Carney, right, and Xi make their way to their seats after shaking hands at the start of a meeting in Gyeongju on Oct. 31, 2025.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Colin Robertson is a former diplomat and host of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute’s Global Exchange podcast.
Whenever Prime Minister Mark Carney eventually takes Xi Jinping up on his invitation to visit China, expectations should be set deliberately low. This will not be a reconciliation, nor a return to the expansive engagement that once defined Canada–China relations, but a guarded reset: a pragmatic effort to stabilize a necessary but adversarial relationship amid intensifying great-power rivalry.
Success begins with realism about China’s leadership. As longtime China scholar Orville Schell argues, Beijing’s external behaviour cannot be separated from the internal logic of the Chinese Communist Party – or from the formative experiences of Mr. Xi himself. The Chinese President is not merely an assertive nationalist responding to China’s rise; he is a political survivor forged by trauma, ideological struggle and relentless internal competition.
Purged alongside his family during the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Xi learned a defining lesson: power is never secure, and weakness invites destruction. That worldview continues to shape Chinese diplomacy. China’s foreign policy is not simply about advancing interests abroad; it is about preserving legitimacy at home. Strength must be displayed, status defended, and compromise tightly managed, if allowed at all. Canadian diplomacy that ignores this reality will misread both signals and limits.
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What, then, should Canada want from China?
At a minimum, Canada wants predictability. China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner, albeit far behind the United States. In 2024, China enjoyed roughly a three-to-one trade advantage. At the same time, the Hogue report identifies China as the most active perpetrator of foreign interference in Canada, while Mr. Carney has described China as Canada’s biggest security threat. That tension cannot be resolved but it can be managed.
Canada wants stable access for core exports such as agri-food, energy, and services. It wants fewer shocks: no sudden trade retaliation, no arbitrary detentions, no unexplained regulatory freezes. It wants functioning diplomatic channels capable of containing disputes before they spiral. And it wants to defend Canadian sovereignty – political, economic, and institutional – by enforcing clear red lines on interference, espionage and coercion without permanent escalation.
In short, Canada wants a relationship that works, even if it remains strained.
Prime Minister Mark Carney accepted an invitation from President Xi Jinping to visit China after the two met last year.Fred Dufour/The Associated Press
What Canada will not get should be equally clear. Political liberalization in China is not on the table. The long-standing Western wager that economic engagement would produce democratic convergence has failed. Under Mr. Xi, the Communist Party has tightened ideological discipline, expanded surveillance, and centralized authority. Human rights conditions in Xinjiang and Hong Kong will not improve because of bilateral dialogue with Ottawa.
Nor will Canada persuade Beijing to soften its positions on Taiwan, the South China Sea, or its strategic alignment with Russia. These issues are embedded in the Party’s historical narrative of humiliation and revival. Public concessions would be interpreted domestically as weakness, something Mr. Xi cannot afford.
Canada also will not secure a comprehensive trade agreement featuring the gender, labour, and environmental provisions pursued under Justin Trudeau. Political, security and alliance constraints make such ambitions unrealistic.
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But what Canada might get is stabilization.
Mr. Carney’s early signals – reopening senior-level dialogue, engaging Premier Li Qiang at the United Nations last September, and announcing plans to visit China – suggest seriousness without illusion. Stabilization could include clearer dispute-resolution mechanisms, restored access for selected agricultural exports, and reduced arbitrary regulatory pressure. Limited co-operation on climate-adjacent issues, such as methane reduction, clean-energy standards, or biodiversity, is also plausible where interests overlap without touching core security concerns.
People-to-people ties are another area where progress is realistic. Students, tourists, researchers and family connections reduce misperception and create constituencies for stability. Rebuilding these links, while protecting academic integrity and national security, is among the least controversial and most productive steps Canada can take.
What Canada could get, if it manages the relationship skillfully, is room to manoeuvre.
That logic aligns with Mr. Carney’s broader economic-security agenda. Trade diversification, industrial policy, critical-minerals strategy, and stronger state capacity are not protectionism; they are the foundations of credible diplomacy.
Guardrails matter. Canada will not pursue deep co-operation with China in artificial intelligence, defence, sensitive technologies, or critical infrastructure. The risks to security, intellectual property and alliance cohesion are too high.
If Mr. Carney’s visit delivers modest results – restored dialogue, reopened markets, clearer rules of the road – it should be judged a success. The alternative is not principled isolation, but unmanaged risk.
China under Xi Jinping is powerful, proud, and insecure. Canada cannot change that reality. What it can do is approach it with discipline, realism, and resilience: open where possible, firm where necessary, and clear-eyed about what engagement can and cannot achieve. For a middle power, that is not timidity. It is statecraft.