MONDAY,OCTOBER21,2019 | THEGLOBEANDMAIL O A
OPINION
NEWS |T
he Chinese folk saying “lift
a rock only to drop it on
one’s own feet,” or its En-
glish equivalent – “to shoot one-
self in the foot” – perfectly de-
scribes the self-defeating inclina-
tions of dictatorship. And noth-
ing exemplifies such inclinations
so much as China’s recent effort
to bully the NBA.
The row began when the Hous-
ton Rockets general manager, Da-
ryl Morey, tweeted (and quickly
deleted) support for the pro-de-
mocracy protesters in Hong
Kong: “Fight for Freedom. Stand
with Hong Kong.” China’sgovern-
ment blacklisted the Rockets; or-
dered the state-run television
network to cancel broadcasts of
two NBA games; and instructed
Chinese companies to suspend
their sponsorships and licensing
agreements with the NBA.
As the NBA’s largest interna-
tional market, China expected
the league to apologize for of-
fending the Communist Party of
China (CPC). And, initially, the
NBA did just that. “We feel greatly
disappointed at [Mr. Morey’s] in-
appropriate speech, which is re-
grettable,” the league said in a
statement. “We take respecting
Chinese history and culture as a
serious matter.”
But that sparked outrage
among U.S. lawmakers, who ac-
cused the NBA of choosing mon-
ey over human rights. “No one
should implement a gag rule on
Americans speaking out for free-
dom,” Senate Minority Leader
Chuck Schumer tweeted. The
NBA threw Mr. Morey “under the
bus” to protect their market ac-
cess, Senator Marco Rubio add-
ed, calling the move “disgust-
ing.”
Under pressure, NBA commis-
sioner Adam Silver then seemed
to shift the league’s position:“Morey is supported in terms of
his ability to exercise his freedom
of expression.”
In the end, it was China that
had to back down. The author-
ities allowed a previously sched-
uled exhibition game to be
played in Shanghai and ordered
state media to play down the con-
troversy. The lesson should be
clear: Bullying is a surefire way to
lose friends and make enemies in
the West.
China may be a lucrative mar-
ket for the NBA, but the NBA is al-
so a very valuable friend to China.
The country’s relationship with
the league is one of the great suc-
cesses in its cultural and commer-
cial relations with the United
States, and a powerful example of
Sino-American “sports diploma-
cy.”
Such diplomacy has a storied
history in U.S.-China relations.
During the 1971 World Table Ten-
nis Championships, the U.S. play-
er Glenn Cowan boarded a shuttle
bus with the Chinese national
team. Rather than avoid him, as
the Chinese team had been in-
structed to do, its top player,
Zhuang Zedong, initiated a con-
versation with the American. The
two players even exchanged gifts- an act of goodwill that garnered
significant positive media atten-
tion.
Recognizing the diplomatic
opportunity, Mao Zedong invited
the U.S. team to China. The trip
opened the way for the two gov-
ernments to begin back-channel
communications and, eventually,
to normalize bilateral relations.
Mao and U.S. President Richard
Nixon did not squander the op-
portunity that sports diplomacy
presented. But, by picking a fight
with the NBA, Chinese President
Xi Jinping’sgovernment could
well have. At a time when Sino-
American relations are in free fall,
this is the last thing China needs.
To some extent, China’s re-
sponse was probably a hubris-in-
duced miscalculation. The gov-
ernment has effortlessly bullied
some of the world’s best-known
companies into submission after
they offended its delicate politi-
cal sensitivities.
China has used similar tactics
to press Western governments in-
to bending to its will. For exam-
ple, it cut off high-level exchanges
and curtailed business dealings
with France, Germany and Britain
when they hosted the Dalai Lama.
Similarly, after the Nobel Peace
Prize was awarded to the Chinese
dissident Liu Xiaobo in 2010, Chi-na suspended salmon imports
from Norway (though the Norwe-
gian government has no influen-
ce over the Nobel committee’s de-
cision). China ended up getting
its way in nearly all of these show-
downs, with Western actors ex-
pressing remorse and seeking to
regain China’s favour.
But hubris is only part of the
story. Chinese officials have
strong incentives to demonstrate
their loyalty to the regime, even
at the expense of strategic objec-
tives. The resultingmodus operan-
di– called “ning zuo wu you,”
which loosely translates to “rath-
er left than right” – influences
most official calculations. The de-
cision to bully the NBA was more
than likely taken by a party appa-
ratchik eager to curry favour with
CPC superiors.
With intimidation hardwired
into the Chinese system, such
self-defeating behaviour is likely
to continue – and cost the CPC
dearly. The more friends China
turns into enemies, the easier it
will be for the U.S. to assemble a
broad coalition to contain its
power and ambitions. At that
point, the Chinese bully’s favou-
rite tactic for defending its
interests will become even less
effective.HowChinalosesfriendsandalienatespeople
Beijing’sresponseto
anoutspokenNBAteam
officialhighlightsthe
government’shubris
indealingwithdissent
MINXINPEI
OPINIONProfessorofgovernmentat
ClaremontMcKennaCollegeand
anon-residentseniorfellowat
theGermanMarshallFund
oftheUnitedStates
I
t’s a notion that has made
headlines several times over
the past few years: Fish feel
pain, and the way we catch and
kill them for food may actually be
cruel. This evolution in under-
standing of the sentience of an
animal long-considered too sim-
ple has caused some controversy
and discomfort. And as New-
foundland copes with a massive
fish-farm die-off, concerns about
the well-being of the fish in
crowded farms are being added
to this mounting conversation.
At Newfoundland’s Northern
Harvest Sea Farms, as many as 1.
million salmon suffocated to
death in early September, due to
lack of oxygen in the water. As
The Globe and Mail reported two
weeks ago, concerned marine
biologists noted the fish would
have been stressed and fighting
for oxygen in the cramped, warm
waters. Workers have also been
struggling to deal with the de-
composing remains, which are
being vacuumed out of the cages,
processed on land and dumped
back into the sea. The layer of rot-
ten fish sludge sitting on the bot-
tom of bay is said to be more than
15 metres thick in some areas,
and marine biologists worry this
sludge could create algae blooms
that steal oxygen from the water
and choke out other wild marine
life.
Fish farming is a rapidly grow-
ing sector within Canada’s fishing
industry, with salmon being the
most commonly farmed fish, and
worth about $1-billion. There are
concerns, however, about a lack
of government oversight of these
farms and about the damage
they can cause to surrounding
environments. Deterioration of
water quality owing to waste pro-
duction, and the spread of dis-
ease to wild fish populations
(and of drugs used to treat those
diseases), are included in these
concerns. Last year, member of
Parliament Fin Donnelly told CBC
News that open net fish farms are
essentially “using the ocean as a
toilet.”For a food source typically
touted as environmentally sus-
tainable, and perhaps less ethi-
cally fraught than their land-
bound counterparts, fish may ac-
tually be more complicated than
we once thought.
Growing research now points
to the fact that fish have the abil-
ity to experience sensations, in-
cluding pain and suffering. In a
2018 article in Smithsonian Maga-
zine, It’s Official: Fish Feel Pain,
author Ferris Jabr explains that at
the anatomical level, fish have
neurons known as nociceptors,
“which detect potential harm,such as high temperatures, in-
tense pressure, and caustic chem-
icals.” Fish bodies also produce
the same innate painkillers (i.e.
opioids) that mammals do.
Mr. Jabr details several studies,
which show fish demonstrating
atypical behaviours when inflict-
ed with pain, and returning to
typical behaviours when given
painkillers.
In more recent research, biol-
ogist Lynne Sneddon of Universi-
ty of Liverpool told The Inde-
pendent, “When the fish’s lips are
given a painful stimulus they rub
the mouth against the side of thetank much like we rub our toe
when we stub it.” She added: “If
we accept fish experience pain,
then this has important implica-
tions for how we treat them.”
Although evidence is growing
about the sentience of fish, they
still lack legal protection in Cana-
da, regarding their welfare or hu-
mane handling, and are legally
considered property when
caught or farmed. Fishing is ex-
empt from most provincial ani-
mal care acts as an accepted ac-
tivity in which an animal may be
permitted to suffer (much like
the farming and slaughtering of
other animals for food).
And though there are no sta-
tistics on the number of fish
killed for food in Canada each
year, we know the industry is
worth several billion dollars, with
exports of $6.6-billion worth of
fish and seafood in 2015 putting
estimates in the hundreds of mil-
lions of fish permitted to suffo-
cate to death each year. The po-
tential suffering associated with
that number of animals is hard to
comprehend.
Ethical concerns surrounding
the way we farm, catch and kill
fish for food are increasing. Al-
lowing sentient animals capable
of suffering to be crammed into
cages where they are unable to
escape harmful conditions, and
suffocate to death, no longer
aligns with the values of many
Canadians who care about the
humane treatment of animals.
Compounding environmental
stress upon already vulnerable
ecosystems and biodiversity only
exacerbates this obvious prob-
lem.
It’s time to care about fish, and
perhaps that means leaving them
alone.Catchoftheday:Weneedtorethinkfishasfood
JESSICASCOTT-REID
OPINIONMontreal-basedfreelancewriter
andanimaladvocate
DecomposingsalmonarevacuumedoutofafishfarmanddepositedintoFortuneBayalongNewfoundland’s
southerncoastonOct.2.BILLBRYDEN/ATLANTICSALMONFEDERATIONG
ranted, Brexit is driving ev-
eryone mad. We Brits owe
all our European friends a
sincere apology, a bottle of whis-
ky and complimentary tickets to
a Royal Shakespeare Company
performance. For Britain is now
Hamlet, forever agonizing over
whether Brexit is to be or not to
be. So I can perfectly understand
why Europeans such as French
President Emmanuel Macron just
want to be rid of us, so as to push
ahead with an important, ambi-
tious agenda for the whole Eu-
ropean Union. Nonetheless, it re-
mains in Europe’s own enlight-
ened, long-term interest to go the
extra kilometre. This means, con-
cretely, that if the British Parlia-
ment does not approve Boris
Johnson’s new deal this week, the
EU should offer an article 50 ex-
tension, as formally requested in
the letter sent (though childishly
not signed) by Boris Johnson to
the European Council President,
Donald Tusk.
A no-deal Brexit would be
hugely damaging to Ireland and
other parts of Europe geographi-
cally close to the United King-
dom. The amendment proposed
by the independent Conservative
Oliver Letwin and passed by Par-
liament on Saturday is intended
above all to preclude no deal.
But who takes the blame? We
know from a leaked document
that the Johnson team of hard
Brexiters was preparing to blame
any failure to get a deal on the
“crazy” intransigence of Brussels.
If, however, Mr. Macron were to
make an unholy alliance with Mr.
Johnson to push Britain out of the
door on Oct. 31, then my side of
the Brexit argument – for referen-
dum, remain and reform – would
be bound to place part of the
blame on our European partners.
There is no good outcome to
Brexit, but the least worst way
forward is for Britain to vote in a
second referendum to remain, or
not, in the EU.And the best way to achieve
that is for Parliament to vote for
Mr. Johnson’s deal, subject to a
confirmatory referendum in
which the British public would be
asked a single, clear question: Do
you want Britain to leave the EU
on the terms negotiated by this
government, or do you want it to
stay in the EU? To be or not to be.
Since thisgovernment is dom-
inated by hard Brexiters, and
what is envisaged in the new deal
is in fact a hard Brexit for En-
gland, Wales and Scotland, with a
softer one only for Northern Ire-
land, no Leave voter could plausi-
bly complain that they were only
being offered the choice between
a flaccid Brino (Brexit in Name
Only) and staying in the EU. Hun-
dreds of thousands rallied out-
side Parliament on Saturday to
show their support for such a
people’s vote. Even more impor-
tant than the activists are the
opinion polls that now consis-
tently show a majority for re-
maining in the EU. How absurd it
would be if the U.K. was to leave
the EU, in the name of respecting
“the will of the people,” at pre-
cisely the moment when the willof the people had changed.
I know that many continental
European friends who were once
sympathetic to a second referen-
dum now think the EU would be
better off without us. If Britain
leaves now, it will take another
five years to work out what the
new economic relationship with
the EU will be and whether Scot-
land will leave the United King-
dom, and then a further five years
to see how all this beds down in
practice.
By that time, the EU and what
is left of the U.K. will certainly
have diverged. Britain will be
worse off economically than it
might have been, but probably
not so badly off that stubborn En-
glish voters, in particular, would
swiftly choose to return with, so
to speak, their tails between their
legs.
If Brexit goes badly for Britain,
that will ensure a thoroughly un-
happy and bad-tempered rela-
tionship across the Channel, neg-
atively affecting the vital co-oper-
ation on foreign and security pol-
icy. If, against the odds, Brexit
goes well for Britannia, then na-
tionalist populists such as Hun-garian Prime Minister Viktor Or-
ban, the Italian Matteo Salvini
and France’s Marine Le Pen will
start to say, in those immortal
words from the movieWhen Har-
ry Met Sally, “I’ll have what she’s
having.” Either way, it’s bad for
the EU.
Fortunately, the checks and
balances of British liberal democ-
racy are working. In a magnifi-
cent, muscular verdict, the Su-
preme Court found that Mr. John-
son acted unlawfully in trying to
prorogue Parliament for five
weeks. And on Saturday, a demo-
cratically elected Parliament
once again took back control
from a bullying executive, to en-
sure proper scrutiny of a hastily
made deal that has epochal im-
plications for both Britain and
Europe. Whether this ends with a
confirmatory referendum, as I
hope, or with a general election,
which seems more likely, or with
Parliament narrowly approving
Mr. Johnson’s deal, it will be a law-
ful, democratic process. And a
lawful, democratic process is
something Europe should always
support, even if it takes a little
longer.Europeshouldsupportalawful,democraticBrexit
TIMOTHYGARTONASH
OPINIONProfessorofEuropeanStudiesat
OxfordUniversityandasenior
fellowattheHooverInstitution,
StanfordUniversity