This year began with leaders from Finland, South Korea, Ireland, Canada, and the United Kingdom joining the parade of Western ministers and presidents making official visits to China to defrost, manage and stabilize relations with Beijing in a Trump 2.0 world. Most were seeking three kinds of outcomes: economic relief or advantages, reduced volatility through dialogue mechanisms, and strategic optionality. Most also signalled intent to accommodate increasingly harsh geopolitical realities.
The trend is less about pro-China pivots and more reflective of transactional hedging and temporizing under hegemonic uncertainty. These leaders are rationally betting that a limited effort and some diplomatic smirking can buy them time. Their short-term “wins” have been access to General Secretary Xi Jinping and modest trade and investment goodies, aka “deliverables” in government parlance.
The essence of the trade is “face” for “face-time”. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) designs these visits to signal its dominant position in the global hierarchy, mute public criticism of its bad behaviour, show that others are accepting normalization on its terms, and use their displays of respect to imply political endorsement of its propaganda narratives.
The problem:Behaviour that’s individually rational for each visiting leader can be collectively and cumulatively harmful. Taken together, such meetings can alter expectations about what degree of accommodation is now the price for access to China’s market and its Politburo Standing Committee members. The cumulative risk for Western governments is the precedent they’re setting, the lessons the CCP will draw from these encounters (pressure works), and whether they do more to legitimize the CCP than they do to bolster others’ security and prosperity.
This creates problems for aligning strategy, whether U.S.-led, EU-centred, or in the style of middle power coalitions that Mark Carney advocated at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. What looks like tactical de-escalation in the near term can erode coalition capacity that Washington will likely need and want if it regains leverage over supply-chain chokeholds, rivalry intensifies and its China policy hardens. Expect whiplash in a couple of years.
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung and First Lady Kim Hea-kyung take a selfie with Chinese President Xi Jinping and First Lady Peng Liyuan at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on January 5, 2026. Photo: Lee Jae-myung, via X.
A new survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations illustrates the dilemma: Donald Trump’s “America First” posture is pushing other countries’ perceptions and policies toward China, even as elites and publics remain wary of Beijing’s use of coercive leverage.
I’ll explore the future implications of these visits in another post. For now let’s talk about the context of the China these leaders are dealing with by synthesizing key points from some of my recent interviews on Canada–China relations, strategic rivalry between China and the West, and international order more broadly.
Below you’ll find links to the resulting coverage, with a signature quote from each, followed by a synthesis of the strategic narrative I tried to convey.
China’s broader agenda is fundamentally adversarial to Canadian interests and values. Why? Western societies follow the Kantian ideal (at least in principle if surely not always in practice) that we never use humans just as a means to an end. Humans are ends in themselves, and have value in themselves. For the Chinese Communist Party, humans are just means to an end. I’ve heard that personally from Party insiders.
The purpose of the Chinese Communist Party’s playbook is to advance China’s power and influence around the world. The risk now is that Canadian politicians rush into agreements with China that deliver short-term benefits but have problematic implications for Canadian sovereignty and our freedoms.
Making China the core of Canada’s diversification strategy is not a good idea, because it is not a geopolitically reliable partner. If you create dependency on China, the CCP will weaponize it for political purposes – and to silence Canada and constrain Canadian foreign policy. What’s needed is a long-term vision of principled realism to protect the country’s interests and values.
Canada and all open societies need to strengthen their intelligence and security capabilities, not just military, but also the capacity to prevent foreign interference and influence and transnational repression. And we need to double down on alliances with like-minded partners to try to shore up as much of the multilateral liberal order as possible through trade agreements.
The China we must now face
In all these media interviews, I emphasized a basic reality: today’s China is controlled by a hardline authoritarian regime that increasingly resembles a totalitarian system. It treats other peoples and nations as instruments in service of the Party-state’s overarching ambition to become the world’s leading power, dominate the Indo-Pacific, and reshape global governance in line with its own solipsistic worldview.
The quixotic era of hopeful engagement—the belief that China could be changed by integrating it into the international order and a liberal trading system—is over. Since Xi Jinping took office in 2012, China has moved steadily away from a temporary interlude of softer authoritarianism toward a harsher, more centralized, and more ideologically rigid form of rule. The system today is far more repressive, securitized, and driven by fear than most outsiders appreciate.
My own arbitrary detention was a deeply personal reminder of what that system is capable of. Years of diplomatic work had familiarized me with how the Party-state functions; experiencing it firsthand underscored the urgency of protecting Canada and Canadians and other citizens of free societies from what Beijing is now increasingly prepared to do in the ruthless pursuit of its aims.
China’s mercantilist strategy is de-industrializing the West
Economically, China’s model remains aggressively mercantilist. The Chinese Communist Party seeks to extract commodities and energy from countries like Canada while it moves up the value chain and captures the commanding heights of manufacturing and advanced technology. Economies that rely primarily on commodities often struggle to sustain productivity, mainly because of the institutional, structural, and policy choices that tend to go along with commodity dependence.
Without a robust industrial base, it’s difficult to remain an advanced economy. Meanwhile China’s channeling its growing industrial power into a sweeping civil-military fusion program driving the breathtaking expansion of the People’s Liberation Army.
A liberal international system—in both values and economic structure—is fundamentally incompatible with a one-party hegemon. Whether deliberately or as a byproduct of its geoeconomic strategy, China is dumping surplus industrial production into foreign markets in an effort to sustain domestic growth. That’s hollowing out competitors’ manufacturing bases and locking in asymmetric dependence. In this context, tariffs on Chinese overcapacity, especially in strategic sectors such as electric vehicles, are not reckless acts of protectionism. Instead, they are prudent policies and necessary defensive measures. Can minimum prices and quotas accomplish the same task? We’re about to find out.
High-tech cooperation with China has likewise become increasingly impossible. For decades, Beijing has required foreign firms to transfer technology as the price of market access and has repeatedly siphoned off innovations for military or strategic use. Genuine reciprocity in sensitive sectors is obviously no longer viable, if indeed it ever was. Canada must protect its strategic industries and emerging technologies accordingly.
Dialogue despite divergence
Canada cannot assess China in isolation. We are operating in a turbulent geopolitical environment shaped by shifts in the U.S.-Canada relationship, rising great-power rivalry, and the increasingly assertive agenda of authoritarian states. China is reshaping the world as profoundly as climate change: faster than our political systems can adapt, yet slowly enough that the full scale of the transformation is often hard to register in the daily news cycle.
At its root, the Canada-China relationship is defined by a clash of interests and agendas. Beijing seeks a world more amenable to one-party rule and to its own dominance. Canada seeks to protect its sovereignty, its security, and the prosperity of a modern, advanced industrial economy, as well as what remains of an international order based on rules with embedded liberal values. Dialogue cannot erase this structural divergence, but it can help to manage it.
Diplomacy without delusion
Dealing with China is unavoidable. The country is too large and too systemically important to ignore. But all interactions must be careful and conducted from a position of strategic forethought rather than improvisational naïveté or hasty transactional “pragmatism". The West’s policy of containment of the Soviet Union during the Cold War is not an exact model for how to do that, but it’s a useful benchmark for the level of caution and vigilance required. Given how enmeshed China has become in global networks, and its greater scale and power relative to the USSR, constrainmentis a more realistic strategic framework.
High-level diplomacy with Xi Jinping matters precisely because decision-making in the PRC system has become so centralized. But Canadians must not accept the CCP’s demands to adopt a “correct perception” of China—which is basically shorthand for silencing criticism in exchange for access. That’s not realism; it’s conditionality dressed up as diplomacy.
Diversify or be dependent
For the Canadian government and the Canadian public alike, my advice is simple: keep calm and diversify. When relations with the United States become difficult, we mustn’t panic or rush into deeper economic dependence on an authoritarian state that may offer short-term opportunity at the cost of long-term vulnerability.
Democracies should strengthen trade, investment, and security ties with other democracies and likeminded states that share interests and are at least not strategic threats—across Europe, Latin America, Africa, and especially the dynamic Indo-Pacific including ASEAN, Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, and other CPTPP partners. From such a sturdy foundation, Canada can deal with China with a stronger hand.
As in any relationship, trying too hard to please or appearing desperate rarely produces good outcomes. Confidence, clarity, and firm boundaries matter.
A definite need for deterrence
China is also materially supporting Russia’s war effort through energy purchases, machine-tool supply, and financial assistance in circumvention of sanctions. At the same time, it is intensifying pressure in the South China Sea and around Taiwan. If Beijing concludes that deterrence in the Western Pacific is weakening, the risks of conflict rise.
Modern conflict is now an industrial and technological competition. Think drones, AI, advanced manufacturing, and resilient supply chains. Canada and its allies must rebuild industrial capacity, strengthen shared technological ecosystems, and improve defence procurement to restore credible deterrence and reduce the likelihood of war.
The weaponization threshold test
Every interaction with China, whether commercial, technological, political, or diplomatic, should be evaluated through a simple test: Will this create leverage that could later be weaponized against us?If the answer is yes, stop, or at least proceed with extreme caution.
Limited, bounded trade is possible when benefits are clear and strategic risks are low. Dependency in leverage-sensitive sectors is simply untenable. Yes, there is no single substitute for China. But the vulnerabilities aren’t aggregate, they’re specific and sectoral. Fix the over-dependence where it really matters.
The challenge before us now
In a world where authoritarian powers are increasingly assertive, the task is not retreat, but the disciplined securing of Canada’s future. That means a principled defence of our democracy, our economy, our security, and our values.
It also requires resilience at home and stronger partnerships abroad, grounded in a sober understanding of the authoritarian ambition we now face. Canada must communicate a coherent and confident narrative to the world—not rhetorical, but rooted in the reality of the country’s tangible advantages. Our actions must demonstrate, consistently and credibly, why long-term partnership with Canada is the more reliable choice.
A disordered world also demands a rapid improvement in China competence: a better-informed public, a more realistic media conversation, and policymakers equipped to navigate systemic rivalry. The illusions of the past no longer serve us. What is required now is clarity of purpose, confidence of posture, and coherence of strategy.
What happens next will not be decided by slogans or sentiment, but by choices that are deliberate and sometimes uncomfortable, made by governments, businesses, and citizens alike. China policy is no longer a niche foreign-policy file. It is now central to Canada’s economic future, national security, and democratic resilience. That demands sustained public attention, institutional memory, and political courage. Drift is no longer a viable strategy.
In trade, in technology, in diplomacy, and in defence, Canada must move beyond reactive swings and anchor its China policy in long-term strategic planning that survives election cycles and media shocks. The most dangerous policy would be neither confrontation nor engagement, but complacent improvisation.
For Canadians, the central responsibility is to stay informed, resist comforting illusions, and demand principled seriousness from those who govern. This is not some distant geopolitical drama. The decisions made now will shape our security, our economy, and our freedom for decades.
StrategicEffects consultants Jonathan Landreth, Patricia Xavier and Joe Widacki contributed research for this post.
Comment: China’s abductions of foreign nationals should carry costs and consequences
https://www.politico.eu/article/chinese-abductions-of-foreign-nationals-should-carry-costs-and-consequences/
Excellent, Michael. Thank you! Your previous essay on “correct perceptions” is also fantastic. Geremie