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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sure, because the USA has no history of economic coercion.
Another damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. I wish him and the entire trade team the best of luck.
I don’t trust Mark Carney much and he’s doing a shit job of managing things in Canada so far, but if there’s one thing he ought to be good at it’s negotiating a trade agreement with China.
Not long long ago, Carney said that China is Canada’s biggest security threat with respect to foreign interference in Canada and is an emerging threat in the Arctic, and he was saying that “we’re taking action to address.”
So at least he as a very realistic picture, let’s hope he is taking the right action.
he’s doing a shit job of managing things in Canada so far,
betcha those “things” are a PC Premiere’s fault.
I think Carney will do okay, overall. He doesn’t need advice from an international security expert.
Vina Nadjibulla has been doing a lot of media appearances recently and is not some impartial security expert or academic either. Her spouse is Michael Kovrig. The fact that she is in the media so often recently with no acknowledgment of the fact that her husband is a central figure in the historic breakdown of Canada-China relations should raise eyebrows. This article even addresses the arrest of Michael Kovrig while completely neglecting to mention that the person whose opinion they’re presenting as arms length expert analysis is actually married to him.
There are many academic experts around in Canada with deep insights on China and without backgrounds of such a deeply questionable nature wrt bias, but Vina keeps getting big platforms that others do not. Is she hyper-motivated to seek the opportunities out? If so, why? Are the outlets specifically seeking her out for a reason? If so, what is it? And, why is her deeply personal connection to the breakdown of Canada-China relations almost never mentioned?
Her spouse is Michael Kovrig
OMG. This makes so much sense now.
The fact that she is in the media so often recently with no acknowledgment of the fact that her husband is a central figure in the historic breakdown of Canada-China relations should raise eyebrows.
Especially since Kovrig and Spavor were actually spying for North Korea.
