Opinion

Norman Bethune’s story still holds lessons for China-Canada relations

The Canadian doctor, hailed a hero in China, was driven by personal conviction; there are others today, tilling the soil of Sino-Canadian friendship

3-MIN READ3-MIN

Listen

A sculpture of Norman Bethune, a Canadian surgeon and communist, at the Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in Beijing on August 31, 2025. Photo: Eugene Lee

Wenran Jiang, the founding director of the China Institute and Mactaggart Research Chair Emeritus at the University of Alberta, is an adviser at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy.

Published: 5:30am, 7 Jun 2026

I grew up in a classroom where the name Norman Bethune was invoked with reverence. Like every schoolchild in China, I could recite from memory Chairman Mao’s 1939 essay “In Memory of Norman Bethune”, which characterised Bethune as a man who had come from afar, who gave his life to the Chinese revolution, who embodied selflessness and internationalism.

For years, I kept a poster in my office – the famous oil painting of Mao meeting Bethune in Yan’an – as a quiet tribute. As the years passed and Canada-China relations cooled, mention of Bethune began to feel like a cliché, a relic of propaganda. It was only during a recent visit to the Norman Bethune memorial in Hebei’s Shijiazhuang city that I found myself confronting the man behind the myth, realising how little I truly knew of his life, his artistry and the full measure of his devotion to justice.

The memorial does not merely rehearse the familiar narrative of the Canadian doctor who served in the war against Japanese aggression. It gathers artefacts that trace Bethune’s journey from Detroit to Montreal, as a thoracic surgeon and an artist, from a passionate advocate for socialised medicine to a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, and finally to the dusty battlefields of northern China. One sees his sketches, his medical instruments, letters written in a hand that betrays both urgency and tenderness.

The exhibition reveals a man who was not only a healer but also a creator, a thinker who believed medicine and art were both acts of solidarity.

Standing before these objects, I felt a sudden, almost physical jolt: Bethune had been reduced to a symbol of Sino-Canadian friendship but was, in truth, a complex human being whose life pulsed with contradictions and convictions. His commitment was not a diplomatic gesture; it was a moral imperative born of witnessing inequality.

This realisation came at a moment when official interactions between Ottawa and Beijing are often framed by trade disputes, strategic rivalry and mutual suspicion. The election of Mark Carney as prime minister, his visit to China in January and Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent visit to Ottawa – these are important developments, yet they occupy a plane far removed from the lived experience of ordinary people.

Norman Bethune’s story still holds lessons for China-Canada relations

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The Canadian doctor, hailed a hero in China, was driven by personal conviction; there are others today, tilling the soil of Sino-Canadian friendship

The Canadian doctor, hailed a hero in China, was driven by personal conviction; there are others today, tilling the soil of Sino-Canadian friendship