The Dragon, Canada's Friend And Foe

But while successive Liberal and Conservative governments in Ottawa have taken the position that free trade alone would make Canadian companies more productive and innovative, that has not happened, according to Stanford. China's economic success is not simply the result of a natural abundance of labor - which every poor country has. Rather, says Stanford, China's boom "reflects a deliberate, semi-planned strategy to construct advantage in sophisticated industries with the help of powerful state interventions: subsidized capital, investments in infrastructure, a managed currency, and of course, forcibly cheap and compliant labor." Now that China is scouting the world to obtain raw materials and energy for its growing domestic industrial sector, Canada is viewed as a secure supplier. "Believe it or not, trade with China is reinforcing our historical status as an exporter of staples," first as a colony of Britain and then of the US, says Stanford. To the applause of Canada's leading national and business daily, the Globe and Mail, Federal Industry Minister David Emerson is taking a serious look at toughening up his country's notoriously weak laws regarding foreign takeovers of its companies. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/GB05Ad01.html