Prime Minister Mark Carney landed in Beijing on Wednesday for the first visit by a Canadian prime minister to China in eight years — part of his government's efforts to rebuild Canada's fractured relationship with China and expand non-U.S. trade.
After declaring in 2022 that China is a "disruptive global power" that does not share Canada's values, the Liberal government is now shifting its China policy in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump's attempts to upend global trade with tariffs.
Carney is in Beijing with several members of his cabinet, including Energy Minister Tim Hodgson and Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand.
"This is a new government with a new prime minister, a new foreign policy and a new geopolitical environment," Anand told reporters in Beijing when asked if she still views China as a disruptive power.
"In this moment of economic stress for our country, it is necessary for us to diversify our trading partners and to grow non-U.S. trade by at least 50 per cent over the next 10 years."
Since taking office last spring, Carney's government has described Beijing as strategic partner. It recently advised two Liberal MPs to quit a Taiwan visit early to avoid confusion over Ottawa's policy of not recognizing the self-governing island as an independent country.
Carney will spend two days in Beijing meeting with senior communist leaders and will sit down with President Xi Jinping on Friday. Carney and Xi first met last fall at the APEC summit in Korea.
The Canada-China relationship fell apart in 2018 after China detained two Canadians and held them in custody for nearly three years in retaliation for Canada's arrest of a Chinese tech executive in Vancouver on a U.S. extradition warrant.
The visit comes after years of warnings about Chinese electoral interference in Canada, mounting human rights concerns involving the Uyghur minority and free speech in Hong Kong, and military actions aimed at broadening China's territory beyond the nautical zone laid out by the United Nations.
A major topic of Carney's meeting in China will be Beijing's heavy tariffs on pork, canola and seafood, which were imposed after Ottawa ordered tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, steel and aluminum.
Anand told reporters in Beijing Wednesday that conversations with Chinese officials have been "productive" and negotiations continue.
"We are here to represent all sectors of the Canadian economy and the work continues over the next number of days. We are going to be, as I said, ensuring that all stress sectors of Canadian economy are brought into the negotiations and the conversation," Anand said.
Western and Atlantic premiers are hoping China drops its tariffs; Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is joining Carney in China for the trip. But Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Tuesday he's "very concerned" about the possibility that Ottawa will ease the EV tariffs, which he said are needed to protect the auto sector.
Asia Pacific Foundation vice-president Vina Nadjibulla said the visit demonstrates "Carney's pragmatic foreign policy in action."
"There is not going to be one word that can describe this relationship, but the public messaging around it needs to continue to be clear-eyed, fully recognizing the complexities of the relationship," she said.
Dylan Loh, a professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore who focuses on China's foreign policy, said Beijing needs better diplomatic relations with other countries and hopes to profit from the pushback Washington is generating through its aggressive foreign policy.
China's leaders are also grappling with high youth unemployment and property market woes, he said.
"From Beijing's perspective, they are viewing this not just in isolation. They're viewing Canada as part of the broader story," he said. "Part of it is having a conducive external environment geopolitically, economically, such that they feel secure at home."
Loh said he expects Carney and Xi will sign "low-hanging-fruit agreements" and offer "some allusion to resetting the relationship or starting again from a clean slate" — but it will come at a cost.
"It's quite clear that in return for normalization of economic relations, they will want to see a less antagonistic position that Canada will take with regards to Beijing's interests," he said.
Beijing has asked Ottawa repeatedly to acknowledge that it caused the rift in diplomatic relations. Loh said Ottawa could be more reconciliatory behind closed doors without "caving into pressure in public" and fully satisfying China.
"They want to see that Canada has learned its lesson, and that needs to be manifest in some way," he said.
Carney has talked about advancing trade and environmental co-operation with China, while keeping Beijing away from sectors that touch on national security or the Arctic.
Loh said China normally does not like to compartmentalize parts of a relationship and prefers to link trade, security and other matters together. But he said Beijing has accepted limited engagement with Canada's peers, such as the European Union.
Nadjibulla says there could be movement on energy, such as an agreement to export more Canadian oil and gas to China. She said Canada needs to resist any attempt by Beijing to suggest Ottawa is in "strategic alignment" with China when "pragmatic economic engagement" is Carney's only goal.
"Beijing will try to use this trip as a diplomatic win, and as part of its broader strategic narrative around China being a more responsible major power, contrasting it to the U.S. — and of course, drawing attention to the challenges Canada is having currently with the U.S.," she said.
"We have to be much more cautious around that."
Nadjibulla added that any moves Canada makes will be closely watched by Washington ahead of negotiations this year on the North American trade deal. The visit will also have practical implications for Canada's relationships across the Indo-Pacific, where many countries are trying to resist coercion from both Washington and Beijing.
Graham Shantz, president of the Canada China Business Council, said Carney might take up the Australian approach of continuing to criticize China on human rights grounds while pursuing trade that boosts both economies.
He said Canada is "underinvested" in China, to the detriment of manufacturers, service providers and educational institutions.
Shantz, whose group is hosting a Friday banquet dinner in Beijing, said Canada should also engage with China on issues like exchange rate policies.
"It will be critical to Canada and to Canadian interests to understand both what we want, and then also to understand how we need to negotiate for that, within the context of how China works," he said.
Experts say the automotive tariffs respond to Canadian concerns about China's subsidized output flooding the market and deindustrializing local sectors. But the Canadian tariffs followed closely on almost identical moves by Washington, which has long argued that Chinese cars could pose national security risks.
Beijing sees Ottawa as having taken part in American efforts to prevent China's economic rise. The China Daily editorial board — which is known to reflect the views of the Chinese Communist Party — on Monday said Canada had enacted "policies to contain China in lockstep with the United States."
The editorial also said China wants "a fair, open and nondiscriminatory business environment for Chinese enterprises," which many see as a call to drop investment and research restrictions Ottawa has put in place on national security grounds.
Loh said it's important that Canadians manage their expectations for Carney's visit.
"There are some areas of deep disagreements between Canada and Beijing, and one visit is not going to resolve (all of) it," he said.
Picture Courtesy: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
