On Reflection | From Meng Wanzhou and detentions to USMCA and the Arctic: 5 rules to unfreeze Canada-China ties

The present breakdown in relations between Canada and China is neither morality play nor conspiracy. It is, instead, a tragedy in the making.

There is, in my view, nothing inevitable or natural about Canada and China becoming enemies. Indeed, I am a firm enemy of the proposition that our two countries should ever become enemies.

Canada does not know today’s China in any deep sense, and China surely overestimates the degree to which it understands Canada’s domestic and regional complexities. After all, modern Canada was born immediately after China lost the Second Opium War in the late 19th century. This means that the entire century and a half of modern Canadian statehood coincides almost exactly with the period of great destabilisation in China, and that Canadians and Chinese alike have much mutual learning to do in the context of the Chinese restabilisation and flourishing that my friend Kishore Mahbubani has called “the great convergence”.

Here’s a fact that surprises many of my Chinese friends and colleagues: Canada is older than China. Yes, I said it. Chinese civilisation is obviously far older than the Canadian project, but the modern Canadian federation is over 80 years older than the modern Chinese state. This means that, contrary to possible appearances or stereotypes, Canada’s internal political and administrative systems, at all levels of government, are highly entrenched and hugely sophisticated.

Here’s a fact that surprises many of my Canadian friends and colleagues: Canada is, in many ways, geographically closer to China than is Australia. If our Australian cousins fancy themselves “in Asia”, as it were, then aren’t we Canadians even more “in Asia”? Answer: of course we are. The Canada of the 21st century occupies some of the most strategic real estate in the world – at the very intersection of the United States, China, Russia (in the Arctic space), and the European continent (what I call “ACRE”). Indeed, as I have long argued, this Canada is likely to be a country of almost 100 million people by the century’s end – larger than any country in the European Union, and among the most important and powerful countries on Earth.

The Canada-China relationship is therefore a relationship of neighbours, great countries and proud peoples that must be recalibrated with the greatest urgency and seriousness if we are to avoid losing time, escape misunderstanding or even calamity in the short-run, and do great things together over the longer run.

Let me offer five rules.