Carney/Xi looking at ways they can threaten the US
They are set to meet on Friday.
China urges Canada to break from U.S. influence as Carney visits Beijing
BEIJING (AP) — As Canadian leader Mark Carney arrives in China on Wednesday, his hosts see an opportunity to peel the longtime U.S. ally away from their rival, at least a bit.
China's state media is calling on the Canadian government to set a foreign policy path independent of the United States — what it calls "strategic autonomy."
Canada has long been one of America's closest allies, geographically and otherwise. But Beijing is hoping that President Donald Trump's economic aggression — and, now, military action — against other countries will erode that longstanding relationship.
The government bristled at former U.S. President Joe Biden's efforts to strengthen relations with Europe, Australia, India, Canada and others to confront China. Now it sees an opportunity to try to loosen those ties, though it remains cautious about how far that will go.
Carney, for his part, has focused on trade, describing the trip to China as part of a move to forge new partnerships around the world to end Canada's economic reliance on the American market. Trump has hit Canada with tariffs on its exports to the United States and suggested the vast, resource-rich country could become America's 51st state.
An attempt at diplomatic resuscitation
The Canadian prime minister, who took office last year, is seeking to revive a relationship with China that was marked with acrimony for more than six years under his predecessor, Justin Trudeau.
The downturn in relations started with the arrest of a Chinese tech executive in late 2018 at America's request and was fueled more recently by the Trudeau government's decision in 2024 to follow Biden's lead in imposing a 100% tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles. China has retaliated for both that and a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum with its own tariffs on Canadian exports including canola, seafood and pork.
"If the Canadian side reflects on the root causes of the setbacks in bilateral relations over the past few years — the previous Justin Trudeau government's policies to contain China in lockstep with the United States — it will realize that it can avoid the same outcome by upholding its strategic autonomy in handling China-related issues," the state-owned China Daily newspaper wrote in an editorial this week.
WATCH: Trump says U.S. and Canada have 'natural conflict' but 'mutual love' in meeting with Carney
"If Ottawa still chooses to subject its China policy to the will of Washington again in the future, it will only render its previous efforts to mend ties with Beijing in vain," the English-language paper warned.
The government-run Global Times said: "Perhaps it was the heavy price paid for blindly following the U.S. in imposing high tariffs on China that awakened Ottawa's sense of strategic autonomy."
Canadian officials have said they expect Carney's trip to produce progress on trade but not a definitive elimination of any tariffs.
Where could common ground be?
Chinese experts said the two countries could find common ground over the U.S. military intervention in oil-rich Venezuela that forcibly brought its president to New York to face charges and Trump's subsequent statements that Greenland, a Danish territory, should come under U.S. control.
"We can also see Canada's current state of considerable unease towards the U.S.," said Cui Shoujun, a foreign policy and Latin America expert at Renmin University of China. "If the U.S. can claim Greenland, might it then lay claim to Canada?"
He also predicted that Trump's move against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would strengthen the strategic autonomy of Latin American countries to resist possible American interference in their affairs.
But China remains realistic about how far countries such as Canada could swing in its direction, given their fears of China's growing economic and military clout as well as their deep historical and cultural ties with the United States. They also have major differences with China over its booming exports and the threat they pose to employment in their countries, as well as over human rights and Taiwan.
Zhu Feng, the dean of the School of International Studies at Nanjing University, cautioned against overestimating the importance of Carney's visit to China, "because Canada is not only a neighbor of the United States but also an ally."
Trump's pressure on traditional U.S. partners may open up some space for China to expand relations with them, but American allies will need to balance that with their continuing dependence on U.S. economic and military strength. They may be able to reduce that dependence somewhat in the short term — but it's unlikely they will be to eliminate it for the foreseeable future.
The Americans and president Donald Trump are angry at Carney
Mark Carney heads to China today, and Ottawa wants this treated like a sober act of adult diplomacy instead of what it actually is: a full-on sprint toward a regime Canadians were warned about repeatedly, loudly, and officially. This is the China accused of interfering in our elections, the China that ran covert police stations on Canadian soil, the China linked to the removal of dangerous pathogens from a Winnipeg lab, and the China that deliberately kneecapped Canadian farmers by hammering canola with tariffs. And now, suddenly, it’s time for smiles, handshakes, and talk of “resetting” relations, as if the last decade was just an awkward misunderstanding and not a rolling national-security briefing Canada chose to ignore.
Carney, who not long ago described "China as Canada’s biggest security threat", now arrives talking about diversification, resilience, and the urgent need to “build a fully developed relationship.” The speed of this conversion would make a televangelist blush. Apparently nothing clarifies moral vision faster than tariff pressure and a few grim spreadsheets.
The sales pitch is economic necessity. Trump's 'America First' looms and still no deal, therefore Beijing suddenly becomes a misunderstood business partner. That logic only works if you pretend China’s behaviour changed overnight. Spoiler warning : It didn’t. What changed is Ottawa’s tolerance for risk, and by risk we mean other people’s jobs, national security, and long-term leverage.
Then there’s the cast list on the trip, which reads like a reward ceremony disguised as diplomacy. Alongside cabinet ministers sits Michael Ma, the rookie MP who attended a Conservative Christmas party, crossed the floor hours later, delivered a crucial seat to the Liberals, and promptly found himself upgraded to international-travel class. No portfolio. No deep China brief. Just impeccable timing and the kind of loyalty that appreciates a good itinerary.
How generous.
Back home, Conservative MPs like Amarjeet Gill have gone public saying they were approached and encouraged to switch teams. Gill didn’t hedge. He didn’t “reflect.” He didn’t workshop a statement with consultants. He said no, said it clearly, and then said it out loud so everyone could hear it. That alone separates him from the rest of the Ottawa herd. Others were approached too. Some stayed silent. One didn’t.
That one, of course, was Michael Ma. A political nobody elected as a Conservative, invisible until the moment he wasn’t. Ma insists the switch was about what his constituents wanted. That claim collapses on contact with reality. The same constituents who woke up to discover their Conservative vote had been laundered into Liberal power without their consent are now supposed to believe they also wanted their MP tagging along on a Beijing junket weeks later. In the context of this trip, that explanation isn’t just weak, it’s farcical. If this was truly about local priorities, the victory lap would have been in Markham–Unionville, not Beijing.
At least some MPs still appear to have a functioning ethical compass. Gill’s refusal makes that clear. He understood that voters elect parties and platforms, not free agents looking for upgrades. Ma’s behaviour shows the opposite instinct entirely, and his justifications are insultingly thin. He couldn’t spell ethics if you spotted him the vowels. To be fair, that may be a caucus-wide issue.
Carney will meet Xi Jinping, talk trade, float investment, and hope nobody notices the contradiction between the warnings Canadians were given and the handshakes now being staged. The expectation is that Canadians accept this as realism. What it looks like is a bet that voters won’t connect the dots between foreign interference, economic coercion, and a sudden eagerness to please.
This isn’t a tightrope walk. It’s a voluntary lean toward a regime that has shown, over and over, exactly how it uses leverage once it has it. And it’s worth remembering that Mark Carney didn’t arrive at this moment as some wide-eyed novice. Before politics, he chaired Brookfield Asset Management, a firm that has spent years cultivating deep financial relationships in China, including partnerships and financing arrangements involving Chinese state-linked banks and investors as part of its global infrastructure and real-asset strategy. Those deals were always sold as smart global finance. They also required staying very friendly with Beijing.
Maybe that has nothing to do with today’s posture. Maybe it’s just coincidence that a prime minister with a long résumé of China-facing financial dealings now talks about welcoming Chinese capital, lowering fences, and “resetting” relations, all while flying to Beijing with a freshly flipped MP in tow. Canadians are apparently expected to believe this is pure pragmatism, untainted by habit, history, or personal comfort with the people on the other side of the table.
A country that forgets why it was cautious ends up paying for it later. Canada’s independence, sovereignty, and democratic institutions are not bargaining chips, and they are not offsets for tariffs or investment gaps. Remembering the last decade doesn’t make Canadians unreasonable. It makes them patriotic.
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