The Remarkable Chester Ronning: Proud Son of China by Brian L. Evans (review)

Chester Ronning’s name should be mentioned alongside those of Norman Bethune and Dashan as true Canadian friends of China, but it is not. This book can help to change that. The historical facts have been written with sensitivity and humour.

The text can be summarized as having four components. The first touches on the work of the Norwegian Lutheran missionaries in China and the difficulties they encountered in the nineteenth century during the Qing dynasty. It describes the life of Hannah Rorem and Halvor Ronning, Chester’s parents, who went to Fancheng, Hupei province, as missionaries via the United States. Their writings provide readers a taste of what they encountered in their daily lives in China. Chester’s impressionable childhood there, and his return to Fancheng as a missionary after an absence of fifteen years, enabled him to speak the Hupei dialect like a local, to the extent that he was asked later in his life why he looked like a foreigner!

The second component is life in Alberta, where Chester Ronning was a teacher, a principal of Camrose Lutheran College, a member of the United Farmers of Alberta, and a provincial politician representing Camrose for the United Farmers of Alberta. His experiences and observations on the upheavals in politics and in the daily lives of ordinary people in China made him a good fit for Alberta politics through the Great Depression.

By far the most fascinating part of this book is the section covering Ronning’s years with the Department of External Affairs, Ottawa, particularly in his role as a diplomat, mediator, and friend of numerous Chinese leaders, as well as an advisor to Canadian politicians. His personal dealings with leaders of the nationalist Kuomintang Party and the Chinese Communist Party, and his insight into and understanding of the social and political changes in China, including his bias toward the Chinese Communist Party because of his friendship with Zhou Enlai, are well documented. The fact that he tended to overlook the devastating results of Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution is described in great detail. Of note was Ronning’s numerous failed attempts to influence Canadian foreign policy toward recognition of the People’s Republic of China; this failure was blamed on US influence on Canadian foreign policy until Pierre Trudeau became prime minister. “It might be argued that Trudeau and Ronning, each in his own way, were trying to challenge American condescension of Canada.”

Finally, the concluding chapters cover Ronning’s role as a tireless public speaker, writer, and commentator after his retirement from the Department of External Affairs.

Professor Brian Evans has produced a masterfully detailed and human account on Chester Ronning, full of entertaining anecdotes of his long and interesting life. This was possible because of the friendship between the two men; the endless hours of interviews with Ronning and his family, friends, and acquaintances; and in-depth research on written materials, both public and personal. The numerous photographs also add considerable substance to the biography.

With the economic rise of China, among the world leaders today, and the close human and trade relations between Canada and China, this is a significant book for the general public who are interested in China, as well as for academics and political leaders in Canada.