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Meetings between national leaders tend to be stiff, decorous affairs. When something interesting or unusual happens, everyone acts surprised.

This explains the front-page ink spilled over the supposed "rebuke" served up by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao when he crankily told Prime Minister Stephen Harper that he should visit China more often. "This is your first visit to China and this is the first meeting between the Chinese premier and a Canadian prime minister in almost five years," he declared. "[That] is too long a time for China-Canada relations, and that's why there are comments in the media that your visit is one that should have taken place earlier."

As I see it, Mr. Wen's crankiness is his problem, not ours. But opposition politicians and pundits have taken China's...