Canadians hope PM's China trip will fuel energy ties

BEIJING - Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will officially kick off his three-city China trip on Wednesday, as Ottawa seeks to beef up relations with its second-largest trade partner after the United States amid economic downturns in its traditional allies.

Harper arrived in Beijing on Tuesday night and will meet with Premier Wen Jiabao on Wednesday.

Presidents of several key Canadian oil and gas companies are traveling with Harper on this trip, which many in Canada expect will boost oil exports from the North American nation to China.

Xinhua News Agency said Harper's trip will "enhance the Sino-Canadian strategic partnership". Meanwhile, Yuen Pau Woo, president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, was quoted as saying by Postmedia News that Harper "is regularizing contact between Beijing and Ottawa at the highest level and making China a part of the Canadian prime minister's diplomatic routine".

A self-proclaimed emerging "energy superpower", Canada was recently hit by a delay to a proposed oil pipeline project after it was rejected by Washington, its primary energy customer.

In an interview with Postmedia News and the National Post last week, Harper called Canada's exclusive reliance on energy exports to the US a "weakness" and vulnerability, and said it was "a national priority" for Ottawa to export energy to other markets, particularly Asia.

China has become an important factor in Canada's economic growth, Harper said in the interview, while stressing that Canada will diversify its trade with China.

Leaders from the Canadian agricultural, education and transportation sectors are also part of Harper's entourage, which will also travel to Guangzhou and Chongqing.

Deepening ties with China and the Asia-Pacific in general will help create more jobs and foster long-term economic growth, Andrew MacDougall, a spokesman for the Canadian prime minister, said earlier.

David Mulroney, Canada's ambassador to China, has said relations between Ottawa and Beijing are in "a golden period".

Peter Harder, president of the Canada-China Business Council and a former top official at the Department of Foreign Affairs, earlier said the United States will always be Canada's No 1 trading partner, but China will be No 2.

"And the question is how big that No 2 will be," he told CBC News.

"There is a growing appreciation of our mutual dependency and complementarity Harper's trip is an investment in the future," a recent editorial in the Toronto Star newspaper said.

Mandarin and Cantonese are the third most spoken languages in Canada, after the country's two official languages, English and French. More than 1.3 million Canadian residents are of Chinese origin.

Between 2005 and 2010, Canadian merchandise exports to China grew by some 83 percent, from $7.26 billion to $13.25 billion.

Bilateral trade in 2010 reached $57.8 billion, accounting for 7.2 percent of Canada's trade and representing a 13.7 percent increase over 2009.