Opinion piece by Charles Burton, a former diplomat at Canada’s embassy in Beijing, a senior fellow at Sinopsis.cz, a China-focused think tank based in Prague.

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When Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met Canadian counterpart Anita Anand for bilateral talks this spring, he said our relations must be based on “setting aside differences and seeking common ground.” But experience shows that Beijing never sets aside any differences. Rather, China expects Ottawa to simply abandon any non-trade concerns in return for greater access to the Chinese market.

In this instance, the carrot was Mr. Wang speculating that if bilateral relations maintain “a momentum of development, and our policies remain stable and positive,” trade could grow 50 or even 100 per cent, “because China will soon become the world’s largest market, and the Chinese market is opening up to Canada more and more.”

When then-Chinese president Hu Jintao visited prime minister Paul Martin in 2005, the leaders elevated relations to a “strategic partnership” and promised to double bilateral trade within five years.

Eleven years later, premier Li Keqiang told then-prime minister Justin Trudeau that China would double trade with Canada by 2025, along with settling a dispute over canola and talks on free trade.

The promises never materialized, and Beijing’s mercantilistic regime – which strictly controls the economy to maximize state wealth and power – will never give Canada access to any significant share of China’s internal markets. Beijing sustains its economy with exports, not imports.

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So it seems Prime Minister Mark Carney was played earlier this year when he let China export a quota of EVs into Canada under preferential tariffs for several years, in exchange for a nine-month reduction in China’s punitive tariffs on Canadian canola meal.

China’s Foreign Minister and its ambassador to Canada have been clear that if we want China to keep buying our canola after the agreement expires in December, we better comply with seven new conditions that Canada has agreed to for revising the Canada-China Strategic Partnership.

These “co-operative mechanisms” – including a Political and Security Consultation Mechanism, and a National Security and Rule of Law Dialogue – are blatantly designed to tip any dialogue in China’s favour.

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These restrictions on dialogue will nicely defuse Canadian outrage at China’s violations of international law, its influence and transnational repression programming in Canada, and our efforts to stop the transfer of sensitive technologies to China’s military-industrial complex.

Canada has further allowed itself to be caught in a web of Chinese coercion. For example, facing pressure from the threat of further U.S. tariffs, Canada recently tabled legislation prohibiting imports of goods produced by forced labour. But Beijing is weaponizing a specific clause in that legislation, which allows Ottawa discretion over blacklisting geographic regions alleged to be complicit in forced-labour production. China wants Canada to exempt supply chains tied to Uyghur and Tibetan regions, and will likely attempt to leverage this by stalling negotiations under the Canada-China Economic and Trade Cooperation Roadmap, which was completed during Mr. Carney’s visit to China in January.

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The real question is this: How many more times will Ottawa be flim-flammed by Chinese politicians dissembling about huge economic benefits if we give them what works so well in their favour?

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