Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney said that China is one of the largest threats with respect to foreign interference in Canada and is an emerging threat in the Arctic.
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Asked to elaborate at a news conference in Niagara Falls on Friday, Carney said Canada has to counter Chinese foreign interference threats. He also criticized China for being a partner with Russia in the war with Ukraine and said it is a threat to broader Asia and Taiwan in particular.
Carney said China is the biggest threat “from a geopolitical sense.” “We’re taking action to address,” he added.
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The main reason China has had worsening relations with Canada and has been threatening to Canada at all is because we have been so closely allied with the US, and the US overtly wants to hamper China’s development and even to overthrow their system of government.
The Meng Wanzhou thing was Canada purely going along with a brash US attack on a leading Chinese company, and it did tremendous and needless damage to Canada-China relations. China didn’t start that. The US did, and Canada helped them do it.
Now, while the US has started acting towards Canada in a way a little more like it has treated countries throughout the Global South for decades, China is offering to partner with Canada to oppose the US abuses of the whole global system of trade. China isn’t devastating Canada’s economy. They’ve started buying our oil, which is good for our economy. They’ve been suggesting more open trade with us, and would no-doubt drop tarrifs on our agricultural products if we lowered our ridiculous tarrifs on their EVs, which we imposed at 100% just to please the US even though it’s worse for the Canadian consumer and has been primarily beneficial to Tesla and Elon Musk, an overt fascist enabler of our biggest threat who also says we’re not even a real country.
The US is the primary aggressor to worry about. They’re holding military exercises this week with the Philippines on simulating all-out war with China and Trump appointed a bunch of guys who have years of advocating for war with China. He is waging economic war against China right now.
I support Carney wanting increased economic ties with Europe and more pivoting away from US dependence, but to treat China as an enemy and speak more harshly about them than even the US is something I really dislike. Opposing the foreign interference, asserting sovereignty in the Arctic, protecting Canadian markets to an extent that is reasonable and fair, these are all good things, but they can be done without making an enemy of China, especially while China is actually offering to work with us and to help us out in dealing with our biggest immediate threat.
Well, China sure as fuck took hostages in it’s response to Meng Wanzhou. That response was unforgivable, holding innocent people as a bargaining chip in a diplomatic game. We got played by the US, no doubt, by having to hold someone due to our treaty obligations when they had her in their own country and never arrested her. But the way China handled that like gangsters did not inspire confidence in their diplomatic choices.
Yes, they arrested a… A FUCKING SPY and a guy who was unfortunately being USED by said spy… Seems pretty reasonable.
“Unfortunately being used by a spy” does not sound as reasonable as you think it does…
How exactly is a foreign country supposed to know that he wasn’t a spy, but simply being used as an unwitting asset? Spavor DID in fact pass intelligence information to Kovrig.
The federal government literally settled with him because of it.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/spavor-government-settlement-1.7136196
Wow I’ve somehow completely missed this.
It was certainly not widely mediatized. Imagine if China arrested the CEO of BlackBerry (when they were relevant) to further the economic interests of their neighbor, and in retaliation we arrested two spies and everyone cried about how unreasonable we were. It would make absolutely no fucking sense. But apparently it’s China who’s unreasonable in this affair…
I think this is a well reasoned take. We should cooperate with China on the issues where it’s mutually beneficial since the EU can’t provide all the things we need (goods and markets). We should demand China retract their interference tentacles as part of this cooperation, as well as independently work to cut them off ourselves. Our current posture where we parrot US’es “China bad” talking points probably counterproductive on that front. Carney’s recent rhetoric could be useful for some voting blocks and I suspect that’s why it escalated. I think he’ll probably reset the relationship if he wins the election and establish some boundaries and red lines.
I don’t think that China wants to work with anyone to ‘help’ them. They just try to take advantage of the situation, but the Chinese government hasn’t become better because the U.S. got worse.
He isn’t wrong about China being a security to Canada, and he isn’t the first PM to say so.
Things like the Zhao/Chong incident are far more subtle than the leader of a country saying over and over again that they want us to be the 51st state, but it doesn’t mean that it’s something that we can ignore. Radiation and a shotgun will both you.
Agree with that. Now is not the time to pick a fight with China. I was surprised that Carney picked China here. The much bigger threat is the USA. We don’t have to be best friends with China but I think to have a strategic trade partnership is crucial right now to eliminate ties with USA as much as possible.
Are you forgetting the “police stations” China established here recently? Those are not actions of a foreign government respecting our sovereignity or of a government defending itself against the US’s attacks. That is the action of a foreign power intent on ignoring our borders and laws to enforce their own ideologies.