Canada needs to be cautious about pivoting from the U.S. lest it fall into China’s arms

For all of the confusion about where the Ottawa-Washington meltdown will lead, one thing seems certain. The big winners of this diplomatic collapse will be China and other repressive dictatorships eager to become our new “strategic” partners and further undermine the world’s stabilizing democracy bloc.

Opinion piece by Charles Burton, former diplomat at Canada’s embassy in Beijing, senior fellow at Sinopsis.cz, a China-focused think tank based in Prague, Czech Republic. He is and author of ‘The Beaver and the Dragon: How China Out-Manoeuvred Canada’s Diplomacy, Security and Sovereignty’.

Archived link

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Beijing in particular wants to inherit Canada’s economic dependence. Establishing such a broader North American beachhead will only further President Xi Jinping’s resolute goal of displacing the U.S. as a global hegemon, and cementing a China-dominated world order whose very foundation is the rejection of democratic freedoms and human rights.

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If Canada ever reaches a point where attacks on our economy put families’ livelihoods at stake, then standing firm on our moral principles will give way to tolerating – or at least ignoring – human rights abuses in exchange for restoring Canadian prosperity through trade and investment with the likes of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and China. As someone who has been sanctioned by both Beijing and Moscow for standing up for Canadian democratic and civil values in global affairs, this prospect is deeply troubling.

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When Mr. Xi makes a landmark trip to North America next month, it is expected he will add a Canadian stop, the first time in 16 years a Chinese head of state has visited this country. And this at a time when there have been calls for Ottawa to scrap restrictions on importing Chinese-made EVs, to locate Chinese auto factories here, and to even encourage Canadians to buy “Great Wall wine” instead of Californian.

In contrast to the belligerent threats that Canadians have been conditioned to expect from Washington, the Chinese President will project dignity and a tone of respect and goodwill toward Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Canadian business associates, who will be offering a warm welcome to the Chinese delegation.

But like Howitt’s “Spider and the Fly,” in which a cunning spider uses seduction and manipulation to lure a fly into its web, Canada should be wary of those who wield flattery and charm to disguise other intentions. Rushing to embrace China’s expansionist and calculating totalitarian regime will never work out well for Canada’s overall interest.

In the current hostile landscape, Canada could find itself deeply regretting coming out of an American frying pan into a Chinese fire.

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  • ScottyOP
    38·
    14 小时前

    Canada must seek closer ties with like-minded democracies (what it does already). The ‘Chinese path’ is - at best - a short-term convenience, but in the long run a lost game for Canadians and the free world in general. Beijing and other dictatorial regimes aren’t reliable partners, no matter what happens in the U.S.

              • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
                2·
                11 小时前

                I actually did Google it. It was a study done by alliance for democracy, a think tank started by some old NATO commander, working with latana, a marketing firm.

                Harvard had nothing to do with this.

                  • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
                    11·
                    10 小时前

                    Ya know, it’s corporate employee survey season right about now. Fun fact: we actually exclude the survey results from my Chinese coworkers, because they always put down 100%, 5/5, everything is perfect, and that skews the survey results.

                    Otherwise, I generally would agree that life in china for the average person who keeps their head down (outside of working hours) is probably better than for the average US citizen. It’s just that I’d believe the survey results if they were closer to 60%.

        • mrdown@lemmy.world
          51·
          13 小时前

          Is a two party system any better where both side shame others from not voting to their favourite political cult? Aren’t those who people advocating for a one party system?

          • IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works
            33·
            13 小时前

            Doesn’t matter. I’m talking about China. The US having a shitty democracy does not do anything to legitimize China’s lack of democracy.

            • mrdown@lemmy.world
              4·
              13 小时前

              An oligarchy system is not a democracy no such a thing as shitty democracy and I don’t think saying that legitimate chia lack of democracy

              • IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works
                23·
                12 小时前

                Assuming that the oligarchy system you are referring to is the US, I don’t care. I don’t live in the US, I didn’t mention the US, and whatever the US does has no bearing on whether or not China can accurately be considered democratic.

                • mrdown@lemmy.world
                  2·
                  12 小时前

                  Same thing is European counties to a lesser degree.

                  and whatever the US does has no bearing on whether or not China can accurately be considered democratic.

                  How many time are you going to pretend that I defend China? I am saying Chinese system is bad and the west system too

        • Nonconfrontational@lemmy.ml
          3·
          12 小时前

          They lifted 800 million people out of poverty in 40 years. 90% of Chinese adults own their home.

          Why would they lose an election?

      • ScottyOP
        35·
        13 小时前

        This is the same cheap propaganda that is so widespread here. China is a dictatorship where people can’t openly say their opinion about democracy nor anything else, at least not if the opinion differs from the Communist Party’s narrative. And Beijing’s human rights violations have been evident for decades.

        Edit:

        I remembered a study I read some time ago and could now find it. It’s from 2024, and it essentially says that when Chinese citizens are surveyed anonymously, support for party and government plummets:

        Most public opinion research in China uses direct questions to measure support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and government policies. These direct question surveys routinely find that over 90 per cent of Chinese citizens support the government. From this, scholars conclude that the CCP enjoys genuine legitimacy. In this paper, we present results from two survey experiments in contemporary China that make clear that citizens conceal their opposition to the CCP for fear of repression. When respondents are asked directly, we find, like other scholars, approval ratings for the CCP that exceed 90 per cent. When respondents are asked in the form of list experiments, which confer a greater sense of anonymity, CCP support hovers between 50 per cent and 70 per cent. This represents an upper bound, however, since list experiments may not fully mitigate incentives for preference falsification. The list experiments also suggest that fear of government repression discourages some 40 per cent of Chinese citizens from participating in anti-regime protests. Most broadly, this paper suggests that scholars should stop using direct question surveys to measure political opinions in China.

        This is just one among many studies that show that ‘perception’ of democracy isn’t that simple to illustrate just by something like a diagram as propagandists make it seem. It should be clear that directly asking citizens who live under a dictatorial regime what they think about their government will provide no useful answers in my opinion.