Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water

China continues to make uneasy ripples across the world of trade and commerce, let alone its voting presence at the UN Security Council, its own record on human rights abuses, its hunger for basic materials and energy. Because of its immense appetite tied up in production and trade, and its own huge consumer market, everyone wants a piece of the action. It's in China, India and increasingly too Brazil, that the world of trade, production and enterprise sees opportunities for their own.

Dancers perform at a preview show for the Chinese Lantern Festival, which marked the end of the Lunar New Year celebrations Friday. Prime Minister Stephen Harper will have both trade and panda diplomacy on his agenda when he visits China next week. Photograph by: Mark Ralston, AFP, Getty Images, Ottawa Citizen

Aside from commerce, there's the cultural, artistic and social aspect of doing business with China. For Canada, there's also a very large expatriate Chinese demographic of Chinese-Canadians whose pride in their adopted country does not extinguish entirely their pride and traditional memories of their Chinese heritage.

There's an international panda-craze, with Western zoos striving to convince China to loan out a panda for public viewing. And, it seems, on Prime Minister Harper's upcoming China visit along with a number of his Cabinet Ministers, persuading and finalizing details on enabling rental (at a whopping $1-million annually) of pandas for three Canadian zoos - Calgary, Toronto and Granby, is high on the agenda.

That, and vitalizing trade in finished goods in particular between China and Canada. So far, it is raw products that China is eager for, understandably, and Canada would like to see that expanded to other goods. For far too long in our trade with our conventional, traditional, largest trading partner, our neighbour the United States, it has been raw products rather than finished goods that represent our portion of trade agreements.

But the bottom line for Canada is the opportunity to extend its chances to increase trade with the production- and -population giant. China imports raw logs from Canada, and is hungry for metals and minerals. Former Prime Minister Jean Chretien shamelessly led many highly-publicized trade missions to China. For the purpose of introducing Canadian business to opportunities and investment in China, on the face of it.

While making for himself valuable personal contacts to Chinese politicians, business leaders and others who would be helpful to him personally out of official office and representing clients for a leading Canadian law firm. When Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government chastised China for its poor human rights record, Jean Chretien heaped scorn on him, claiming Canada would do better to charm China rather than chide it.

And, now that the Prime Minister has reached the point where, without surrendering the need to keep reminding China that there are international standards of human rights that every country is expected to respect, Canada can also proceed to do business with China. A position that suddenly earns the government scorn and criticism from the same sources that once flagellated it for its honour first, business second position.

What does make many Canadians uneasy however, is the growing Chinese investment in Canada's oil industry, amounting to about $14-billion so far. On the other hand, Canadian investment in China, given the differences in our size, population and GDP stands at $4-billion, so the differential isn't that notable; in effect, Canada's investment is larger.

It's just that it is the oil industry itself, and the distant but potential notion that Canada might lose some element of control over that primary resource that makes for suspicion in the minds of many. That suspicion won't be entirely quelled by closer economic ties, because the mission will focus largely on shipping Canadian crude to refineries in China.