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.
[…]
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.
especially while China is actually offering to work with us and to help us out in dealing with our biggest immediate threat.
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.
China is a dictatorship country with many flaws.
But for too long, Canadians have ignored the vicious American Gorilla standing up at their door.
Same with the USA
The two Michaels were both American State Department agents, with close ties to both American political parties. This is provable. One was deeply tied to the Republican party. He was the one that was active in North Korea, and helped a Republican agent, Dennis Rodman, to get an inside track with the North Korean leaders. He also worked closely with the Republican party to create back door influence with the North Koreans and the Chinese, facilitating various Republican operative visits to China. The other was a Vice President - Asian operations for International Crisis Group, a (Democratic) George Soros -influenced American State Department extension. They were both operatives for the American State Department in China. They also had Canadian passports, not American, so the Americans could not intervene. Perfect targets for the Chinese regime, in response to our Canadian government co-operating with the American State Department in their feud with Huawei.
https://macleans.ca/news/world/kim-jong-un-meet-the-nhl/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/international-crisis-group-michael-kovrig-china-canada-1.5770575
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/illinois-playbook/2018/06/12/rodmans-transformation-279683
It was absolutely not a ‘random choice’ that China picked the two Michaels.
It was like a week ago he had full confidence in his minister who wanted to ship a Canadian citizens issuing anti-China tweets in Canada to China for execution. Then replaced him with someone equally bad.
I’d assume he can’t see them as that bad when he wants a Canadian gestapo for fighting anti-CPC rhetoric.
I don’t see it. How is China a geopolitical threat to Canada? I get it’s a threat to the Chinese people, being a dictatorship, and to their neighbors, being jingoistic, but how are they a threat to us?
In the same way the Americans have been a threat to ideologically misaligned countries around the world for decades, through influence, interference, subterfuge, and meddling.
Americans own our media and boost or snuff our politicians, or apply pressure on us to change our policies, China may very well get to the same level of influence over time. They’ve started on that road.
They’re just as involved in the Arctic as Russia is, not to mention a lot of their illegal fishing in our waters. They’ve been just as involved in trying to put people in positions of power in our government, and have had their own CCP police stations where people can report on dissenters of the CCP on Canadian land.
This thread is so focused in other comments about how “America is just as bad if not worse of a problem for Canada!” And that alone makes me wonder how much Chinese propaganda is showing up on Canadian social media channels, even newer ones like Lemmy. The fact of the matter is that there can be multiple threats, and ignoring China just because the US is being a big, loud, scary threat right now is not what I want the leader of my country to be focused on. Carney has been doing well to bring up the problem of the US wanting our minerals, while also pointing out other adversarial problems focused around trying to open up shipping lanes through the Arctic in our land.
The way people (especially on the left) talk about politics is very reminiscent of ancient anthropomorphism. People like to assign human emotions to countries in order to judge their relationships. Understanding the nuances of political structure is very difficult, and if you don’t understand (I am one of them) it’s better if people don’t get involved.
The entire mess between the Western world and China goes all the way back to when the Roman Catholic (Empire) Church and the Pope in Rome (Roman Emperor) forbade the Chinese to honor their ancestors, in the 17’th century (Qing Dynasty). The Jesuits made good infiltration into the Chinese culture, traveling along the Silk Road, in the early 17’th century, bringing knowledge and scientific discovery to the Chinese. Since the Jesuits predominantly focused on God Himself as a universal deity (not the Pope) there was some acceptance by the Chinese peoples to this socialist religion full of compassion, humility, and humanity. On the other hand, when the Pope and the Roman Catholic (Empire) Church got involved, everything switched from worship of God to fielty to the Pope. , The Pope insisted that the only venue for a Catholic, and thus ‘the people’, to seek solace, comfort, moral guidance, and forgiveness was through him (the Pope). The Chinese had a many-thousand-year tradition of seeking moral guidance, comfort, and personal direction from their ancestors. This fit in well with the Jesuit teachings, but was antithetical to the Pope’s need for personal power and domination. There could only be one master over the soul, and that was the Pope. Therefore, the Pope forbade this practice. The Chinese were not to honor their ancestors, but were to honor the Pope instead. Only through the Pope could there be salvation. Honoring one’s ancestors was therefore heretical and blasphemy.
The Chinese, of course, were very resentful that a foreigner, living in a foreign land, who had absolutely no connection to Chinese culture, could tell the Chinese whom they could honor and in what fashion, and so in the 17’th century the Chinese peoples kicked the Roman Catholic (Empire) Church out of China.
Ever since, the Roman Catholic (Empire) Church has had it out for the Chinese. Not just China, but the Chinese themselves. It became a cultural/racial thing.
As a result of the Opium Wars, the Roman Catholic (Empire) Church re-established a toe-hold in China by virtue of conquest, only to be kicked out again in the 1950’s, when the Chinese peoples firmly and thoroughly purged China of all foreign cultural and identity influences, and restored their traditional culture and identity. The problem was not Catholicism, and even Christianity itself, the problem was that the Pope insisted it be entirely controlled by himself, an outsider to China, a foreigner. The Chinese allowed the Catholic Church in China, as long as the entire leadership of the church were Chinese, living in China, respectful of the thousands-of-years cultural identity of the Chinese. It was to be a made-in-China Catholic religion, recognizing Chinese history and precedent… After all, the Chinese cultural religious background and identify are at least twice as old as Christianity.
Most of the Western negative attitude towards China stems from the Roman Catholic (Empire) Church crusade against the Chinese for refusing to bow down to the dictates of the Roman Catholic (Emperor) Pope, and for the refusal of the Chinese peoples to accept the moral, ideological, and ethical authority of a foreign (non-Chinese) power.
This is extremely narrow and one-sided. This problem went both ways.
For example, when western diplomats went to China to negotiate trade, they were often thrown out for not bringing convoys of gold and silver as tribute just to talk to the Emperor, since in those days China was such a local superpower that the very concept that a foreign nation wouldn’t kowtow and beg for scraps at the Emperor’s feet didn’t exist. They thought that diplomats daring to stand without groveling in front of the Emperor was a direct insult and verging on a declaration of war.
This is why so many western diplomats simply went around the Imperial court, which is also a significant reason why the opium wars happened (though not exclusively. The west is heavily to blame for escalating and taking advantage).
Both sides refused to back down, so it both underhanded means as well as military force was utilized. Neither side accepted to consider the other as an equal, so when a clash of needs and desires came about, physical domination was the only possible result. Nowadays, China is still using the same principals that the Emperors of eld held, but is trying to use the west’s old methods back against them.
I wont say that the west isn’t at fault at any point along the way, but China’s means and motivations are equally as bad and there is no justification aside from greed, pride, and envy for what they are doing. People complain about all the stuff the CIA’s been doing, but you have to ask yourselves, how do you justify China sending thousands of fishing boats just outside of Argentina’s EEZ? You know, in Atlantic waters, not even Pacific ones.
And this isn’t even starting on how China keeps making artificial islands in the south China seas to extend their claims on territorial waters, boxing in the Philippines, Indonesia, and the other local powers that are still so poor that the Halifax-class is more like a battleship compared to what their navies have.
Wow. What mythological fiction book did you read that in, or is it a direct product of your own mind?
Every bt of it sounds exactly like the kind of China-bashing propaganda that the Roman Catholic (empire) Church spreads.
Did you know that Amnesty International was founded by a devout Catholic, and the purpose was to promote Catholic propaganda as ‘an independent voice’? Everything that Amnesty International says about China is vetted by the pope.
God fucking dammit. Wrong move Carney. We are either going to be attached to America or China, and America is threatening our sovereignty.
Brookfield has extensive holdings in the Chinese economy. Many established when Carney was at the helm. Carney is definitely not anti-China when investments are considered. However, Carney is of his own admission devout Catholic, and it will remain to be seen if the Roman Catholic (Empire) Church’s antipathy and cultural prejudices against the Chinese influence his political decisions.
Total loser shameful move. Canada has unanimous loyalty to US propaganda among politicians and media, and deprogramming Canadians is essential. This is hopefully just political baby kissing, but Canada is F’d if its only option is to submit to US empire.
Lmao, ur saying that we should totally align ourselves with CHINA out of all nations
- A very considerable portion of goods are manufactured by China already, with tools that NOBODY ELSE has. Trump’s “vision” for American manufacturing is a fantasy, we NEED China whether you like it or not.
- The USA is a fascist country that is isolating itself. We are tying ourselves to a sinking ship if we continue in this fashion.
Not align ourselves against China is the choice Canada must be deprogrammed against. US programming ensures US subservience.
