November 27, 1996 - The Globe and Mail

WE read the other day that the Disney Co. is running into resistance with its plans to expand in China. It isn't that the Chinese are less eager to see Mickey Mouse and Cinderella than the rest of the world, or that they won't buy the merchandise or visit the theme parks. No, Disney's problem doing business in China isn't financial. It is political.

The Chinese don't like Disney making a movie about the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of Tibet, and so are threatening to close their huge market to Disney. The Chinese haven't seen the movie about the Dalai Lama, but a senior official declares that the very idea is repugnant to them. The Chinese are sensitive about Tibet, where they have crushed all opposition. The official said the film is "intended to glorify the Dalai Lama, so it is an interference in China's internal affairs."

An interference in China's internal affairs.We thought of that when we learned of the warm reception accorded Jean Chretien when he dropped into Shanghai on Monday. Mr. Chretien has become something of a favourite of the Chinese Premier Li Peng reportedly likes his folksiness and his personal relationship is said to be creating opportunity for Canada in China.

But the real reason Mr. Chretien and Canada are in favour in China is because we no longer criticize it. The Prime Minister declared early in his mandate that he would separate human rights and foreign policy. We abandoned the high ground, and the Chinese cheered. Mr. Chretien said it would be presumptuous for a country of 28 million to tell a country of 1.2 billion to behave itself. "I'm not allowed to tell the premier of Saskatchewan what to do," he shrugged. "Am I supposed to tell the premier of China what to do?"

At the same time, though, Mr. Chretien makes two points. First, we advance the cause for change in China more effectively through quiet diplomacy, putting our case for reform in private. Second, it is by trading with China, not by threatening it, that we sow the seeds of liberalization.

The weakness with both arguments is that we cannot verify the first because diplomacy is confidential; we don't know if Mr. Chretien ever raises individual cases and if the Chinese act on them. As for the second, it will take years to know if economic and social contact changes China. The most powerful argument for placing commerce over conscience is, as Mr. Chretien says, that China is too big to ignore. We cannot isolate it.

But for those who really do believe that trade brings democracy and pluralism, China's response to Disney -not to mention so many other noxious acts of the regime - is a sobering counterweight. China countenances no opposition, no matter how subtle. When a government tells a foreign company that it must accept its version of history or leave, it shows how far it has to go on the road to liberalization, whatever the excited pitchmen at the Chamber of Commerce say.

When a country continues to jail dissidents seven years after it murdered thousands of them, when it insists on shackling the press, when it continues to threaten Taiwan, it raises doubts about any commitment to democracy.

Mr. Chretien and his self-interested investors may well be right in saying that China will eventually become an open, pluralist democracy, but the world has been courting China aggressively for more than a decade, and China remains stubbornly authoritarian. When the Chinese begin dismantling the fledgling democracy in Hong Kong next year, as they threaten to do, Mr. Chretien's faith will face its greatest test.