The New Bipolarity: Where Does Canada Fit Into US-China Rivalry

 Yesterday, one of our two Undergraduate Excellence Scholars, Safia Hafid, led a one-day conference on the changing realities in Asia-Pacific.  She applied for and received a Young MINDS grant which enabled her to bring together seven speakers from a variety of perspectives and backgrounds.  Our CDSN team helped her along the way, but this was her show and she performed wonderfully.  She not only found seven great speakers, but she did a great job of introducing the day, placing the larger question into context, managing the speakers, and moderating the question and answer sessions.  The day flowed smoothly, and I learned a great deal.  I live tweeted the afternoon so you can check out the thread here.  I will summarize some of the major points below (I will post Safia's report once she completes it).  You can watch it in English or French.

Panel 1.
Elizabeth Larus of U of Mary Washington led off by asserting that the US has not declined so much and China has probably peaked.  There was a far amount of consensus on the latter point.  I had heard the "China is going to get old before it gets rich" argument, but hadn't realized how bad their clean water problem is.
Rob Murray of McDonald-Laurier Institute discussed how Canada had spent much effort to develop a somewhat independent path from the US during the Cold War but largely stopped doing so in the US's unipolar moment.  He joined the chorus of folks seeking a strategic foreign policy review... which is not going to happen.
Thomas Christensen of Columbia University argued that the US is still far more powerful than China, but that the key flashpoints are far closer to China, mitigating some American advantages.  With the possibility of a blockade by China's navy and air force, Taiwan has to get what it needs before the fighting starts as resupply is going to be really hard.
In the Q&A, Larus explained why covid is such a threat to Xi: Xi has put much of his rep on zero covid. They vaccinated their young, not their elderly, their shots may not be as good, not as much health infrastructure, so risks of massive waves of deaths if covid breaks out. Christensen had one of the best lines of the day when talking about some far right American voices demanding MOAR: "you can't deter a war by starting one, \"referring to Pompeo's and Bolton's stances who would "love Taiwan to death."

Panel 2.
David Welch of U of Waterloo presented on China's tactics in its various territorial and maritime disputes (NPSIA has a PhD student working on this topic).  One of his most interesting findings is that China seems to be obeying the ruling about South China Seas non-islands.  We just can't say it aloud much.  He reinforced the consensus that Taiwan's term-limited president, Tsai Ing-wen, is handling this all very, very well.
Next was Lynette Ong of U of Toronto.  She argued that Xi Jinping's use of nationalism is now biting him as he is now constrained by ultranationalist forces.  She discussed the pattern of centralization and repression that is going to be challenging to ride.

Panel 3.
Stephanie Carvin, my colleague at NPSIA, discussed the absence of Canada in DC--a short flight but apparently not taken all that often, whereas the Aussies are everywhere.  We need a strategic foreign policy review (yep, she said it, too), more specifics and less vague statements, and a tech policy that is more than Huawei/notHuawei.
Last but not least was journalist Don Newman, who pointed out that the de facto ban on Huawei is less than clear to our allies.  He argued that AUKUS should not be Canada's focus but NORAD modernization. 
For the q&a, I asked whether Canada has ever been a rule maker and not a rule taker.  I was thinking in hard security, but Steph pushed peacekeeping (a long time ago), R2P (um, did that ever lead to anything), and land mine ban (which did).  In response to a question, Don argued that Canadian foreign policy got paralyzed by the two Michaels.  But I wonder if this government would have done anything on foreign policy anyhow--another consensus--this govt does not care about foreign policy.

I learned a lot, and I didn't have to do anything as Safia did all of the heavy lifting with some help from the CDSN staff.  We have another Young MINDS-sponsored event next week, organized by our other 2021-2022 Undergraduate Excellence Scholar--Alexander Rizkallah.  It will be a wildly ambitious hackathon with day one at NDHQ (Carling campus) and day two at Carleton.  

I hope y'all can join us on hackathon pitch day!