A verbal altercation between Xi Jinping and Justin Trudeau has uncovered the tensions that reign between the two countries. The Canadian Prime Minister militates so that democratic regimes are released from economic dependence on China.
by Hélène Jouan (Montreal, Correspondent)
Analysis. China is not about to tremble, but Canada seems to wake up. After almost three years of acute diplomatic crisis linked to arrest, at the request of American justice, from Meng Wanzhou, ex-numéro two of the Huawei telecommunications giant, in Vancouver, in 2018, and the imprisonment of Two Canadian nationals by China In retaliation, the “amicable” case regulations in September 2021 augur a appeasement in relations between Beijing and Ottawa. But a change of tone and, even more, of strategy, of Canada vis-à-vis the Empire of the environment, revived hostilities.
Proof of this freezing atmosphere, while the Chinese president takes advantage of his return to the international scene at the G20 summit, in Bali, to pruffer his head of tête with foreign heads of state, Xi Jinping did not deign to organize an official appointment with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. A strong verbal altercation between the two men, Wednesday, November 16, on the sidelines of the summit, filmed by television cameras, revealed the state of tension of their relations.
The Vice-Prime Minister of Canadian, Chrystia Freeland, given for probable successor by Justin Trudeau, drew the contours of this new Canado-Chinese relationship that irritates Pékin. In a speech delivered on October 11 at the Brookings Institute, a Washington reflection group, a speech in which it sounded the death knell for the rapprochement between democratic countries and the authoritarian regimes in progress since the fall of the Berlin Wall , Chrystia Freeland called on democracies to unite on the economic level to resist autocratic regimes.
“War insurance”
Quoting Russia of Vladimir Putin, but also China and its “wolf” diplomacy, which “also skillfully and voluntarily instrumentalizes its economic ties with us to achieve its geopolitical objectives”, it has taken up the virtues of the virtues “Friend-shuring” (“amilocalization” in his text in French), a term advanced by the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, Janet Yellen, to boast the interest of democracies to strengthen their respective supply chains in order to ‘Enter the influence of authoritarian regimes. “Since 1989, we have cashed peace dividends. Today, it is time to take out war insurance,” she said.
“Ottawa finally understood that it was necessary to abandon any illusion of Xi Jinping, it is a salutary awareness because this regime only knows the language of firmness”, welcomed Guy Saint-Jacques, Canadian ambassador to China until 2016. This firm language advocating “decoupling” with China quickly materialized. The Canadian government has ordered three Chinese firms to leave the rare mineral industry in Canada, before announcing, in the name of “national security”, wanting to restrict foreign investments in this sector in the future.
You have 48.3% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.