For all of the confusion about where the Ottawa-Washington meltdown will lead, one thing seems certain. The big winners of this diplomatic collapse will be China and other repressive dictatorships eager to become our new “strategic” partners and further undermine the world’s stabilizing democracy bloc.
Opinion piece by Charles Burton, former diplomat at Canada’s embassy in Beijing, senior fellow at Sinopsis.cz, a China-focused think tank based in Prague, Czech Republic. He is and author of ‘The Beaver and the Dragon: How China Out-Manoeuvred Canada’s Diplomacy, Security and Sovereignty’.
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Beijing in particular wants to inherit Canada’s economic dependence. Establishing such a broader North American beachhead will only further President Xi Jinping’s resolute goal of displacing the U.S. as a global hegemon, and cementing a China-dominated world order whose very foundation is the rejection of democratic freedoms and human rights.
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If Canada ever reaches a point where attacks on our economy put families’ livelihoods at stake, then standing firm on our moral principles will give way to tolerating – or at least ignoring – human rights abuses in exchange for restoring Canadian prosperity through trade and investment with the likes of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and China. As someone who has been sanctioned by both Beijing and Moscow for standing up for Canadian democratic and civil values in global affairs, this prospect is deeply troubling.
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When Mr. Xi makes a landmark trip to North America next month, it is expected he will add a Canadian stop, the first time in 16 years a Chinese head of state has visited this country. And this at a time when there have been calls for Ottawa to scrap restrictions on importing Chinese-made EVs, to locate Chinese auto factories here, and to even encourage Canadians to buy “Great Wall wine” instead of Californian.
In contrast to the belligerent threats that Canadians have been conditioned to expect from Washington, the Chinese President will project dignity and a tone of respect and goodwill toward Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Canadian business associates, who will be offering a warm welcome to the Chinese delegation.
But like Howitt’s “Spider and the Fly,” in which a cunning spider uses seduction and manipulation to lure a fly into its web, Canada should be wary of those who wield flattery and charm to disguise other intentions. Rushing to embrace China’s expansionist and calculating totalitarian regime will never work out well for Canada’s overall interest.
In the current hostile landscape, Canada could find itself deeply regretting coming out of an American frying pan into a Chinese fire.
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What Carney said about the myth of the international rules-based order is correct. There’s always been winners and losers in that and what’s happening now is that the US is trying to kick Canada and other countries out of the winners’ circle.
The idealism of only dealing with “the good guys” has never been remotely realistic or feasible. But obviously trade is necessary for the global economy to function, so compromises will always have to be made. It’s just that this idealistic illusion was maintained by sweeping US anti-democratic and destabilizing actions under the rug and pretending, as the article does, that they didn’t even exist.
China does not, and likely never will get the same treatment, and frankly it’s probably better to trade with a country with issues you’re aware of and capable of acknowledging than one that you can pretend has no issues to feel better about trading and allying with them.
I think it’s pretty clear by now that per the wishes of America’s elites and even most of their electorate (who voted for somebody explicitly promising that) the only “winner” acceptable for America in an America-dominated World is America itself (which in practice means just a handful of people in America, since the common Americans aren’t actually “winning” anything).
So any article framing the replacement of an American-led World order by a Chinese-led World order as being a bad thing is either ignorant as fuck or purposeful propaganda by one of the few Americans “winning” from the current setup or one of those foreigners getting some crumbs from it - i.e. somebody who makes money from being a “friend” to America and spreading the idea that American dominance is a great thing for everybody.
A fair article would be pretty neutral about it - pretty much “these other guys who don’t give a shit about us are trading places” - with maybe even a “let’s get this over with ASAP” slant since as the saying goes, “when the elephants fight it’s the grass that suffers”, and at this point the “grass” is pretty much all of us in countries other than the US and China as even Canada is now not in the inner circle with America.