40&id=694657&more=

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About a week ago I posted a short note about China's under-20 soccer team being denied entry to Canada. They had planned on attending a tournament hosted by the Vancouver Whitecaps soccer team. This week I was contacted by Bob Mackin Jr. a Vancouver based reporter. He offered an interesting follow up to the story. The following are his comments:

The Whitecaps appealed to the federal immigration minister and the problem was smoothed out. Or so they thought.

A Chinese national team did make it into Canada, but it wasn't the under-20s -- who hope to play in Canada in the 2007 U-20 World Cup and will eventually be the Chinese U-23 Olympic team in 2008. The Chinese team that did play
Cardiff City FC (and lost 5-0) was actually the under-17 team. I told Vancouver Whitecaps officials who claim they are as surprised as I am.

There has been no official communication made from the China Football Association or Vancouver Whitecaps regarding this matter. I interviewed the captain of the Chinese team after Friday's game and confirmed it's an
under-17 team. I'm trying to get more information about why the U-20 team didn't make it over.

I'm not willing to speculate as to why the under-17 team ended up where the under-20 team was expected to be, but if anyone else has useful speculation or information as to how the 'mix-up' came about please leave a comment. I would be interested to read more about it.

I have contacted the Chinese Football Association. If they shed any light on the matter I will share it here.

Update: You can read Bob Mackin's story on Slam Sports here: http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Soccer/Canada/2006/07/24/1699786-sun.html

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A dozen people angered by China's lack of disclosure about what it has done with Canadian citizen Huseyincan Celil held a protest in Toronto on Thursday. It's good to see the main stream media is still picking up on this story, but it is unfortunate that only a dozen people went to the protest. I fear for Mr. Celil's life. Even if he is not to be put to death by the government in China he will certainly not be living a very enjoyable existence right now. Hopefully diplomatic channels can provide him some assistance.

If you want to help Mr. Celil out write a letter to your MP or Peter McKay the Minister of Foriegn Affairs insisting they do more to help him. I'm sure they're doing a lot of work behind the scenes but it will help for them to know that the public is aware of the situation and monitoring the government's progress.

Link: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2006/07/21/uzbek-celil-protest.html

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Rogers is sponsoring a Chinese Lantern Festival at Ontario Place in Toronto. While the lanterns sound impressive, and I'm sure it's quite a show the tickets are a bit on the steep side. If you want your fix of "Chinese culture" you've got to shell out anywhere from $20 to $49. Unless you're under four, in which case you can enjoy massive CN tower shaped lanterns for absolutely nothing.

Link: http://chineselanternfestival.ca/e/home.html

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There have been rumours of a brewing free trade deal with Malaysia for some time now. Currently the DFA is in negotiations with a number of countries including South Korea and Singapore. This report suggests that once there are more resources available to begin negotiations with Malaysia, the two countries will start working out details of a free trade deal.

One can expect bilateral free trade agreements between Canada and smaller Asian countries to steadily increase over the next decade. The trend will be further strengthened if the Asian Free Trade Area (AFTA) works towards unifying member states' trade relations with non-member countries. The current agreement works similarly to NAFTA wherein free trade is enjoyed within the region but each member country independently negotiates trade relations with non-members.

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The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada has an interesting feature article this week regarding Halifax's potential as a port of entry for Asian goods. Halifax is one of the few options left as the West coast doesn't seem to be able to keep up with demand for freight handling. Furthermore, Halifax is well located to handle an expected increase in Indian trade via the Suez Canal.

In related news, according to The Globe and Mail CNR and CPR are both enjoying handsome profits, largely due to increasing trade with Asia. The railways both bring in the manufactured goods that reach Canadian ports, as well as move resource based commodities to port for shipment overseas.

Posted by Ryan at 12:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

China's under 20 soccer team which was meant to participate in a Vancouver tournament has been denied entry to the country. There is still a chance they will be granted entrace before the tournament begins on July 19th. I haven' t been able to dig up the reasons given for the denial of entry.

Link: http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0600soccer/0200news/tm_objectid=17397941&method=full&siteid=50082&headline=bluebirds-facing-china-crisis-name_page.html

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The Taiwan World Trade Center opened a new office in Vancouver to help facilitate trade with the Canadian market. Vancouver's is TWTC's 44th overseas office.

Canada and Taiwan aren't huge bilateral trading partners, but between them do a good deal of business. Furthermore Vancouver is home to a significant overseas Chinese and Taiwanese population which TWTC hopes will make increasing business ties all the easier.

Link: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/detail.asp?ID=85997&GRP=B

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Ottawa is pressing China to release information about what it has done with Uigyr activist and Canadian citizen Huseyincan Celil. Celil was recently extradited from Uzbekistan to China where he may face charges, imprisonment, and execution.

I suspect a good deal of diplomacy is going on in the background in attempts to assure Celil's safety. I also suspect China will be less than responsive until they perceive progress being made towards securing fugitive Lai Changxing, who is currently being held in Vancouver.

http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-06-28T215700Z_01_N28286630_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-CHINA-COL.XML&archived=False

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A group of mainly Canadian investors has announced plans for a joint venture with the Chinese rail monopoly to build and run a super-luxury train service from Beijing to Tibet. They will of course utilize the new and highly touted 'highest railway in the world.'

The group claims their trains will be the most luxurious in the world and tickets will cost upwards of $1000 per day. It sounds very fancy indeed.

Link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060710.RTIBET10/TPStory/Business

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North Korea recently launched 6 older scud style missiles into the sea of Japan, while also test launching their new Taepodong 2 missile which is rumoured to have long range capability. International response has been unanimously displeased.

The Taepodong 2 had been sitting on the launching pad for over a week before launch, making people nervous the world over. I've been suspicious about the reasons NK waited so long to launch, and originally suspected it was because they were unsure of the Taepodong's capability. It was worth more to them as a bargaining chip when it was a relatively unknown entity sitting on the launch pad. Now that they've tried to launch one and it exploded a few seconds after take off, it takes some of the shine off of their missile program. That said, it certainly can't be discounted as a threat, especially in the hands of such an unpredictable government.

Canada's official response has been rather muted. The military of course participates in Norad which claims to have been immediately aware of all of the launches. Goverment response however, has been lacking. Other countries, especially those with significant Asian Pacific interests have sternly condemned the launches. Australia for instance, a country with which Canada has much in common, has made significant headlines with its condemnations. In the meantime Canada, which is actually within the claimed range of the Taepodong and counts Japan, China and Korea amongst its most important trading partners, has been surprisingly quiet.

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In an attempt to secure more oil supplies South Korea's Korean National Oil Corporation has purchased an oil sands mine near Coldlake Alberta. The mine is believed to hold approximately 250 million barrels of extractable oil reserves. Don't expect news like this to be rare over the next few years. Securing oil interests in the relatively close, and reassuringly stable Canadian market is attractive to most Asian countries, especially those which have a dearth of domestic resources.

Link: http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/137818.html

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