Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
oversaw the rehabilitation of nearly 400 housing units, road and sidewalk
repaving, installation of new lighting and sewer lines and construction of
linear parks to check disruptive through traffic. In 1982 the final element in
the plan was completed, SPOTA's 120-unit Mau Dan housing co-op, testi-
mony to an extended process of collaborative community-building. This
unexpected conjunction of race and space suggested a startlingly new phase
in the status of Chinatown and Chinese-Canadians as participants in the
welfare state. 'Racialization', as Audrey Kobayashi (2004: 241) has observed,
'is always a historical geography'.
Charting the Pacific Rim, Assembling a Network
Neighbourhood changes in Chinatown matched larger national movements as
Canada entered its second century. The 1970s represented the high watermark
of the welfare state, before growing national deficits led to cost-saving strate-
gies and toward a neo-liberal regime in the 1980s and since. While it is unwise
to over-identify national change with a single public figure, the Trudeau admin-
istrations from 1968 onwards embodied contemporary liberal currents and set
in motion significant redirection in social and economic policy. An intriguing
new overseas horizon lay west across the Pacific, towards China, a land and
society that fascinated Trudeau. In 1949 he made his first visit in the danger-
ous months preceding the founding of the People's Republic and returned a
decade later as a labour lawyer with journalist Jacques Hébert, the two pub-
lishing a topic of their impressions (Hébert and Trudeau (1961) 1968). As
Prime Minister he ordered a review of Canadian foreign policy, and launched
a mission for diplomatic recognition of China, displacing Taiwan, an initiative
achieved in 1970. Three years later Trudeau became the first Canadian Prime
Minister to undertake an official visit of the Chinese Mainland.
The economic as well as diplomatic advantages of closer trans-Pacific
relations were already becoming evident in the 1960s with the beginning of
wheat sales and the opening of a balance of trade surplus with China. But
far more dramatic was the surge of the Japanese economy, growing by
10 percent a year that decade, five percent a year in the 1970s and during
the 1980s becoming the second largest global economy. Japan's rise was
followed by the buoyant if smaller economies of the four tigers: Hong Kong,
Singapore and Taiwan recorded average annual GDP growth rates through
the 1970s and 1980s of 9-10 percent and South Korea around eight per-
cent. After 1980 China's annual growth was invariably close to 10 percent.
People noticed. New Pacific markets beckoned for Canadian raw materials
notably wood products, minerals (especially coal and copper) and wheat
shipped through British Columbia ports (Barnes et al. 1992; Edgington
and Goldberg 1992; Hutton 1998).
