20.5°C Not observed 
Federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea and fellow travellers representing the sealing industry were in China last week.
Their aim for the visit was promoting the many uses for seals, or perhaps more correctly, their flesh, pelts, organs, and oils.
Last summer, the European Union approved a ban on the import of seal products. As a result of the ban, the sealing industry in Canada is expected to shrink by $2.4 million.
Although the government is fighting the European ban, Shea said it is also trying to expand the market in China to make up the difference and more.
“’This industry has a lot of potential to grow,’” the National Post quoted Shea.
At the moment, Chinese imports of Canadian seal products are not particularly strong. Of course, Shea and the industry executives were more focused on the potential.
Really, at least on the surface, the market sounds almost perfect for a long-suffering industry.
Imagine a place where there is a bottomless population that eats anything, no matter how adorable or, ironically enough, repulsive.
Shea and the executives lobbied for the widespread import of seal meat, not yet a staple, or even a rare delicacy, among the Chinese people (but if they would just try it…).
Unlike back home, the fur industry in China does not face bothersome, well-mounted opposition from animal-rights activists. And the Chinese government has no political need (and lacks the will or desire also) to accommodate such activists’ demands.
At the same time, the endless mass of would-be consumers keeps getting richer and is eager to acquire status symbols like furs.
The delegation even promoted some less traditional uses of seal, like using the animal’s heart valves for surgery instead of a pig’s.
The Canadian government and the sealing industry maintain that the seal hunt is humane and fiercely monitored, but are drowned out by other voices. Throughout North America and Europe, the claims of animal-rights protestors have taken hold of the popular imagination.
So then, like the great explorers of old, it was off to the Orient to discover new trade!
Several articles about the promotional trip referred to China as an “Asian superpower.” More specifically, those articles called China “the Asian superpower”, implying there is only one.
This kind of talk brings Japan to mind. At the end of the Cold War, that economic powerhouse looked poised to overtake the Soviet Union and seriously challenge American dominance.
Then, of course, the Japanese market fell out and the country has since demonstrated its own set of economic problems.
China is now subject to similarly great expectations, perhaps even greater, since Canada, like so many other countries, does not want to compete with China’s growth, but rather capitalize on it.
Seeking out new markets (in seal products or something else) in China makes sense, but we would do well to remember that economy faces many challenges also. However much we might want it to be one, China is far from an economic cure-all.
