In the spring of 2008 an academic colleague bemoaned to me the absence of materials on Canada-China relations that she could use in her teaching. There were a handful of books on the history of the relationship, occasional academic essays and think tank reports (mainly by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada), and a steady flow of media and other punditry, but dry the desert was.
What a change in five years. Academic books, mainly in the form of edited collections, are flowing: we have memoirs by Canadians, including Paul Lin and Brian Evans, on the front line of Sino-Canadian relations; virtually every major think tank across the country (the Canadian International Council, the Canada West Foundation, the Conference Board of Canada, the Fraser Institute, to name just a few) has published one or more reports focused on China’s rise and its implications for Canada with a heavy concentration on economics and trade. Opinion pieces about China and Canada-China...
Paul Evans is a professor of Asian and trans-Pacific international relations at the University of British Columbia. His first book was a biography of John Fairbank; his most recent, Engaging China: Myth, Aspiration and Strategy in Canadian Policy from Trudeau to Harper, was published by the University of Toronto Press last year.
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