This article originally appeared in the Hamilton Spectator.
By Stephen Nagy, February 11, 2026
Reflecting on the preliminary agreement between Canada and China to address economic and trade issues, China’s ambassador to Canada Wang Di says that we “should advance co-ordination across all sectors … In a spirit of mutual understanding and friendly consultation.”
Canadians should hear the pitch politely — and then read the fine print.
“Co-ordination” and “friendly consultation” sound perfectly amicable. They suggest predictable rules, neutral tribunals and commerce insulated from politics. But Beijing’s operating assumption is different. For Beijing, increased trade is not a destination. It is leverage — banked for the next dispute.
Prime Minister Mark Carney recently warned that economic integration is increasingly used as a “weapon.” If that’s true, Canada’s China debate shouldn’t begin with market size. It should begin with assessment of vulnerability.
Start with Canada’s geography. Every serious Canadian economic strategy runs into the same fact: we share the world’s most valuable commercial border with the United States and Washington is unlikely to treat Canada’s China policy as a quaint middle power experiment.
The question is not whether Canadians should trade with China. Of course we will. The question is whether we should deepen dependence on a geopolitical rival of our principal ally without expecting to pay a price at the border, in intelligence co-operation or in industrial policy.
Any Canada-China trade talk must pass a simple Canadian test: Does it strengthen our access to the U.S. market and our resilience at home, or does it create a new veto point in Beijing and a new suspicion in Washington?
Beijing’s ambassador is asking Canadians to imagine a version of China that behaves like a normal trading partner. The record suggests caution.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s report on the Chinese Communist Party’s coercive diplomacy tracked 152 cases over a decade and notes Canada among the more frequently targeted countries. The pattern is familiar: pressure is applied, the political link is denied and the target is invited back into the warm light of “good relations” if it makes the right gestures.
Canadians don’t need to look far for what this feels like in practice. When relationships sour, the pain is rarely spread evenly across the economy. It lands where it can generate domestic pressure — farmers, exporters, universities or a single marquee firm that can be singled out and made an example.
Shingo Yamagami, a former Japanese ambassador to Australia, has a name for the political psychology this produces: “China magic” — the temptation to mistake smiles and photo ops for strategic restraint. His warning travels well. A charm offensive is not evidence of changed intent, it is often evidence of improved tactics.
China is simply not built to uphold international agreements in the ways Western nations still too often expect. Its party state can fuse economic policy, internal security and propaganda in a single campaign. Beijing treats narratives and markets as connected instruments of national power.
Canada must respond with discipline.
We need selective engagement and hard guardrails. Keep channels open for consular cases and narrow commercial issues, while tightening rules on critical minerals, sensitive data, advanced research and dual use technology. If Beijing wants deeper access, it can start by proving reciprocity and predictability.
Then we need strategic coalitions before concessions. Carney’s “variable geometry” is applicable: build resilience with like minded partners first — Japan, the EU, Korea, Australia — then engage China from a position where “no” is credible and costs are shareable.
Finally, we need to view domestic national security resilience as part of our broader economic policy. Transparency rules, foreign interference defences and research security are not side issues. They are the entry fee for doing business in a world where economics and politics are braided together.
China’s ambassador is doing his job. Canada should do ours: trade where it’s safe, diversify where it’s smart and never confuse access to a market with the absence of leverage.
Stephen R. Nagy is professor of politics and international studies at the International Christian University. He is a senior fellow and China project lead at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. The title of his forthcoming book is “Japan as a Middle Power State: Navigating Ideological and Systemic Divides.”
