In the fall of 2010, Ottawa will dedicate a magnificent ceremonial gate at Somerset and Bronson, a gift from China’s capital city to Canada’s in honour of the 40th anniversary of Canada’s diplomatic recognition of the People’s Republic of China. For most, the gateway will be one to Ottawa’s Chinatown, but I will see a gateway to social and economic prosperity for both nations.
Those who joined me on a recent economic development mission to China were welcomed by a unique partnership of government and industry capitalism eager to do business with Ottawa, and actively seeking cross investment with Canada. We visited the worldwide headquarters of Huawei, a telecommunications giant who this week opened a state-of-the-art R&D facility in Kanata. Ottawa’s Plasco signed a contract in Beijing that should be the beginning of a large and profitable project to turn China’s considerable municipal garbage into clean energy. We inked reciprocal tourism promotion and economic development deals and extended invitations for return visits by investors, R&D firms and environmental groups. We found that the pace of business, though coloured by custom, is no longer slowed by suspicion or formality.
In many ways Canada represents an aspiration ideal to the Chinese; educated, orderly, clean and safe. What we have done for 32 million citizens they aspire to do for their 1.3 billion. I visited the Beijing urban planning centre and saw a commitment to reforesting the capital so comprehensively that no citizen will be more than 500 meters from parkland. At the same time, they are planning to build their transportation infrastructure to allow the city to grow even more rapidly in the next ten years.
Helping China clean up its environment alone is a multi-billion dollar opportunity, and I encourage Ottawa companies to be well represented at ECO Expo Asia this fall. Training Chinese workers in Canadian best practices could be profitable for Algonquin and La Cite, and educating scientists, engineers, and doctors is an important role for Carleton and the University of Ottawa. Ottawa business can help shape this tiger into a great citizen of the world.
Canadians may be blessed by a common border with the largest single economy in the world, but the second largest economy is now equally open to us- eager for our mineral resources, but also for the resources of our inventive minds; engineering, computer science, environmental science, and management. They are a nation that has moved from the 19th century to the 21st century in a matter of decades, and are looking for partners in that progress.
It’s easy to see poverty and repression in China, but equally easy to see progress and results. Economically, this powerhouse has created middle class prosperity for over a quarter of its citizens in just thirty years and daily is spreading that wealth from the coastal cities to the inner rural regions. Socially, it is tackling environmental and health issues at a pace we can only talk about. Politically, it is beginning to talk about transparency and “sunlight”.
China is a dynamic work in progress, and Ottawa has an opportunity to contribute. And by becoming their gateway into the lucrative but elusive North American technology markets, we stand to profit from the largest work-in-progress the world has ever seen.
