John Weston, who knows his way around Asia, expected a lot of pomp and circumstance when he accompanied Stephen Harper on the prime minister’s just-completed visit to China and South Korea. He didn’t, however, expect the trip to accomplish what it did in terms of relations between Canada and the two Asian countries.

“On the last leg we saw the first-ever address by a Canadian prime minister to a Korean national assembly,” Weston said on Dec. 8, just after arriving in Ottawa from the eight-day trip. “Beyond that, though, there were specific achievements that I never anticipated.”

Weston was chosen for the trip because of his extensive experience in the region.

A lawyer by trade, he spent most of the ‘90s in Taiwan, opening a Canadian trade office and helping to run a Taipei-based international law firm. He also speaks fluent Mandarin, the Chinese dialect of government and trade in both Taiwan and Mainland China.

Weston, a rookie Con-servative member of Parliament for West Van-couver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country, was one of six MPs to accompany Harper on the trip. He also visited Taiwan and Hong Kong in July.

Weston said Harper acquitted himself extremely well during visits to Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Seoul. He said his impression of what was reported in the media as a chilly rebuke from Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao — who told Harper during the stop in Beijing that five years between meetings between the two countries’ leaders was “too long a time for bilateral relations” — was nothing of the sort.

“If you came to my home to visit and I said, ‘You haven’t been to my home in a long time. I wish you had been here sooner. It’s been too long,’ that would be a friendly reminder. There’s no way the Chinese premier intended it as a rebuke. If he had, he wouldn’t be offering these … commercial endorsements to Canada.”

Weston said that even before Harper’s visit, the Tory government has sent 18 ministers to China since it was first elected in 2006, part of what Weston called a “significant” effort to cement economic ties with the emerging economic superpower.

“Our trade has increased dramatically despite the economic downturn, so the statements made were statements from one friend to another,” he said.

Among the other significant on-the-ground developments were the lifting of restrictions on the import of Canadian pork to China and a similar lifting of restrictions on the import of Canadian beef to the Republic of (South) Korea, Weston said.

“It was a real honour to be on the trip,” he said. “I saw our prime minister in action and he is becoming very much a respected leader around the world.”