三、發表論文全文或摘要

Cooperation: A Case of Canada-China Relations），連同主持、評論、

發表人共有加拿大、英國、日本、美國等地約 16 位學者共同參與，

熱烈討論場面並不因上午第一場次而略有遜色。所發表兩篇論文結束後，束裝於 6 月 6 日上午搭機返國，台北時間 6 月 7 日晚間順利飛抵國門。

二、與會心得

綜觀本次與會經驗，成果可謂十分豐碩。本人除執行科技部計畫部分研究成果呈現於 6 月 4 日議程的論文發表外，由於另外一篇論文題綱申請也獲通過，故一併予以執行，因而是近年參加國際會議首度同時發表兩篇論文的創舉，最後也順利圓滿完成任務，可說是個人空前難得的經驗與成果。另外，個人主要參與的兩個場次，除了少數來自東亞地區的參與者，更有不少來自西方國家、不同國籍學者針對眾多論文及研究所共同關切的「加拿大外交政策及國關學者與實踐者關係」議題上有腦力激盪，也針對其他議題範疇展開類似專家參與知識社群的相互切磋，發言也相當貼切熱烈；就此而言，相較於本人往年參加國際研究學會主辦研討會的經驗，這次的收穫更為不同凡響。

English School and Sustainable Cooperation: Canada-China relations as a Case*

Paper delivered at 2015 Canadian Political Science Association Annual Conference

Ottawa, Canada

By Der-yuan Maxwell Wu Associate Research Fellow, Institute of International Relations

National Chengchi University E-mail: [email protected]

* This draft paper is subject to further revision. Please do not cite without permission from the author. Nevertheless, any comment and suggestion are welcome.

English School and Sustainable Cooperation: Canada-China relations as a Case

I. Introduction:

Bilateralism, compared to multilateralism, in International Relations theoretical or empirical practice received not much attention. Much of IR theories such as Realism, Liberalism and Constructivism were often referred to in the context of multilateralism. English School was no exception to this tendency. It was seldom applied to bilateral relations.

In a sort of parallel, “cooperation” tended to be less problematized than “conflict”

in IR, although both were often put together in texts to suggest the adoption of a comprehensive and balanced approach. Moreover, where cooperation was the research focus, it tended to be linked more with multilateralism than bilateralism.

Further, existing bilateral relations literature, much of which adopted a primarily descriptive mode of approach, was often criticized for inadequate theoretical relevance.

In this context, this paper aims to bring bilateral cooperation back for attention in IR. The paper will argue that English School, in terms of conceptualizing three traditions of international system, international society and world society as well as pluralism vs solidarism, provides some important insights for the development of bilateral relations and the extent to which the state of cooperation may become sustainable. As will be demonstrated subsequently, Canada-China relations that was often characterized with more cooperation than conflict could be

considerably recast along the line of English School.

Canada and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations in the coming October.

The bilateral ties have been re-strengthened to a sort of “strategic partnership”

and with frequent ministerial visits since 2009, despite previously strained relationship. In characterizing Canadian foreign policy towards the PRC, prominent Canadian scholars often invoked the term of “engagement policy” to navigate through the development of Canada-PRC relations. (eg. Evans 2014) Nevertheless, the Canadian way to engage China with a longstanding aim to foster a condition for its re-entry into international community remained largely under-explored in Canadian Foreign Policy and under-appreciated by outside world.

Canada was unique and instrumental in helping bring China back in international society process for at least three reasons. First of all, Canada is one of the few western countries that have firm belief in the merit of engagement approach and has put it into practice fairly consistently. In the heyday of the Cold War in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the story for Canada-China being “reluctant adversaries” (Evans and Frolic 1991) could be partially traced to the Canadian policy preference for the approach vis-à-vis the American way of containment.

Second, unlike Great Britain that advocated similar engagement approach but recognized the PRC much earlier in the 1950 with lingering diplomatic squabbles with it, Canada had never been a colonial power and had not subjugated China.

Third, Ottawa adopted an innovative “Canadian formula” to normalize

relationship with Beijing on October 13, 1970, which had circumvented much diplomatic log-jam, thanks to Taiwan issue, at the time and were followed by many other countries that intended to recognize the PRC.

In the wake of Beijing’s growing assertiveness in ir as well as IR circles, it is timely to re-examine China’s relations with outside world and Canada’s role in it in terms of the relevance of western perspectives. Specifically, the major research question is: in what ways elements of English School could be identified in the case of Canada-PRC relations? In what conceptual way the bilateral cooperation could be sustainable? It would be argued that English School thinkers such as C.

A. W. Manning, Alan James and Adam Watson provides some insightful

conceptualization of pragmatic-needs- as well as norm-based cooperation, which also made the Perspective a distinct candidate to reconcile not only the

longstanding “interest vs ideas” debates but also to bridge the gap between academic and practitioners’ worlds, as highlighted in CPSA-ISA Canada section.

The paper draws much from archival sources in the Library and Archives Canada.

The paper focuses on Canadian perspective of Canada-China relations. It is also hoped that this approach would help bridge the gap between academic and practitioners’ world, given archival materials contains abundant accounts of policy practitioners.

II. English School Perspective: Then and Beyond?

The concept of “international society” becomes a landmark of English School.

Hedley Bull define it concisely: “a society of states exists when a group of states, conscious of certain common interests and common values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions.”

(Bull 2012: 13) In the elaboration of “international society”, it was often juxtaposed with “international system” and “world society”. They all together stem from Martin Wight’s “three traditions” of IR theory: realism, rationalism and revolutionism. Three thinkers are identified with the primary founders of

“international system”, “international society” and “world society”: Hobbes, Grotius and Kant, respectively. (Wight 1991) Each envisioned with emphases on different facets of world affairs. In brief, “international system” highlighted the feature of a struggle for power and ensuing conflicts among sovereign states and an anarchical environment where they pursued their policy goals with

self-interests. “International society” emphasized the institutionalization of mutual interest and understandings, in the form of shared norms, rules and institutions among states. “World society” takes individuals, voluntary

associations and human beings as a whole as the building blocks of world order and justice. (Buzan 2004: 7-9)

In many ways, the aim of English School is to elaborate the theory of international politics which arguably involves all speculation at anytime and anywhere on the international spectrum. (Dunne 1998) As such, international society perspective was often pursued without much reference to the foreign policies of its individual members, and insofar as structure-agent relations are concerned, tended to be more structure-oriented. Although English School and the three concepts were developed in this context, they are not irrelevant to agent-oriented foreign policy analysis and bilateral relations. The triads of the concepts could be re-deployed in a way pertinent for foreign policy analysis, not only in general sense but also in narrower sense of responsibility drivers. (Harle 2006; Jackson 2000: 169-78) In many ways, the three concepts could be viewed as environment or medium within or through which foreign policy was

formulated.

Within the idea of international society, particularly in the context of debates about value priorities of order and justice, human rights and (non-)intervention, a spectrum could be conceived with pluralist-oriented and solidarist-oriented posed towards either endpoint. Pluralism represents the disposition towards a

state-centric arrangements where co-existence and non-interference of sovereign

states serve to maintain inter-state status quo. By contrast, solidarism envisions an alternative arrangements that could transcend the preoccupation with

coexistence and nonintervention and move further to be more concerned with global “justice” than with interstate “order” maintenance.

In English School, cooperation is often attributed to the effect of norm which derived primarily from cultural commonality among members of international society. Aside from common culture as a major basis for cooperation, “pragmatic needs” were an important motive for sovereign states, even without overarching culture in play, to subject voluntarily themselves to some institutions of

international society. (Linklater and Suganami 2006: 26-27) As one form of the institutions, international law, though not necessarily backed with sanctioning power or compulsory jurisdiction from world bodies, could still be indispensable, or as C.A. W. Manning put it, “a situationally generated pragmatic inevitability”, (quoted from Linklater and Suganami 2006: 27) even for those latecomer states that did not participate in its earlier development. In this regard, Hedley Bull and Adam Watson went even further to suggest that the states of Asia and Africa perceived strong interests in accepting the rules and institutions of international society because they could not do without them even in their relations with one another. (Bull and Watson 1984: 433-34)

In elaborating the existence of various international societies, English School scholars often traced its development to the historical genesis of the Westphalia system in the first half of the 17th century. Throughout the 20th century, the contemporary European-originated international society was expanded globally.

With new actors were drawn into the society, how to socialize those new members and make them comply with rules, norms or institutions involved became of increasing concerns and English School was relatively weak in

providing much detailed account. Arguably, to make the new members tie deeply and firmly into international society is to try to foster the condition in which they are embedded in the international society. As such, the notion of “embeddedness”

could be introduced to help address the inadequacy of English School in the relationship between latecomers members and international society. Similarly, the extent to which cooperation is sustainable could also be made reference to the degree of embeddedness condition that could be created.

Embeddedness was genetically conceptualized by Karl Polanyi in stressing the way in which economic life is socially situated and market did not really function

in a vacuum. Mark Granovetter went further to stress the role of personal

relationship and structures (or networks) of such social relations in building trust.

(Granovetter 1992: 60) The concept of embeddedness was elaborated and expanded further, by Sharon Zukin and Paul DiMaggio, into four aspects:

cognitive, cultural, structural and political embeddedness. Cognitive

embeddedness refers to “the ways in which the structured regularities of mental processes limit the exercise of economic reasoning,” whereas cultural

embeddedness stresses “the role of shared collective understandings in shaping economic strategies and goals.” (Zukin and DiMaggio 1990: 15-17) Besides, structural embeddedness which considerably correspond with what Granovetter highlighted pointed to “the contextualization of economic exchange in patterns of ongoing interpersonal relations,” political embeddedness emphasized “the

manner in which economic institutions and decisions are shaped by a struggle for power that involves economic actors and nonmarket institutions, particularly the state and social class.” (Zukin and DiMaggio 1990: 18, 20)

The four aspects of embeddedness could be insightful for highlighting some important features of Sino-Canadian relations and point to the extent to which the bilateral cooperation involved can become sustainable. Before tackling this part of linkage between English School, embeddedness and the case, I shall briefly outline the development of Canada-PRC relations.

III. Canada, China and the Development of Bilateral Relations till the 1990s From the genetic English School perspective, both Canada and the PRC

constituted “new” members of international society in the sense that neither states had participated in the formation of international society in the European setting in the 17th and 18th centuries. Notwithstanding latecomer status of both countries, there existed some difference in membership between Canada and the PRC at the time. They could be further differentiated as “quasi-” and “alien-“ members of that society in view of some cultural divide between them. Since Canada was composed of two founding nations, English and French, in its embryo formation, and used to be a British dominion, in many ways it was already immersed in the western-orchestrated international society. To the extent that Canadian foreign policy in post-World War II was characterized with Pearsonian internationalism aspiring to uphold international norms and to advocate responsibility that a “good international citizen” is supposed to fulfil and commit, Canada could arguably be

treated as a “spokesperson” of international society. By contrast, China was a

“semi-colony” in the 19th century, in Sun Yat-sen’s word, in facing up the expansion of western civilization, the encounter of which involved series of traumatic experiences, or “Humiliation of Hundred Years”. (Unschuld 2013:

35-96) More importantly, Mao’s China came into the world stage with a “Chinese characteristics” of Marxist-Leninist ideology and deep suspicion against the West, which reinforced its longstanding anti-imperialist mentality. Nevertheless,

Canada has long adopted an engagement policy toward the PRC well ahead of the outside world, which arguably constitutes a distinctive feature of the bilateral relationships. (Evans 2008; 2014: xiv) With the ideological and cultural divergence between the two countries as well as a distinctive Canadian

engagement policy, Canada-PRC relationships constitute a worthy subject from English School’s perspective.

Canada was on the brink of recognizing the PRC before the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950. (Beecroft 1991: 49-52; Ronning 1974: 171-5) The historical contingency of the Korean War, Taiwan Strait crisis in the 1950s and the Canadian-American relations made the plan on hold for nearly two decades.

Before eventual diplomatic normalization in 1970, Canadian preference for engagement approach vis-à-vis American containment policy was already unfolded. The sort of longstanding engagement policy with Canadian

characteristics involves “the aspiration to create a constructive relationship with another state with the intent to alter its behavior and character.” (Evans 2014: 12) In the context of Mao’s China, this was meant to deal with the dangerous outliers and helped them “learn their way into international society.” (Evans 2014: 13) Nevertheless, during the Korean War and Taiwan Strait Crises in the 1950s, the Liberal government was cautious in taking initiatives to approach Beijing. Then, in the policy review of 1958, the Diefenbaker government decided to adopt an incremental approach, as some European countries and Japan began to move in that direction, by expanding trade contacts with the mainland while maintaining diplomatic recognition of Taipei. (Beecroft 1991:65-67) Among the contacts, the wheat sales to Beijing were most noted. The first transaction was made in 1958 and another larger-scale deal was further struck in 1960-61. (Evans 2014: 21;

Kyba 1991: 168-72) This bridge-opening move set the stage for expanding non-political exchanges with Beijing under the new atmosphere.

As the Liberals returned to office afterwards, the Canadian policy toward China began unfolded in a two-pillar approach. A major decision was taken to expand

non-governmental contacts with Communist China, which was notably

manifested in a program of exchanging correspondents between the Globe and Mail and New China (Xinhua) News Agency. Besides, policy proposals were made to resolve an institutional impasse on China’s representation within the UN framework. (DEA file B, 1, 8874: Briefing Notes Dec.23/63) The new

“progressive attitude” for an explicit engagement approach is demonstrated by Paul Martin’s call for “broadening contacts at a variety levels…to penetrate the curtain of ignorance and blunt the edge of ideological differences.” (quoted from Beecroft 1991: 68; Evans 2014: 22)

Other than that, there were exchange programs set up in pre-recognition period.

For example, the Norman Bethune Medical Exchange was launched between the Chinese medical institute in Beijing and McGill University, the only North American university to have an academic exchange with the PRC at the time.

(Lin 2011: 147)

After having negotiated in Stockholm for 18 months, Canada established

diplomatic relations with the PRC, on October 13, 1970, through the adoption of

“Canadian formula” by which Canada recognized the PRC as the sole legal government of China while taking note of the Chinese position on the

inalienability of Taiwan within Chinese territory. (Wu 2001; 2005) One year later, the PRC was admitted to the UN system. At the time, it not only broke the ice for members of international community to embrace the PRC, but also set the stage for post-recognition exchanges and cooperation. In the 1970s, overall, these exchanges and cooperation were primarily undertaken in trade, consular, cultural and educational realms as well as several ministerial visits. Major

environment-related cooperation was not really initiated until the early 1980s when the government decided to designate the PRC as an eligible recipient of development aid.

Marcel Masse, the president of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), announced in 1980 that Canada’s goal in China should be “the

multiplication of contacts at the thinking level.” CIDA funding in various projects served as a catalyst for bilateral cooperation and capacity-building that met Chinese needs for international training and the acquisition of management and technical skills which significantly grew out of Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door policies. Initially, four sectors of concentration were identified for bilateral cooperation: human resources and management training; agriculture; forestry;

energy. Later on, transportation and telecommunications were added into the list of cooperation activities. As a result, Canadian universities, community colleges became key players. Local entities such as towns, cities and provinces entered into twinning relationships with Chinese counterparts. Various non-government actors in sports, arts and performance engaged in incessant exchanges across the Pacific. (Evans 2014: 31; Wilson 2001)

Bilateral exchanges persisted into most of Mulroney’s years, albeit with

preoccupations more with trade and investment than human rights. This priority was laid down evidently in the China Strategy of 1987. (Frolic 2011)

Nevertheless, the shocking occurrence of the Tiananmen incident of 1989 brought about transitional setbacks in bilateral cooperation. CIDA-funded development cooperation projects as well as several consultations were suspended. (DEA file C, 23, 12612; Evans 2014: 39-40) Nevertheless, Ottawa fell short of imposing

general sanctions and terminating completely the aid program. Engagement continued for fear of unwittingly pushing China toward isolation, albeit in a limited and low-key way. High-level visits resumed in 1991. In the meantime, as another tool of engagement, Radio Canada International, while negotiating

various exchanges programs with Chinese local services and reaching agreements on sharing transmitters, inaugurated on Oct. 1, 1989 its daily broadcasts in

Mandarin, much ahead of original plan of April 1990. (DEA file D, 1, 21043:

BFE memo to BKR Jul.24/87; PEK tel to Ott Feb. 15/89; Ott tel to PEK Oct.4/89)

Later on, as bilateral relations resumed gradually, CIDA launched another round of bilateral cooperation. It was formulated through Interim Canadian

Development Strategy for China in November 1991. It pursued three new

programming opportunities: strategic energy planning, applied economic research institute linkages, and CIDA’s major role in establishing the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED). (Wilson 2001) The CCICED project, initially was thought to be transitory when it was launched in April 1992, turned out to be institutionalized as China’s advanced policy consulting institute on environment and development and have functioned as one of the landmarks for Sino-Canadian environmental cooperation for more than two decades.

Overall, nevertheless, the eruption of the Tiananmen incident and Chinese official responses afterwards suggested that the PRC remained adamant in its position on

the primary importance of social stability and order the definition of which fell firmly in the hands of the Communist Party and that the state’s views on

individual political and civic rights continued to diverge significantly from those of the West. Canada-China official relations and cooperation projects gradually returned to normal transactions, while public disquiet about China, mainly from some corner of civil society, began to revolve around three themes: human rights, democratic development and good governance. Policy debates then focused on

在文檔中國際合作的意義空間協商及其溢出效果：以中加關係為例 (頁 47-69)

三、發表論文全文或摘要

Cooperation: A Case of Canada-China Relations） ，連同主持、評論、

發表人共有加拿大、英國、日本、美國等地約 16 位學者共同參與，

熱烈討論場面並不因上午第一場次而略有遜色。所發表兩篇論文 結束後，束裝於 6 月 6 日上午搭機返國，台北時間 6 月 7 日晚間 順利飛抵國門。

二、與會心得