As Prime Minister Mark Carney gears up for a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week – the first visit to the country by a sitting prime minister since 2017 – an expert warns that the stakes are high and hypervigilance is advised.
Carney announced the trip last week, saying that the decision was made because Canada is looking to build a “competitive, sustainable and independent economy.”
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Vina Nadjibulla, the vice-president of research and strategy at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, called this meeting a significant test of Carney’s “pragmatic diplomacy.”
“He will have to strike a difficult balance between pursuing economic engagement with China, especially in sectors like energy, with the serious national security and economic securities that we still have to manage when it comes to China,” Nadjibulla told CTV News Channel on Monday.
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Nadjibulla, an expert on international security and peace-building, emphasized that the prime minister must find a way to avoid strategic dependence on this single trading partner.
“With China, we have a history of economic coercion,” Nadjibulla added. “China uses economic dependence, like in the case of canola, for political leverage.”
While Nadjibulla says it is important that Carney engages with China pragmatically, she points out that it will be “interesting” to see how he will navigate the conversation surrounding both Canada’s national and economic security.
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We should not confuse economic engagement with trust or with strategic alignment,” Nadjibulla said, calling Canada’s relationship with China “complex.” She added there are several economic opportunities to explore like oil, gas and agriculture.
“Pragmatic engagement is fine. Diplomatic amnesia would be a mistake,” she said.
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[Nadjibulla] says that despite this being Carney’s attempt to diversify Canada’s economic engagement, it is imperative to keep in mind that most of the Asia and the Indo-Pacific exists outside China.
“We need see China as part of that broader Indo-Pacific strategy, rather than as the totality of our engagement with Asia,” Nadjibulla said.
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