Mark Carney seeks a reset with China amid Donald Trump's chaos and global tensions. Can he succeed where others have failed?

Justin Trudeau once pursued free trade and an extradition treaty with China as a way to diversify away from an unpredictable America in Donald Trump’s first term as president, only to see those efforts collapse after Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping flexed their geopolitical muscle.

The U.S. and China weaponized tariffs, detentions and a pandemic supply chain crisis to assert power and global influence, and Canada was left to triangulate loyalties and rivalries, with little success.

Now Mark Carney, the former central banker and economics technocrat, is Beijing-bound on Tuesday to “elevate engagement” on trade, energy, agriculture and international security, according to his office, amid the new year chaos of Trump’s second presidential term.

Carney “has to go there,” said Jody Thomas, former national security adviser to the Trudeau government, “because we have to be in all the uncomfortable places having uncomfortable conversations if we’re going to build alternative markets to the U.S.”

“The challenge is in walking the line in what we want from them, and what they want from us,” she said. “We have to go in eyes wide open, because we’re not changing them.”

In essence, Carney’s challenge remains the same as always: how to expand markets for Canadian products — but not to the point of overdependence; how to align with China on big global challenges like climate change; how to press for restraint where China supports Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; and preserving the ability to criticize Chinese violations of human rights or international law whether in Taiwan, Hong Kong or Xinjiang province without facing punishing retaliation, and all while fencing off sensitive sectors — defence, technology, critical minerals, intellectual property — from China’s own demands.

After China, Carney will fly off — not to court Japan or any other Asian ally — but to Qatar, the Middle East’s latest power broker where sovereign wealth fund investments might be lured to Canada. The prime minister then heads to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland where global government and business elites will gather.

A senior Canadian official, who spoke on condition they not be identified in order to discuss plans that were still in the works, said all of Carney’s trips have had one main goal, “to establish greater strategic autonomy for Canada. And what that means to us is that we need more options and more strength.”

“Obviously with China, we’re very much focused on the economic relationship and on re-establishing a firmer footing for our diplomatic relationship,” the official said.

Michael Kovrig, the former Canadian diplomat detained in China for three years along with Michael Spavor, supports the plan for the prime minister to go to try to reset the relationship.

“The risk,” he said in an interview, “is to get so excited about having got the meeting, and seeing that there is progress, that you make compromises that seem inconsequential in the short term. But then, over the long term, can lead to problems.”

Kovrig, like many China observers, said the trade and security balance will be a tricky one to strike.

“It’s a risk, I think, for all of the high-flying Davos set that is used to having polite meetings with senior Chinese officials and mainly having technocratic discussions … and not being mindful enough about the other side of the Chinese state, which is the security apparatus and the political hardliners within the Chinese Communist Party, and sort of forgetting that ultimately, the agenda that the Chinese Communist Party is pursuing is largely hostile and harmful to Canada’s national interests.”

But Kovrig said Carney’s “expertise and stature, and Canada’s resources, represent bargaining power — if he’s willing to use it” to persuade People’s Republic of China (PRC) officials to “moderate their aggressively mercantilist economic policies that are driving massive overproduction and flooding foreign markets.”

The prime minister lands in China Wednesday with two days of meetings planned with the Chinese president and Premier Li Qiang. The rest of the schedule is not yet public.

Prof. Irwin Cotler, a former justice minister, co-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and international chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, wants Carney to press the Chinese government to release pro-democracy Hong Kong-based media tycoon Jimmy Lai from prison, among a host of human rights issues.

“I’m in favour of strategic engagement,” said Cotler in an interview. “I’m in favour of fostering and advancing, as we can, economic issues of benefit to both countries, security issues of benefits to both countries, but not at the expense of human rights.”

The concerns “need not be raised publicly,” Cotler said, and may not bring a resolution, but if Canada remains silent not only will there not be any resolution but “the Chinese government will continue to believe that they can continue with these violations with impunity.”

However, Carney’s team is clearly not set to have those talks in public.

“We don’t want to go back to diplomacy via the press,” said the senior official. Rather, the prime minister expects to mainly have such conversations in private.

“The prime minister has been very clear with the Chinese leadership that that’s our goal — that we want a relationship without surprises, and that there are going to be things that we’re not comfortable with and we’ll let them know. And I think they appreciate it.”

Kovrig supports that approach. But, he said, “speaking as a former political prisoner and hostage, the other thing that I would really like to see from this visit, even if it’s not spoken about publicly, is for Mark Carney to press for the release of other Canadians and foreign citizens who are detained in China for political reasons, or at least more humane treatment and better and more reliable consular access for them.”

Carney is not bringing a big business delegation. Along for the China leg are cabinet ministers for foreign affairs, industry, energy, agriculture and international trade, his parliamentary secretary who has made a couple of advance visits, and his newest Liberal MP, former Conservative for Markham-Unionville, Michael Ma.

The Conservatives, whose leader Pierre Poilievre faces a review in a few weeks, have frequently trashed the World Economic Forum in rage-bait social media posts but declined comment on the trip.

Carney’s team believes the Qatar and the Davos legs of this trip are important parts of the bigger play — to diversify Canada’s alliances.

Vina Nadjibulla, vice-president of research and strategy at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, said success for Carney in China would be to get some “specific concrete wins or deliverables on the economic side, both in terms of new opportunities, especially in the energy sector, but also in terms of movement on the tariff issue.”

But she also warns that while Beijing is keen to frame the visit as a renewal of the 2015 strategic partnership with Canada, “we’re simply in a very different moment now. China is not just partner. China is also a competitor and a rival.”

She also says that just because the kind of relationship we have with the U.S. has changed “doesn’t mean that PRC’s behaviour or the threats and challenges emanating from PRC have changed.”

Lynette Ong, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Toronto and director of the China Governance Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, said China has its own reasons to try to build “a better relationship with a lot of countries, especially given the geopolitical tension with the United States, and Canada is one of those countries that I think China wants it on its side, or to have a warmer relationship with — out of economic necessity.”

If that emerges from the Beijing visit, Carney will possibly have secured something not many of his immediate predecessors did: a stronger strategic engagement with the world’s second largest economy at a time when it matters.