This week’s deep dive ino the archive of The Paul Wells Show is an episode from May 2024, with veteran journalist Jonathan Manthorpe. The topic is China, and Canada’s long history of optimistic engagement with China.
Specifically the topic is Manthorpe’s book Claws of the Panda, first published in 2019. I’ve had nearly nothing to do with its success — it’s a superb book, a pocket history of Canada-China relations told with a storyteller’s real flair — but I’ve tried to spread word of its existence every chance I got since it first came out. In 2024 Manthorpe had just published a substantially updated version of Claws of the Panda, and along the way it’s become almost a standard text on the topic for interested Canadians.
Claws of the Panda is a methodical summary of decades of Canada-China relations, beginning with Christian missions in China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Canada, Manthorpe argues, has always had a missionary impulse with regard to China: relations between the two countries, the theory went, could help China become more like Canada. It’s worked out rather the reverse: Canada has too often had to trade its own democratic standards for market access. That’s the story Manthorpe tells, as timely now as ever.
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You can read a (machine-generated) transcript of this week’s episode via the "Transcript” button at the top of this page which should be visible on most platforms when you view it on your desktop browser.
I am grateful to be the Max Bell Foundation Senior Fellow at McGill University, the principal patron of this podcast. Antica Productions turns these interviews into a podcast every week. Kevin Breit wrote and performed the theme music. Andy Milne plays it on piano at the end of each episode. Thanks to all of them and to you. Please tell your friends to subscribe to The Paul Wells Show on their favourite podcast app, or here on the newsletter.
