21 May 2022, NIICE Commentary 7918
Tridivesh Singh Maini
Canada was one of the only members of the Five Eye Alliance (which consists of US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) to not have banned Huawei from its 5G network for long. On 19 May 2022, it announced that wireless carriers in the country will not be permitted to install Huawei equipment in their 5g networks. Canada’s Industry Minister, François-Philippe Champagne stated, “We are announcing our intention to prohibit the inclusion of Huawei and ZTE products and services in Canada’s telecommunications systems’.
Recently, the US has been urging its allies to not use Chinese technologies as these could be misused by Beijing. US had warned its allies, including the UK that in case they did not impose a ban on Huawei, the US would be compelled to stop sharing sensitive intelligence related information. Like other western countries, Canada’s ties with China have also witnessed a steady deterioration in recent years. In 2018, few days after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ Chief Financial Officer and the daughter of the company’s founder, based on a U.S. extradition request, Beijing jailed two Canadians (Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig) on charges of espionage. The two Canadians were sent back to Canada in September 2021 and Meng returned to China after a deal between US and Chinese prosecutors on the same day.
Canada’s ban on Huawei and ZTE from its 5G network highlights a number of points. First, the ties between US allies (especially UK, Australia and Canada) and China have clearly gone downhill. While earlier UK, Australia and Canada could afford to think in terms of balancing relations between China and US it is becoming much tougher to do so now. US and its allies have been able to build consensus not just on banning Huawei from 5G networks, but also a number of other issues; such as an inquiry into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and , comprehending the and the serious implications of the Hong Kong Security Law (passed in June 2020 by China). The Security law has 66 articles which seeks to curtail protests.
The downward slope in ties between China and the US as well as the latter’s allies impacts not just trade and investment linkages but ties in other spheres too, such as people to people linkages and education. which are likely to get impacted. If the enrolment of Chinese students is taken into consideration, in UK the enrolment of Chinese students in the UK still remains high (in 2021, 32 percent of the total international student community was from China). In the case of Australia on the other hand, February 2022 was witness to a 40 percent dip in enrolment of Chinese students from February 2019 (Australia for long has been amongst the preferred destinations for Chinese students). In 2019, Chinese students in Australia accounted for 37 percent of the total international student community wherein the international education sector had contributed AUD 40 billion to Australia’s economy.
Australia’s insistence on an inquiry into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, led China to introduced an 80 percent tariff on Australian barley, and additional tariffs and restrictions to other Australian products, including iron ore, coal, lobster, wine, and timber. In April 2021, then Chinese Ambassador to Australia iterated said that tourism and education sectors would suffer if Canberra did not change its aggressive approach towards vis-à-vis Beijing on the COVID-19 issue. China had also issued repeated warnings to its students in Australia after racist attacks in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier this year US, UK and Canada also announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics to protest against Beijing’s human rights record in the Uighur Muslim majority province of Xinjiang as well as Hong Kong. India had also announced a diplomatic boycott of the games after a PLA (People’s Liberation Army) soldier who had was involved in the Galwan valley clash in 2020 was appointed as a torchbearer for the Winter Olympics event.
In fact, there is a broad political consensus in the US, UK, Australia and Canada with regard to China on some of the issues discussed above. The US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat in an address at Munich Security Conference urged other countries, especially US allies to stop doing business with Huawei. Pelosi stated, ‘If you want to build a collective conscience of values and respect for human rights and the rest, don’t go near Huawei and instead, let’s internationalize and build something together that will be about freedom of information.’ Even politicians who by no means are centrists – such as US Senator Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn (former head of UK’s Labour Party) have been equally scathing in their criticism of China due to violation of Human Rights.
Canadian PM, Justin Trudeau, who has strong liberal credentials, in a statement issued before the opening of Beijing winter Olympics expressed his concern with regard to human rights violations in China, including the persecution of Uyghurs. Earlier in 2020, Trudeau had announced said that Canada would work with ‘…like-minded nations around the world, to impress upon China that its approach to internal affairs and global affairs is not on a particularly productive path for itself or for all of us’.
In the case of Australia, which went to the polls, on 21 May 2022 (which the Labor Party won) there seems to be a strong consensus with regard to its China policy. While the outgoing PM and leader of the Liberal Party Scott Morrison has taken a strong stance with respect to vis-à-vis China much to the chagrin of certain Australian businesses, PM elect and head of the Labor Party, Anthony Albanese has repeatedly said that his approach onvis-à-vis China would not be fundamentally different from that of Morrison and that the QUAD security grouping (consisting of US, Japan, India and Australia) would be an important pillar of his foreign policy.
In conclusion, ties between the US allies and China are unlikely to witness any improvement at least in the near future. Ties between the US and its traditional allies vis-a-vis UK, Canada and Australia and China can no longer be viewed from simplistic binaries of left/right, liberal/conservative etc. There is a growing convergence amongst these countries on the need to reset ties with China. For long, businesses and commentators in the US and other countries mentioned above believed that the economy and soft power linkages could be de-hyphenated from political differences with China but that is passe in the current geopolitical and economic landscape.
Tridivesh Singh Maini is a New Delhi based Policy Analyst associated with The Jindal School of International Affairs, OP Jindal Global University, India.
