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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Next to just what’s happening to Oil prices worldwide due to America’s and Israel’s attack on Iran, your single example of China’s interference abroad (the second one, as your first example is not even that since it happened in China) are pretty much zero impact actions.
Even in a 100% Canada-centric perspective, just Trump’s tariffs cause way, WAY, WAY more pain to Canadians in aggregate than two Canadians being unfairly arrested for almost 3 years in China, and China running “Foreign Police Stations” in Canada targeting Chinese Nationals living in Canada.
My point stands that “China is better than America”, not because China is good but because America is horrible. Further, even whilst (until recently) America was treating Canada reasonably well, that doesn’t mean they America wasn’t a horrible nasty nation - they were just did inflicted the suffering on people in various countries amongst which was not Canada - just ask most people living in Latin American or the Middle East how nice America is.
My point also stands that when China does interfere abroad “their impact on the rest of the World is much smaller” than America’s. I mean the immediate example of that is America’s attack on Iran and what’s happening to Oil prices Worldwide due to it, but well before that America was always (almost literally “always”: if I remember it correctly the US was only ever not at war for 7 years in its entire History) attacking other countries and have left enormous piles of corpses in many of them. China did do some pretty fucked up shit abroad (most notably attacking and annexing Tibet), it’s just that they haven’t done in quite a while whilst America has done some of their nastiest things in the last 2 or 3 decades and have done a lot more of that and left a lot more people dead on their trail.
And, of course, your examples of China’s abuses in Canada and against Canadians in China just reinforces my expectation that eventually China will be just as bad as America once it finds itself in a similar position.