After Years of Hostility, Carney Opens the Door to Beijing

(Image courtesy: Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada)

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s October 31 meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping marked the first formal leader-to-leader contact between Canada and China in eight years, signalling a move away from the confrontational tone of the 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy.

The nearly 40-minute conversation on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit was described by both sides as a “turning point,” according to Carney’s office. Carney said the goal was to “rebuild ties,” conceding afterward that Beijing “doesn’t recognize the level of concern we have” about foreign-interference allegations but that both countries would agree to disagree. The official readout called it a pragmatic and constructive renewal of relations and confirmed that Carney accepted Xi’s invitation to visit China at a “mutually convenient time.”

Within days, Beijing restored Canada’s approved-destination status for Chinese group tourism, reversing a 2023 suspension imposed during the interference dispute. In 2019, more than 700,000 visitors came from China; the 2025 volume is still below 60 percent of that.

A ‘recalibrated’ relationship

The Prime Minister’s Office said the meeting came at the end of Carney’s first official trip through the Indo-Pacific, a tour that included Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea, and confirmed that Canada and China had directed officials to resolve trade irritants “quickly.” Agriculture, seafood and electric vehicles were identified as priorities, and the leaders discussed “pathways” for cooperation in clean energy, manufacturing, agriculture and international finance, a clear departure from the adversarial tone of Canada’s 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy.

Carney’s team said his new mission was to double Canada’s non-US exports within ten years and that the Indo-Pacific would be central to that goal. Officials promised a more “pragmatic and constructive” relationship with Beijing, even as they highlighted a new defence pact with South Korea.

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand called China’s tourism move “another important step in the recalibrated bilateral relationship.” Her choice of words, “recalibrated,” further hints at a broader rewrite of the 2022 strategy, which had labelled China “an increasingly disruptive power.” Carney’s government, though led by the same governing party that drafted that policy, now argues that economic necessity requires a reset.

Canadians are more open to friendlier Chinese relations than they were earlier this year. Polling courtesy of Angus Reid.

The US factor

The pivot comes amid a prolonged trade confrontation between Canada and China that grew out of Ottawa’s close alignment with Washington’s Indo-Pacific agenda. In 2022, then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken travelled to Ottawa to meet with then-Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, days after Washington unveiled its own Indo-Pacific plan. Canada soon signaled its intent to join the US-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and adopted much of its language on “countering economic coercion.” The alignment deepened as Canadian warships conducted transits through the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea alongside US forces.

And that posture carried into trade. In 2024, Canada imposed a 100 percent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles and a 25 percent levy on Chinese steel and aluminum. Beijing retaliated with duties on Canadian canola, peas, seafood and pork — including a 75 percent tariff on canola seed — hitting Prairie and Atlantic exporters hardest.

Carney’s meeting with Xi was pitched as the beginning of a solution. He told reporters in Gyeongju that the discussion “has set in motion efforts to resolve the trade dispute.” Yet it also underscored the economic pressure driving Ottawa’s pivot: US President Donald Trump’s tariff regime has pressured Ottawa to rekindle its relationship with China.

Continuity behind the reset

Despite the change in rhetoric, Carney leads the same governing party that authored the 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy. The institutional mindset that built that hawkish framework remains intact. In practice, Ottawa’s new approach looks less like innovation than crisis management. It’s an effort to steady relations after years of self-inflicted strain. The government’s earlier moral posturing toward China — framed as “defence” and “protecting democracy” — was always less about principle than about alignment with Washington’s containment strategy. Now that the United States has turned inward, the same governing party is abandoning its own narrative of virtue​.

Five resets and counting

Over the past 20 years, Canada has tried several “resets” with China. Stephen Harper started out keeping his distance, then moved to closer economic ties by the end of the 2000s. In 2016, Justin Trudeau pushed for a free-trade deal, but relations soured after the 2018 Huawei/Meng Wanzhou case. Now Mark Carney is attempting the next reset.

The pattern is familiar: engagement, backlash, reset. Critics argue this reflects an inability to sustain a coherent China policy. Carney’s openness to Chinese investment in renewables and battery storage echoes earlier phases of optimism that later ran aground.

The question now is whether this government will avoid the same trap. Carney has not announced any move to lift the tariffs Canada imposed alongside the United States, and Beijing has yet to remove its own. Yet the Prime Minister’s openness to Chinese investment in renewables and battery storage, and his overtures on renewable-energy partnerships, suggest changes are coming, at least temporarily.

For a governing party that only three years ago warned of “economic coercion,” this reversal is interesting. It raises the question of whether Carney’s government is practicing independence from Washington, or simply reacting to it, again.

Carney’s visit to South Korea also produced a new security and defence partnership and a planned 2026 trade mission — evidence that the military aspect of the Indo-Pacific agenda remains. But the centerpiece of his trip, and of his government’s evolving foreign policy, is the China thaw.