The Decibel - Carney’s high-stakes trip to China

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

This week, Prime Minister Mark Carney will head to China, marking the first time a Canadian prime minister has gone to China since 2017. Recent interactions between Canada and China have been wracked with tension and international incidents. But there is much at stake in this meeting, with Canada looking for new trade partners as the United States becomes increasingly unreliable.Steven Chase is the Globe’s senior parliamentary reporter. He’s here to talk about what Carney needs to balance in order to strengthen economic ties with China without upsetting the U.S., and what’s next for the Canada-China relationship.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Canada's relationship with China has been tense for a long time. At the request of U.S. authorities, Canada detained Huawei executive Meng Wangzhou in 2018. China responded by arresting the two Michaels, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavur. They were held for nearly three years. There was the investigation into allegations of foreign interference. And then, a trade war. Since last year, Canada has had a 100% tariff, on Chinese-made electric vehicles.

And China retaliated by imposing levies on Canadian canola products. But the frosty relationship between the two countries is starting to warm. This week, Prime Minister Mark Carney will make a long-anticipated trip to Beijing. It's the first time a Prime Minister

has been to China since 2017. So today, Stephen Chase is on the show. He's the Globe's senior parliamentary reporter. We'll talk about what's at stake for Carney as he tries to strengthen economic ties with China without upsetting the U.S. And what's next for the Canada-China relationship? I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Steve, thanks for coming back on the show.

Glad to be here. So, Steve, Carney is heading to China this week. Can you tell me how significant is this trip? It's pretty important. It's pretty high stakes. This is the first visit by a Canadian prime minister to China in eight years. that gap represents a major deep freeze in relations with China as Canada and the West became more wary of Beijing and its authoritarian tendencies. But of course, Mr. Carney's reason for going to China is really Donald Trump.

Mr. Carney needs to find new markets for Canada. And Asia is one of the priority markets in China specifically. You know, we're talking 20, 30 percent of the world economy. you can't miss out there. And so after sort of basically closing off the Canadian economy to China over the last 10 years, Mr. Carney is now trying to reopen it. What did it take to make this trip happen, Steve? It took a series of diplomatic trips over the last year, I would say.

Most recently, Anita Anon, the Foreign Affairs Minister, heading to China in October to meet with her counterpart, the Foreign Affairs Minister of China. And of course, Canada has really been the supplicant in this series of diplomatic entreaties. We are the ones looking for a reset. We are the ones who have been constantly going to China for the meetings. And so you can see where the power imbalance is. And as you mentioned, Steve, Canada's relationship with China has been significantly strained for about eight years now.

You said that the reason for this trip is because of the need to expand our trading partners because of what's going on with the U.S. But is it as simple as that? Like, is the U.S. trade war the reason why Canada is going to China? Yes. I mean, Donald Trump's and taking office has instituted a series of protectionist tariffs on Canada, some of which are hitting us quite hard. I'm talking about steel, for instance, or aluminum or autos. And he has also made it clear that he doesn't want, for instance,

Canadian automobiles to be sold in the U.S. Mr. Trump has cast a dark storm cloud over Canada's future. because he has thrown into doubt the special relationship Canada had in terms of selling into the U.S. market. And, of course, attracting American investment. Mr. Trump has made one of his goals is to repatriate American investment, stop having American companies make investment abroad, and instead build factories and other kinds of operations in the U.S. That hurts us.

We are in dire need of foreign capital, and in fact, foreign direct investment has been slowing over the last year. So the government has sort of plotted out three priority areas, European Union, the Gulf region, including places like the United Arab Emirates, and Asia, which is, of course, chiefly China. They want to encourage more investment and more trade. And Mr. Carney has set a 10-year goal of doubling non-U.S. trade over the next decade, which would add $300 billion annually to our export market. And what's tricky here is that what Canada does with China,

the potential to irritate the U.S., right? So you mentioned the shadow, but can you, like, delve deep into that? Like, what kind of shadow does the U.S. and Trump cast over this visit? One of the problems is, of course, Mr. Trump is not consistent, but he has repeatedly made it clear he expects allies to get on board with his anti-China agenda. And most recently, in the case of Greenland, where Mr. Trump is making imperialist claims to Greenland, one of his arguments is to keep it out of the hands of the Chinese. So what's emerging from Donald Trump as recently as the last few weeks is this idea that there should be no Chinese control of important

assets in North America. He's made that clear in his designs on Greenland that he wants to claim for the United States in order to keep it out of China's hands, out of Russia's hands. And of course, that means that, you know, critical assets or things that might be of importance to the U.S. in Canada, he may not want to see China taking a deeper role in the Canadian economy, playing a deeper role in the Canadian economy, making big investments here. Now, we both imposed EV tariffs, that is, 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs when the Biden administration was in power as a way of keeping Chinese electric vehicles out of the North American market, partly because they're subsidized by the state and overproduced, and it's unfair trade effectively. We have seen the U.S. Ambassador thank us

for that. Mr. Trump may not be keen on EVs, but he's also not keen to see China play a bigger role in North America. So that's where the rub is. That's where we've got to be careful of what we do. And it's going to be up to Mr. Carney to make the case to Mr. Trump that, look, you said you don't want to buy our automobiles. You said you don't want to buy our oil. We have to look out for our own workers. Yeah. And Steve, when you're talking about U.S. imperialism, that actually makes me think about what happened in Venezuela just last week. How does what happened there factor into this meeting? It just raises the stakes. It both raises the arguments for diversifying away from an unpredictable mercurial and potentially dangerous ally.

But it also means that Mr. Trump may be watching more carefully as we try to invite China deeper into our economy. So if you think of the analogy of walking a tightrope, well, now the wind started to blow a bit and it started to get a bit more shaky on the tightrope. Steve, I want to take a minute to talk about Taiwan. There was a delegation of five Canadian MPs on a trip to Taiwan, and we know that earlier this week, the two liberal MPs cut their trip short because of Carney's visit to China. How do relations with Taiwan factor in? China considers Taiwan a breakaway province, even though the governing Chinese Communist Party has never actually ruled Taiwan.

It wants to discourage any efforts by Western governments, Western officials, to talk to Taiwanese officials, It makes claim to the island and says that you should not be talking to people there. These are internal affairs. But of course, over the last 30 years, Canadian MPs and senators have been accepting sponsored trips to Taiwan to meet with government officials. All this being done despite China's griping. However, this week, two liberal MPs decided they were going to cut short their trip and come home early on the advice of the Canadian government. So it looks like Mr. Kearney is showing he's willing to change.

his foreign policy to change the way he treats other democracies like Taiwan in order to please China. And it only will emboldened them, I predict, to ask for more. There's lots of ways that China would like Canada to change its policies, the way it thinks about China's militarization of the South China Sea, the way it thinks about China's quashing of democracy in Hong Kong, the way it thinks about China's treatment of the Uyghurs or its behavior in international forums. So I predict that this will embolden the Chinese government to ask for more. In this case, Canada wants to open the door for more canola exports.

They want to remove a trade dispute that's going on right now. And I think the belief is if we just mollify China by not letting our MPs travel to Taiwan, that we will get that deal. When you talk about canola, there's actually this pressure from Canada's canola sector to ease up on Chinese electric vehicle tariffs because China has a very levy of more than 75% on Canadian canola seed because Canada put a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs. So canola farmers are hoping for some change there. But also last week, Doug Ford said he hoped Carney would keep EV tariffs someplace, which would help Ontario's auto sector. So there's a lot for Carney to balance here when it comes to trade. How does Carney need to balance all of this?

Well, he has to keep Western Canada happy, but he also has to keep Canada's most populous province happy. Ontario is where the majority of the auto industry is. It's not going to be possible to make both happy. The fact is, is that the biggest irritant, the biggest blockage to closer relations is this electric vehicle tariff that Canada imposed on China in 2024 in tandem with the Biden administration. China retaliated with serious tariffs on Canadian agricultural products from canola to seafood to others. And the fact is that this is going to have to start with a cut in EV tariffs. Now, maybe there's a way around that, but the canola farmers in Western Canada, particularly are hoping for relief from this trip.

So it's a lot of context here that kind of shapes what's going to be happening on this trip. I wonder, like, do we know what Prime Minister Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping are going to talk about? Like, what are the priorities here? Mr. Carney's imperative in this trip is to find some kind of breakthrough in this deadlock, where Canada has massive tariffs on Chinese EVs and China has significant tariffs on. Canadian agriculture. There has to be a breakthrough there. They have to find a way around it, even if it's not perfect. One of the problems with Mr. Carney is that he has to be careful about

allowing the floodgate open to Chinese electric vehicles because he's still about to renegotiate the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement, which governs trilateral trade, and he has to make sure that what he does in China doesn't hurt his negotiations with Donald Trump. At the same time, his other major goal in this trip is to seek new investment. Foreign direct investment in Canada has slowed because there's question marks about the future of the Canadian economy and its access to the U.S. market. Mr. Carney needs Chinese investment. He's expected to open the door for Chinese investment after a decade of us shutting the door to Chinese investment in areas like national security, defense, critical minerals. He's expected to lay out or clarify the areas where China might be

allowed to invest, to sort of smooth and make it easier for Chinese investors to want to put their money here. We'll be right back. So, Steve, do you have a sense of what China's motivation is for warming its relationship with Canada? What do they want? Well, they want more access to Western countries. They have been shut out of significant portions of foreign economies over the last 10 years as

Western governments began to see them more as a rival or a national security threat than as a partner. So, for instance, Canada locked off significant portions of its economy to China. We blocked Chinese companies from buying into our lithium sector. We blocked a company that would have had a gold mine with infrastructure near the Northwest Passage. So they want access to Western markets. They want to build closer relationships with Western markets. They're generally completely obsessed with the Americans. That is their sole focus. trying to figure out and game out where the Americans are going, it would be to their advantage to peel away allies from the U.S., to build stronger relationships with Western countries other than

the U.S. that they could then use to support their goals, their goals of gaining legitimacy for their sort of ambitious claims in the South China Sea, which, of course, contested by every other country, to build support for their effort to take Taiwan, to build support for or legitimacy for what they've done to Hong Kong, where they've basically crushed dissent and civil liberties. So there's myriad reasons, but Western leaders are beating a path to Beijing's door. The Irish prime minister, the South Korean leader already visited this year. Mr. Carney's next. Then we expect the British prime minister.

And, of course, Mr. Trump could be making his way there in April. What does that mean for Canada? It means it's a competitive market. But we have certain things. We have energy. The Chinese have been buying more and more of our oil in the last year as they shifted away from U.S. oil purchases. We have agriculture. We have resources. I would say that oil, natural gas, liquefied natural gas, other resources, those are those kind of things they can't necessarily get in other countries. And those are the things we have on offer. So we should realize that. But also, remember the G7. So getting a bigger,

footprint in a G7 economy also helps legitimize China and legitimize it in the eyes of others. So, you know, we're an important country to build ties with because other countries will watch and see what we do. Steve, what do we know about how Canadians feel about mending the relationship with China? Well, public attitudes seem to be warming. There was a poll in the fall by the Angus Reed Institute in partnership with the Aza Pacific Foundation, and they found that 27 percent of Canadians now hold a favorable view of China that's up from 16% earlier in 2025.

Now, that doesn't mean now it's all wine and roses. 60% of Canadians still view the country negatively. Over half or 51%, say Canada should focus more on its economic relationship with China. That's up 15% from 2023. And when it comes to human rights, the concern over human rights appears to have fallen. In 2019, 2020, and 2021,

more than 70% of Canadians prioritized human rights in dealing with China. That's fallen to 52%, which I think shows that the sort of economic shock that Donald Trump has delivered to Canada has made people more anxious about their future and more willing to accept tradeoffs. Is there any pressure for Carney to speak out about China's record on human rights while he's there? Yeah, there is. There are human rights groups that are raised in the case of Jimmy Lai. The Hong Kong publisher, who published what was the best read newspaper in Hong Kong, the Apple Daily, and was jailed for sedition and is facing sentencing. As we also know, China is what the G7 calls a chief enabler of Russia's war in Ukraine.

It's well documented now that China is buying Russia's oil despite Western sanctions. it's sending components and parts for weapons to Russia. And in some cases, smaller banks or transfer payment systems in China are helping the Russians conduct their financial operations outside of Western sanctions. So there has been calls for Mr. Carney to speak to to press the Chinese government about this to make sure that China is not enabling the war in Ukraine. In some ways, our foreign policies, working at cross-purposes. Canada has spent more than $22 billion sending assistance to Ukraine to

help fight off Russia. And at the same time, we're trying to build bigger ties with China, which is one of the main reasons that Russia is still able to wage war in Ukraine. Another issue that Mr. Carney is being pressed on is, of course, the repression of the Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang province of China, where over time there has been forced labor. labor, there's been detention, and there is efforts to sort of drown out the Uighur population with Han immigrants. And when it comes to Xinjiang, there's extensive documentation of Chinese state-imposed forced labor involving ethnic Uyghurs, and the government has been under pressure to remind Mr. Xi of the need to curb abuses in Xinjiang.

So during his trip to China, what are the areas that Carney needs to? to be cautious about. One of the elements that Mr. Carney has to be worried about is trade dependency on China. China has a tendency to weaponize trade. And by that I mean, the more you become dependent on China as a market, the more they feel they can use that and link it to other areas. For instance, if you begin to sell more to China, it gives them leverage to turn around and say, you should be curbing what you say about our behavior in the South China Sea.

you should be curbing what you say about Hong Kong. You should be curbing what you say about Taiwan. And it hasn't even been one year since a public inquiry's final report, which warned Ottawa that China is the most active perpetrator of foreign interference targeting Canada's democratic institutions. Just lastly here, Steve, so this trip is going to be going on for a few days. What do experts say we should consider a success for Canada? I think, first of all, some kind of movement on China's retaliation.

tariffs. The tariffs on canola, the tariffs on seafood, the tariffs on other products, to get them scaled back, to get them reduced, or some kind of commitment to do so, would be an achievement. Also, when it comes to investment, a commitment by China to invest in our industries, to invest in energy. Mr. Kearney has talked about battery tech and renewable tech, any evidence that more capital is going to be flowing into the Canadian economy. There's also been talked to Mr. County should invite Chinese automakers to set up shop in Canada, build cars in Canada with Canadian labor instead of sending them over the Pacific on a boat. Those are, I would say, the sort of benchmark for success in this trip. Okay, Steve, we'll leave it there. Thank you so much.

It's always great to have you on this show. You're welcome. That was Stephen Chase, the Globe's senior parliamentary reporter. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.