Mark Carney's China trip a means to hit reset button with Beijing

OTTAWA — The invitation has seemingly been accepted.

Stemming from an overture made by Chinese President Xi Jinping in October, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney will visit Beijing later this month as part of a three-stop, week-long overseas trip.

That visit, although not yet formally announced by the PMO, was made public by an internal media advisory posted on X by Conservative MP Shuv Majumdar.

The PM’s China visit appears to be the first stop in a three-country tour from Jan. 13 to Jan. 21, where he’ll also visit Doha, Qatar and attend the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

The PMO has yet to release details of this trip, which will be his second overseas trip so far in 2026.

China-Canada ties resetting after Trudeau years

Relations between Canada and China turned downright frosty during Justin Trudeau’s time as prime minister, with the December 2018 abduction of Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig by Beijing representing a major turning point.

The detention of the “Two Michaels” was a direct retaliation of Canada’s arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou at a Canadian airport, at the behest of a U.S. arrest warrant.

Even after Meng’s Sept. 24, 2021 release — and the subsequent release of Spavor and Kovrig — relations between Ottawa and Beijing remained strained.

In 2024, Canada imposed a blanket 100% tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles, followed by a 25% levy on Chinese steel and aluminum.

That touched off an ongoing trade dispute that resulted in China imposing heavy tariffs on Canadian agriculture, including a 100% tariff on Canadian canola and pulse exports.

Canada is the world’s largest pulse exporter, with 80% of Canadian peas, lentils and chickpeas destined for China and India.

That’s on top of continued accusations and evidence of Chinese espionage in Canada, election meddling and intimidation, as well as continued Chinese aggression against Taiwan, as well as island-building militarization and unilateral territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Recent live-fire exercises in the Taiwan strait — meant to intimidate Taiwan — were condemned by Canada late last week.

Since becoming prime minister, Carney has worked hard to mend that relationship, meeting President Xi on the margins of last year’s APEC summit — a 40-minute confab that marked the first time he’d met with a Canadian PM since 2017.

That meeting was described by the PM as a “turning point” in Canada’s relationship with China, and was shortly followed by an invitation for Carney to visit Xi in Beijing.

Optics of trip needs to be considered

But while many agree that it’s better to be on speaking terms than locked in a diplomatic cold war, there are questions about the timing of the visit.

“The challenge for Canada is ensuring this visit is seen as transactional and limited, not strategic, and that it reinforces rather than complicates our core relationship with the United States,” said Alan Kessel, a former Canadian diplomat and senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

“A Canadian PM going to Beijing at moment when the United States is tightening its strategic posture towards China can easily be read in Washington as hedging.”

Spokespeople for U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra declined to comment when contacted by the Sun.

Eric Miller, a fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, told the Sun he isn’t sure the White House has the bandwidth at the moment to pay much attention to Carney’s visit — but said the trip is important, in light of increased rumblings south of the border that the days are numbered for the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA.)

“All of it reinforces the idea to the Carney government that they need to accelerate as quickly as possible the process of trade diversification,” Miller said. “Their view is, essentially, ‘we’re going to do our thing,’ and there’s people in the U.S. who may be concerned about that, but there are a lot of opportunities to expand Canadian trade with China that do not go into areas of core national security.”

These may include resetting Canada’s relationship on canola and seafood — including doing away with 25% tariffs on Canadian maritime lobsters.

Even if the purpose of the PM’s trip is economic, Kessel said, the symbolism is unavoidable.

“Under a Trump administration especially, nuance tends to get lost,” he said.

bpassifiume@postmedia.com
X: @bryanpassifiume

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