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The True North Strong: Contemporary Chinese Studies in Canada*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
Extract
To a casual observer, Canada may appear to be very much like the United States, to which it is attached by a long and undefended land border. A more detailed inspection, however, indicates that Canada is different. The differences can be seen in many aspects, and have coloured the development of academic disciplines and the character of intellectual debate, including studies of China.
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References
1 Chester Ronning, who was Canada's Chargé d'Affaires in Nanjing in 1949 and later a strong advocate of Canadian recognition of the People's Republic of China, was the child of missionaries, born in Hebei. Although he grew up on the Canadian prairies, his family was of American origin. See Evans, Brian, “Ronning and recognition: years of frustration,” in Evans, Paul M. and Frolic, B. Michael (eds.), Reluctant Adversaries: Canada and The People's Republic of China, 1949–1970 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), pp. 148–167.Google Scholar
2 They included Donald E. Willmott, a Cornell-trained sociologist who taught at York University, and his younger brother William E. Willmott, an LSE-trained anthropologist who taught at the University of British Columbia. As a curious historical footnote, Donald Willmott worked for the OSS in China during the Japanese war. He was pulled off a sensitive mission because he was Canadian, rather than American. His replacement was killed on the mission. His name was John Birch!
3 See Mitchell, Peter M. “The missionary connection,” in Evans and Frolic, Reluctant Adversaries, pp. 17–40. Endicott, Stephen L., James G. Endicott: Rebel Out of China (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980)Google Scholar is an account of perhaps the most colourful and controversial of the Canadian missionaries in west China. Stephen, one of Jim Endicott's sons, taught history at York University.
4 Norman Bethune was a Canadian doctor who, as a member of the Canadian Communist Party, went to assist the Communist effort in China in early 1938. He died in late 1939 from septicaemia, the result of cutting a finger while operating without surgical gloves. Mao Zedong's eulogy on his death, “In Memory of Norman Bethune,” became one of the “four continuously read articles” of the Cultural Revolution. It gave an enormously high profile in China to Canada which was known, simply, as “The Homeland of Norman Bethune.”
5 See Evans, Paul M., John Fairbank and the American Understanding of Modern China (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988) on the “father” of modern Chinese studies in the United States, and Shambaugh, David, “Introduction,” in David, Shambaugh (ed.), American Studies of Contemporary China (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), esp. pp. 3–5.Google Scholar
6 The IPR was more than an American organization, although funding from U.S. sources was major and crucial to its overall success. Some of Canada's earliest interests in China were funded by the IPR. On the history of the IPR see Hooper, Paul F., “The Institute of Pacific Relations and the origins of Asian and Pacific studies,” Pacific Affairs, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring 1988) pp. 98–121CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Woods, Lawrence T., Asia-Pacific Diplomacy: Nongovernmental Organizations and International Relations (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1993) pp. 29–40Google Scholar; and Holland, William L., “Source materials on the Institute of Pacific Affairs: bibliographical note,” Pacific Affairs, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Spring 1985) pp. 91–97.Google Scholar
7 See Harry Harding, “The evolution of American scholarship on contemporary China,” in Shambaugh, American Studies of Contemporary China, pp. 14—40.
8 There are several perceptive summaries of the disciplinary developments for the study of contemporary China in the Shambaugh volume. Note especially Thomas B. Gold, “The study of Chinese society,” which includes reference to a number of Canadian contributions, at pp. 43–64, and Richard Madsen, “The academic China experts,” at pp. 163–175.
9 The IPR's “other” serial publication, Far Eastern Survey, migrated to California and became Asian Survey.
10 Holland was long associated with IPR, and had been R. H. Tawney's secretary in China in the late 1920s, a visit which produced Land and Labour in China. He was born in New Zealand and became an American citizen when offered a position in the OSS. He was head of the American Information Agency in Chongqing during the Second World War.
11 The British sub-committee (of the University Grants Committee) which produced the “Hayter Report” that was so crucial for the reorganization of Chinese studies in the United Kingdom, visited North America during its deliberations. It examined the situation in ten American universities and two Canadian ones – the University of British Columbia and McGill. See Brian Hook, “Sinology and the social sciences: stages in the development of the research base in Britain,” Asian Research Trends: A Humanities and Social Sciences Review 4 (1994), pp. 166–67.
12 Canada had been on the verge of recognizing the PRC in 1950 when the Korean War broke out. Thereafter, until the Pearson government in 1962, Canada generally subsumed its strategic interests under those of the United States. On the various phases after 1949, see Beecroft, Stephen, “Canadian policy towards China, 1949–57:Google Scholar the recognition problem,” in Evans and Frolic, Reluctant Adversaries, pp. 43–72; Don Page, “The representation of China in the United Nations: Canadian perspectives and initiatives, 1949–71,” in ibid. pp. 73–105; Norman St. Amour, “Sino-Canadian relations, 1963–1968,” in ibid. pp. 106–129.
14 Elizabeth Johnson and I were given access to the Pearl River delta region of Guangdong province in 1973. Conditions for fieldwork, for a variety of reasons, were far from ideal. It was, however, an access that had been impossible up to mat time. See Elizabeth, and Johnson, Graham, Walking On Two Legs: Rural Development in South China (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 1976).Google Scholar It laid the foundation for future fieldwork in the Pearl River delta region.
15 Melby, John F., The Mandate of Heaven: Record of a Civil War, 1945–49 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968)Google Scholar is his memoir as an American diplomat in China in the civil war period. He was the major author of the famous “China White Paper.”
16 Vancouver-born Paul Lin left Harvard and went to China upon the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. He worked largely in Beijing and returned to Canada in 1964. He was Director of McGill's Centre for East Asian Studies until his retirement in 1985 when, for a short time, he became the Rector of the University of East Asia, in Macao. Paul Lin's relationships to central-level political leaders in both China and Canada were critical for the discussions on the normalization of relations, and smoothed the path to academic and cultural agreements in the wake of recognition. He was publicly critical of the Chinese government's handling of events in the spring of 1989.
17 The American connection benefited Canadian studies of contemporary China is some unusual ways. Bernie Frolic was a Canadian student of Soviet politics at Cornell in the mid-1960s. He went to Moscow to conduct doctoral fieldwork, and in 1965 the London-Comell Project provided funds for him to visit China, at a time when no American could make such a trip. He has since become an important figure in the study of contemporary China in Canada. See Frolic, B. Michael, Mao's People: Sixteen Portraits of life in Revolutionary China (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press, 1980).Google Scholar The study was based on interviews conducted at the Universities Service Centre in Hong Kong, with funding from the Toronto-York Joint Centre and the Joint Committee on Contemporary China of the ACLS.
18 Saywell, a product of the University of Toronto, was president of Simon Fraser University for a decade after 1983. Although a Qing historian, he was closely associated with the study of contemporary China. He was the first academic in residence at the Canadian embassy in Beijing in the early 1970s. Canadian academics with a China competency have been seconded to Canada's embassy in Beijing since it opened, a policy for which Arthur Menzies, Canadian ambassador to China, and incidentally also a child of Canadian missionary parents in China, was largely responsible. Those who followed Saywell on secondment include Charles Burton, Claude-Yves Charron, Brian Evans, B. Michael Frolic, Ruth Hayhoe, Richard King, Diana Lary, Graeme McDonald, Peter Mitchell, Charles Leblanc, Mary Sun and Jan Walls.
19 Ezra Vogel has argued, “in most ways, Canadian China specialists have been similar to their U.S. counterparts.” “Contemporary Chinese studies in North America: marginals in a superpower,” Asian Research Trends: A Humanities and Social Sciences Review 4 (1994), p. 193. My own view is that the differences outweigh the similarities.
20 Smil, Vaclav, one of the more provocative and prolific Canadian scholars of contemporary China, made his first visit to China under one of these awards after the completion of his book The Bad Earth: Environmental Degradation in China (London: Zed Press, 1984)Google Scholar; see his subsequent Energy in China's Modernization (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1988) and China's Environmental Crisis (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993).
21 One special programme of the SSHRCC is the Canada Research Grants Fellowships, which are awarded to younger scholars and allow for lengthy periods of research and lighter teaching obligations. One was held by Judd, Ellen, now of the Department of Anthropology, University of Manitoba. It resulted in her recent Gender and Power in North China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, a field study conducted in three villages in Shandong.
22 There are no restrictions placed on either the doctoral or post-doctoral fellowships. Selections are made by a sub-committee of the East Asia Council, based strictly on merit. Research is routinely conducted within China. Canadian scholars have not been deeply involved in the study of contemporary Taiwan (but see Ho, Samuel P. S., The Economic Development of Taiwan, 1860–1970 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978).Google Scholar
23 The Hong Kong-Canada project was funded by the Dormer Foundation and administered by Diana Lary, formerly of the Department of History at York University, who has recently moved to the University of British Columbia. It publishes Canada-Hong Kong Update, a quarterly newsletter, and has held a number of conferences. Other publications from the project are: Charles, Burton (ed.), Politics and Society in Hong Kong Toward 1997 (Toronto: Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies, 1992)Google Scholar; Angus, William H. (ed.), Canada-Hong Kong: Some Legal Considerations (Toronto: Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies, 1992)Google Scholar; Burns, John P., Falkenheim, Victor and Lampton, David M., Hong Kong and China in Transition (Toronto: Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies, 1994)Google Scholar; Johannes, Chan and William, Angus (eds.), Canada-Hong Kong: Human Rights and Privacy Laws Issues (Toronto: Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies, 1994).Google Scholar
24 The Resources Centre is funded by the Hong Kong Bank of Canada.
25 Including Claude Comtois of l'Université de Montréal, who is so central to the development of francophone scholarship on contemporary China in Québec.
26 Janet Salaff of the University of Toronto is presently involved in a major migration study in Hong Kong in collaboration with Wong Siu-lun, professor of sociology at Hong Kong University. Yeung Yue-man, professor of geography at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is Canadian. He has recently edited (with Hu, Xuwei), China's Coastal Cities: Catalysts for Modernization (Honolulu: Hawaii, 1992)Google Scholar; Zhongguo chengshi yu quyu fazhan (Cities and Regional Development in China) (Shatin: Chinese University Press, 1993); and (with Chu, David K. Y.), Guangdong: Survey of a Province Undergoing Rapid Change (Shatin: Chinese University Press, 1994).Google Scholar Yeung was long associated with JDRC, before assuming bis position in Hong Kong in the late 1980s. Hong Kong origin scholars of contemporary China have also contributed to Canadian scholarship. One of the more notable is Julia Ching of the University of Toronto. See her Probing China's Soul: Religion, Politics and Protest in the People's Republic of China (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990).
27 It was administered by Ming historian Timothy Brook. See his Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). The documentation centre still exists, although it has been much reduced in scale since the early part of the 1990s.
28 The Pacific Rim accounts for almost 60% of British Columbia's trade, and 80% of the international migrants to the province are from Asia, of which substantial numbers are of Chinese origin. Alberta derives enormous benefits from its “sister” link with Heilongjiang, and potash exports to the Pacific Rim (especially China) are very important to the economy of Saskatchewan. The wheat trade to Asia (including China) is of enormous significance for all the prairie provinces.
29 The director of CETASE is Charles Leblanc, a philosopher by training, who served in the Canadian Embassy in Beijing from 1983 to 1985. Some recent publications of the CETASE faculty are: Comtois, C. et Robitaille, N., “L'economie des transports a Shanghai,” Revue d'economie regionale et urbaine, No. 3 (1994) pp. 23–40Google Scholar; Comtois, C. et Huard, G., “La bicyclette en China: elements du probleme et analyse preliminaire,” L'information geographique, Vol. 56, No. 1 (1992) pp. 20–27Google Scholar; Comtois, C. “Land-use factors in home-based trip purposes: a geographical analysis of urban transportation in Shanghai,” The Journal of Chinese Geography, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1992) pp. 17–28Google Scholar; Comtois, C., “Transport and territorial development in China, 1949–1985,” Modem Asian Studies, Vol. 24, No. 4 (1990) pp. 777–818CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Comtois, C., “The Canadian foreland of Chinese ports,” Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2 (1990) pp. 167–187Google Scholar; Foggin, P., “China's cities since economic reform,” Urban Planning Sciences Information, No. 139 (1993) pp. 1–12Google Scholar; Lamontagne, J., Disparités de I'education en Chine (Montréal: Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 1993)Google Scholar; Leblanc, C., “La modernisation de la Chine dans la miroir de l'histoire: continuités et ruptures,” Memoires de la Societé Royale du Canada, No. 1 (1990) pp. 117–125.Google Scholar
30 A major one was entitled “Optimisation des transports et utilisation fonctionelle du sol a Shanghai.” It has resulted in the training of a substantial number of graduate students and an impressive number of published papers.
31 See Tillman, George, The International Development Research Centre: A Guide for the Canadian University Research Community (Ottawa: AUCC, 1993).Google Scholar
32 The others have dealt with agriculture, energy, forestry, transportation and telecommunications.
33 See Singer, Martin, Canadian Academic Relations with People's Republic of China Since 1970, Volume 1: Findings and Recommendations; Volume 2:China Profiles of Canadian Universities/Supplementary Materials (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 1986). The CIDA programmes are detailed at Vol. 1, pp. 52–56.Google Scholar
34 Its current president and CEO is William Saywell, who assumed the position after he stepped down from the presidency of Simon Fraser University.
35 Its correspondent from 1988 until 1994 was Jan Wong, one of the first Canadian students to study in China in the early 1970s. Canadian journalists' treatments of China can be judged from Taylor, Charles, Reporter in Red China (New York: Random House, 1966)Google Scholar, one of the early bureau chiefs, and Fraser, John, The Chinese: Portrait of a People (New York: Summit Books, 1980),Google Scholar which contains his observations on Beijing's “Democracy Wall” in the 1978–79 period. See also Nadeau, Jules, 20 millions de Chinois “Made in Taiwan” (Montréal: Québec/Amerique, 1989)Google Scholar and his Hong Kong 1997: dans la geule du Dragon Rouge (Montréal: Québec/Amerique, 1990). An early journalistic account is Hebert, J. and Trudeau, P. E., Two Innocents in Red China (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1968).Google Scholar Trudeau was Canadian Prime Minister for much of the period from 1968 until 1984. The National Film Board has shot a number of documentaries in China, and most recently the documentary unit of the government-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation made a full length documentary on the transformation in south China entitled Red Capitalism.
36 A CIDA project on Chinese higher education has been administered by Ruth Hayhoe at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. See her Chinese Universities and the Open Door (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1989). Jan Walls is Director of the David See-chai Lam Centre for International Communication at Simon Fraser University which, with funding from the Pacific 2000 programme of the Department of Foreign Affairs, runs a wide ranging interdisciplinary programme on international, intercultural and interlingual communication. It attempts to integrate university, government, professional and business resources for education, training, research and development activities. China is an important focus of its work. This goal is shared, in a francophone environment, by CETASE at l'Université de Montréal, which runs the Centre a Montréal pour les Echange avec la Chine (CAMEC). CETASE also has Pacific 2000 funding. At the University of British Columbia there is a distinctive programme in Asian law, including the study of legal culture in Chinese contexts, the director of which is Pitman Potter. See his Domestic Law Reforms in Post-Mao China (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993).
37 Samuel P. Ho of the University of British Columbia has recently completed a major IDRC project with fellow economists in Jiangsu. See Ho, Samuel P. S., Rural China in Transition: Non-Agricultural Development in Rural Jiangsu, 1978–1990 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994)Google Scholar; the Department of Communications at Simon Eraser University also directs an IDRC-funded project on co-operatives in Lijiang, Yunnan, in collaboration with the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences.
38 In May 1994 an agreement was signed between the University of British Columbia, the University of Toronto, McGill and l'Université de Montréal, and Beijing University, Qinghua University and Nankai University for collaboration in seven areas of research: mathematical sciences, biotechnology, law, business, economics, environmental management and cross-cultural communications. The first initiative has been to establish the Internet capacity among researchers and students at the seven universities, The Canada-China link, dubbed C-CNet, was inaugurated in November 1994, when the Canadian Prime Minister visited Beijing University as part of his official programme in China. These initiatives are not limited to the universities. The Conference Board of Canada, a non-profit, privately-funded institution dedicated to enhancing the competitiveness of Canadian business organizations within the global economy, has a Canada-China Applied Economic Research Institutes Linkage programme (AERIL). The programme has major funding from CIDA for several projects: China and the GATT; Sino-North American trade; reforming China's financial sector; strengthening the trade and investment databases for Sino-Canadian economic relations; utilization of foreign investment and technology in Jiangsu; technology transfer in Shanghai; business links between Canada and Guangdong; tax reform in China; gender equality in employment; regional development; the legal and economic conditions for innovation in the Chinese economy.
39 One American recruit to the University of British Columbia in the 1960s was Edgar B. Wickberg, who had written on Overseas Chinese in the Philippines. He has interests in the study of Taiwan and in the 1970s worked on a major study of Chinese-Canadian History. See Wickberg, E. B. (ed.), From China to Canada: A History of the Chinese Communities in Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982).Google Scholar His interests on the links between emigrant Chinese and their home areas continue. It is an aspect of the work of some other Canadian scholars. See, for example, that of Woon Yuen-fong of the University of Victoria. Her “Social change and continuity in South China: Overseas Chinese and the Kuan lineage of Kaiping county, 1949–1987,” The China Quarterly, No. 118 (June 1989), pp. 324–344, and “From Mao to Deng: life satisfaction among rural women in an emigrant community in South China,” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, No. 25 (January 1991), pp. 139–169, are representative.
40 See my “Hong Kong migration and the Chinese community of Vancouver,” in R., Skeldon (ed.), Reluctant Exiles? Migration from Hong Kong and the New Overseas Chinese (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994) pp. 120–138.Google Scholar