ChInese Thuggery (Shockingly) Shocks Canadians

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Sept 20

The Canadian government, through the National Research Council, paid a Chinese lab to develop a vaccine against COVID-19.  The field trials of the vaccince were to be started in Canada a couple of weeks ago, but the Chinese refused to hand over the material.  As a result, the government of Canada has paid several western firms to acquire some 76 million doses of their vaccines.  The conduct of China in this affair shocked the editors of the Hamilton Spectator, and editorialized that Canada needs to adopt a different approach to Chinese relations, a position advocated by this writer for decades.

It’s good to see the Spectator have a come-to-Jesus moment concerning Communist China, but why was it even necessary?  Isn’t the word ‘communist’ enough of a warning?

Communism gives bullies a moral excuse to bully.  Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Guevara, the Kims – which one of these was ever an honest humanist?  After the ruthlessness of the last twenty years, of the militarization of the South China Sea, of the pressure on Hong Kong, the industrial espionage which destroyed Nortel, the forced technology transfers, the games being played with agricultural exports what made you think that the Chinese communists could be trusted to deliver something important to us that was not simultaneously advantageous to them?

Jean Chretien had the Chinese communists figured out: cash and carry trade, and ignore their human rights abuses - there being nothing we could do about it.  Where the talk of a free trade agreement came from, we’ll never know what starry-eyed idealist proposed such nonsense.

China serves one useful purpose in Canada.  When China invests in Canadian resource development and exploitation, you can be sure those resources are going to get delivered to the Chinese market, whatever roadblocks leftist in Canada might throw up.  Chinese investment in Canadian resources is useful in developing the north.

Communism was, is, and always will be bad news for the world.  I don’t understand why, after Tiananmen massacre, the collapse of the Soviet Union and empire these lessons fail to penetrate.

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