“Treason, according to Talleyrand, is a question of date. It was entirely appropriate to be a proud monarchist until July 14, 1789. But from the 15th, this belief, unless changed immediately, made you a traitor to the Republic. Your head became at risk of suddenly moving away from your shoulders.
This question is also central to the definition of useful idiots. The expression is attributed to Lenin, who spoke more precisely thus of the “imbeciles” who “help” the Soviets out of sheer stupidity. The expression was used by the former Canadian ambassador to China, Guy Saint-Jacques, in the place of Alexandre Trudeau. He confessed in his book A Barbarian in New China, published in 2016 and republished in 2020, having at times defended the Chinese Communist Party against its critics, including democracy-loving Chinese. For example, he pushes the artist and dissident Ai Weiwei “to moderate his criticism of Chinese realities and to consider results rather than principles”. Weiwei, imprisoned for 80 days for having contradicted the Communist Party and has since taken refuge abroad, must have appreciated.
During his appearance on Wednesday before the parliamentary committee investigating Chinese influence, the Prime Minister’s brother denied being an idiot, but admitted that he wanted to be useful. He insisted a lot on the dates to justify his benevolent posture towards China. The timing of the famous $140,000 donation to the Trudeau Foundation covers a pivotal period in relations between the West and China, which goes from 2013, for the first meeting between Alexandre Trudeau and the donor, and 2016, date of payment and the imbroglio on the sending of a receipt to finally be sent to one of the tentacles of Chinese power in Hong Kong.
Trudeau brother is quite right to insist on the passage of time so that we can appreciate the idiocy and the usefulness of each other towards two related but distinct things: Chinese power and Chinese society. In my opinion, three periods must be distinguished.
The long Maoist nightmare
The seizure of power by Mao’s Communist Party in 1949 put an end to a long period of civil wars that had ravaged the mainland for a century. From 1949 until Mao’s death in 1976, however, it is reasonable to conclude that the Chinese would have been not only freer, but more prosperous and happy, if they had lived under the old regime. In addition to creating a concentration camp climate in the country, Mao’s policy was to limit the foodstuffs allocated to each citizen in order to massively export his agricultural production to the USSR and in return buy weapons and industrial equipment – most of the time obsolete. The near-malnutrition to which he pushed his people scandalized even Joseph Stalin and the communist leaders of Eastern Europe.
His absurd policy of the great leap forward would artificially create a famine causing between 19 and 50 million deaths, or 1 Chinese in 13. Then, the Cultural Revolution unleashed to purge his opponents at the top of the Party did, according to an official assessment of 1978, 20 million dead and 100 million victims, or 1 Chinese out of 8.
Throughout this period, useful idiots were in colossal numbers in the West, Beijing having succeeded in convincing the whole world that it succeeded, better than India, in correctly feeding its population, an argument constantly presented as the ultimate justification for the lack of freedom. The Cultural Revolution, an enterprise of unfathomable brutality, was also presented as an admirable exercise in direct democracy. I know something about it, because I was, in my young days, from 1975 to 1979, one of the useful idiots who believed and relayed this nonsense.
The era of hope
The second phase began in 1978 with the rise to power of one of the victims of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping. It embodies a period of demaoization of the regime, of openness to economic freedom and individual freedom, always under the aegis of an unshakeable single party in power. The country is becoming extremely open to—indeed, eager for—knowledge and advice from abroad. The dominant posture in the West is becoming that of commitment. Let’s support the modernization of China, the construction of a rule of law, the constitution of a middle class, conditions generally precursors of a slow and gradual political democratization.
This trend was abruptly put on hold with the bloody suppression of the Tian’anmen student uprising in June 1989, but as the years passed, one could note hesitant but real progress in the freedom of speech of citizens, d organizations and journalists, insofar as the unique power of the party was never questioned.
It was already clear, in the 1990s, that the Chinese state and companies plundered their Western partners, copied their patents, excelled in counterfeiting. But this was put to the benefit of a more important phenomenon, the entry of China into the modern world. Not to mention that all the Walmarts of the globe took advantage of the cheap workshop of the world that the Middle Kingdom had become.
It was not foolish at all then to think that by multiplying the interpersonal contacts between Westerners and Chinese – and even as democracy was spreading in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa – we would encourage our interlocutors to cultivate a spirit of initiative, a critical sense, a taste for freedom. Director General of CERIUM from 2004 to 2012, I received with my colleagues almost every year a delegation of young Chinese researchers in social sciences and I was struck by their freedom of speech. Shouldn’t the Chinese lawyers and judges trained by Laval University and the University of Montreal, back home, have a better sense of equal rights and greater resistance to arbitrary decisions? policy ?
As Minister of International Relations in 2012, I noticed that we were still following this logic. Leading a delegation of 80 Quebec leaders to Beijing and Shanghai in October 2013, I was aware of the recent emergence in China of NGOs dealing with the environment, urban renewal or the fight against corruption. I met several of their representatives—without even the presence of a communist chaperone.
But shortly before my visit, the brand new Chinese leader at the time, Xi Jinping, published his “Document noh 9” castigating seven dangerous Western imports, including the very ideas of civil society, freedom of the press, universal values. A senior party official with whom I had established good contact—and who admitted to me that he had been one of the protesters in Tian’anmen Square—was devastated by the existence of this document.
The regression
From 2013, therefore, the debate begins on the transitory or permanent character of this regression. It was only the accumulation of demonstrations of the stiffening of Chinese power in the years that followed that shattered hopes. Those who wished to be useful fellow travelers of Chinese democratization had to draw the conclusion that it was now completely foolish to still believe in it. At least as long as Xi Jinping and people like him lead the country.
When Alexandre Trudeau met the Chinese donor in 2013, his desire to engage in “academic diplomacy” was therefore perfectly in tune with the spirit of the times. When the checks were paid in 2016, skepticism was already growing, but he still seemed blind, as his brother was, to the danger signals.
At what point does it become completely idiotic not to understand that the engagement globally benefits China and not to see that the Chinese policy of influence, expansion, support for foreign dictatorships is now a threat that must be contained? I believe the absolute tipping point was 2019, when Beijing reneged on its commitment to respect Hong Kong’s democratic autonomy until 2047 and savagely cracked down on protesters. Those who did not draw the line at this time delayed the group and satisfied Lenin’s definition. Among them is prominently Justin Trudeau.
Father, columnist and author, Jean-François Lisée led the PQ from 2016 to 2018. | [email protected] /blog: jflisee.org