Canada's relationship with China is evolving quickly. Have we learned the lessons of our own recent past well enough to do it right?

Hi everybody, I'm Steve Pacin. Tonight we are at the Omni King Edward Hotel in downtown Toronto for a close-up edition of TVO Today Live.

This series is possible thanks to the generous support of the Wilson Foundation and its benefactor Red Wilson in the interests of democracy and democratic engagement.

Fortunately, few people in this country know China the way our guest knows China. Michael Kri is a senior adviser for the international crisis group, a former diplomat and founder and geopolitical analyst at the covert group.

And as you well remember, he was detained for more than a thousand days in China on trumped up bogus charges. He's one of the voices urging caution as Canada re-engages with the Middle Kingdom. Michael, it's a great pleasure to meet you,

>> Steve. It's great to be here. Thank you.

>> I I want to start with just the most bizarre question if if I can, and it's really more a question about how normal your life either has or has not become.

As we sit here taping this, over the last couple of weeks, our entire country has been completely fixated on baseball and the baseball playoffs. And I wonder given what you've been through whether you have the kind of either interest or ability to kind of dive into something that ultimately irrelevant but which completely captivated our nation for a couple of months.

you know, the last time I lived in Toronto, the Blue Jays, uh, won the World Series and so, um, it it really touched my heart to see them back in the World Series again.

Um, that that I did notice. Um, and so, yeah, I do try to have time for diversions.

I think that's one thing in fact that being put away in an isolation cell like that for so long really makes you appreciate is the is the necessity to stop and enjoy beautiful moments in life and to have you know diversity and richness in your life.

the incredible importance of course of family and friends and close human relationships, more important than pretty much anything else, of taking an attitude of benevolence toward the world, of public service, of trying to do good things, but also very much an appreciation for art and beauty and music.

So, uh, one of the things that I did when I came back to Canada and then started traveling around the world, I wanted to spend time in nature. I wanted to listen to music, to go to art galleries, uh, you know, to play sports.

Those are things are all important elements of life. But I will admit that otherwise my um I'm pretty work focused because I came back with a sense of responsibility.

Um I've spent the last couple of decades on and off studying China and of course I had seven solid years there of deep analysis of the country and seeing aspects of it that very few other people do.

Uh, and so I feel a responsibility to try to help not only Canadians but everyone around the world understand the China that we're dealing with now because it is an enormous and complicated challenge.

I would liken it to climate change. China is shaping the world in in in ways as profound as climate change and in many respects it's doing it faster than we are able to adapt to it with our political system

but at the same time slowly enough that media often have trouble figuring out how to cover it because it's not just a quick daily news story it's a long evolution and it's reshaping it and I think it is it is the critical challenge of our generation geopolit

>> Well, that's that's why we wanted to talk to you because I want to tap into your knowledge and experience obviously from over there. And I want to start with our prime minister and their dear leader or whatever they call him. They've met.

Carney and she have met and she has invited Carney to come to China for a state visit. Should he go?

>> I think in general, yes. Um, but it's a question of what expectations you bring into that meeting.

So, General Secretary Shei and Prime Minister Carney meeting is a turning point in the relationship in the sense that they were it was previously in a deep freeze for reasons we're all aware of for several years.

And China is such a large and powerful systemic country. Uh you know, you made a reference to a dear leader. China is not North Korea in the sense of its level of power and systemic importance.

You can isolate and ignore North Korea for the most part or try to contain it. That's not feasible with China.

So even though frankly their systems are becoming increasingly similar and China's politics is becoming increasingly more repressive and authoritarian and even totalitarian and like North Korea's in some ways we need a more nuanced strategy to manage that challenge

and for that you need dialogue and you need diplomacy and because that system is so centered now on Xiinping and his power without his agreement on something it's very hard to unblock any challenges and to solve problems.

>> So, good that Carney is going.

>> It's good that Carney and President Xi met and that President Xi himself declared this to be a turning point in the relationship and sent a signal to the entire vast party state bureaucracy that now it's okay to talk to the Canadians again.

We saw the Chinese engineer similar moves with Australia, for example, when there was a change of prime minister there.

So the Chinese are using this as an excuse, as a kind of fig leaf to say, well, you know, it was hurting us. It was bad for China to not have to have strained relations with Canada,

but they don't want to admit any wrongdoing. So they take this excuse to now say, let's turn the page and move forward because they, you know, we need to stop and think before we talk about Prime Minister Carney going to China, what do the Chinese want out of this?

Why have they shift shifted from wolf warrior diplomacy and a cold freeze to trying to warm things up to have a charm offensive?

>> Do you have an answer to that?

>> I think yeah, it's it's I think there are at least three things that they're particularly interested in. They want things right. First of all, they want to drive wedges between particularly western liberal democracies, but in general, they don't want to see any coalitions of any countries banding together for solidarity in dealing with China.

They want to divide and conquer. The more that we each pursue our individual agendas that includes, you know, let's say Canada doing one thing and Australia doing another, um, that's obviously a strategic advantage for them.

>> And if they want to do that, that doesn't sound like something we should enable.

>> Correct. No. In fact, exactly. So then does that argue for not going?

>> Uh again it's it's less about a go and not go as it is what are the conditions on which prime the prime minister goes and what is he seeking to achieve with that meeting.

I think in general we want to have as many highlevel meetings as possible between our leaders because as I said you if you don't talk to Xiinping you can't really get a lot done but and here's the but China gatekeeps right

a lot of China's rhetoric if you look at she's statements after he met with New Zealand's prime minister Australia's prime minister Canada's prime minister you see the same kind of Chinese Communist Party slogans being trotted out like they want Canada and all these countries to have what they call a correct perception of China.

And what that really means is that's a combination of gaslighting and gatekeeping.

It's you accept the term, you accept our terms. We define the terrain on which this contest will be worked out. You accept all of our core interests. You don't say anything critical about us. And in return, you get to meet with the big guy.

>> Should we do that?

>> I think that's what we should not accept. I think, you know, there is some pragmatism that can be involved. You don't necessarily have to use megaphone diplomacy about everything, but ultimately we need to be clear that Canada also has core interests and values and that we need to defend those

and that ultimately we will speak out about things like foreign interference and um transnational repression, gross human rights violations. Uh we will speak out about China's support for Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, its aggression in the South China Sea, its coercion of Taiwan. The list goes on.

Um I was speaking to a scholar a while ago and he expressed you know he was hoping that through dialogue we can solve the problem of a lack of trust.

Um my argument is that it's not the problem between the problems between Canada and China are not primarily due to a lack of trust. They are due to divergent agendas and interests.

Uh so the challenge and and the point of Prime Minister Carney eventually going to China is to maintain dialogue and to develop strategic empathy to understand what does Xiinping want? What do the Chinese want? Uh what are their what's their hierarchy of priorities of what they're looking for?

>> But it sounds like the hierarchy of those priorities involve destabilizing us and being as mischievous towards us as possible.

How do we have a better relationship with them while not indulging their agenda for us? And that's a question nearly every western country is asking itself.

How can we at least get transactionally find some areas where we get economic benefits? Because we have things that we want to sell and they have things that we would like them to buy and vice versa. And so there are some possibilities to benefit the Canadian economy by interacting with China,

but that needs to have very strict guard rails and be carefully bounded. So you need a lot of national security protections. You need investment screening mechanisms. You need a foreign influence registry.

You need more robust capacity in our security services to prevent interference in elections uh in communities, in our politics, particularly in diaspora communities.

>> We have not demonstrated a lot of interest in doing any of those things. So what do we do?

I think we've been slow out of the gate to respond because the Canadian public and government frankly got used to a different world, a Pax Americana and neoliberal globalization and we've been thrust into a much harsher geopolitical world by major transformations in the balance of power and by an aggressive agenda by authoritarian states.

But I I I just came from Ottawa talking to a lot of former colleagues in government. There has real progress on a lot of our domestic security efforts to constrain things like that.

Um, you know, the Investment Canada Act has been updated. There are new rules on scientific cooperation that look to restrict the possibility of theft of intellectual property by Chinese uh either espionage or companies through tech transfer.

There are a lot of measures being taken. Um, the security services used to have terrorism as their number one priority. Now it's foreign interference and that has involved the reallocation of resources.

So, we are doing a number of things. We're ramping up defense spending to shore up deterrence. Um, but these things take time to roll out.

And so rather than being in a rush to try to make a lot of quick deals with China, I think whereas I I fully agree with Prime Minister Carney's agenda in broad terms to accelerate economic resilience and prosperity in Canada through domestic industrial policy and economics. With China, I would council strategic patience

um look for leverage. So the point of that sort of dialogue of prime the prime minister going to China is to better understand the Chinese worldview and then in the process in the leadup to that find ways to generate leverage and then those conversations become a means of using that leverage to defend Canadian values and security and advance our interests.

>> I get you. We're we're a democracy and democracies don't necessarily do patience well, particularly when they don't have majority governments in parliament.

How do you counsel the prime minister to do that when he doesn't know frankly whether or not his government is going to be alive by the end of the year?

I think that's actually where the media and the public frankly can play a role in be in trying to be more mature and informed about international politics and economics and dealing with a country like China to give our political leaders the space to be statesmen rather than populists chasing around uh pandering to votes

and trying you know like a CEO trying to deliver quarterly results but often making choices that in the long term are bad for the company. In the same way, we want to incentivize our leaders to try to make more strategic choices.

You can have some quick wins. Look, the first meeting between Prime Minister Carney and President Xi in their current roles led to the return of approved destination status for Chinese tour groups.

Now, this is not a new benefit. This is the removal of a punishment that China had put on us. But that will drive some revenue to the tourism sector.

>> I think it's fine. But of course you do also need security provisions when you have a large influx of Chinese coming into the country to make sure that this is not creating any security problems.

In general, I think it's good. At the same time, I mean, if we're talking about for the tourism industry here, all countries want to prioritize highquality tourism that respects the environment and so on.

So there are lower level things that need to be worked out. But in general, yes, I mean most countries are on the approved destination list. Why should Canada have a black mark against it?

You know, that that was a that was a gesture, a small gesture from the Chinese that they are sincere about trying to remove bilateral irritants.

And so what what the prime minister can focus on in the short term to demonstrate some quick wins to Canadians is removing smaller problems and obstacles in the relationship through working groups, through dialogue discussions, things like potentially market access for Canadian agra food products.

I want to read you something that China's ambassador to Canada recently wrote in the Hill Times, then get you to react to it. And he wrote, "Given the differences in political and social systems, history, culture, and stage of development, it is normal for China and Canada to have different views on some issues, but there is no fundamental conflict of interests between the two countries."

>> Your view?

>> I don't think even the ambassador believes that. Um, so no, that's a fantastical statement.

Um, China is supporting Russia to the hilt in its invasion of Ukraine. And Russia's agenda includes breaking NATO and potentially attacking European other European countries.

Eventually, China is supplying over 70% of Russia's machine tools and other critical implements that go into its war machine. China is propping up the Russian economy by buying its energy and ignoring US sanctions trying and European sanctions trying to constrain that.

That's just one example. China is trying to dominate the South China Sea and dominate the western Pacific and East Asia. It wants to be hegemonic there and impose its own political views and authoritarian framework through global governance.

>> So is it possible to establish a normal relationship with a country that sees the world so fundamentally differently from the way we do,

>> right? and not only sees the world differently but wants to transform that world to greater reflect its own authoritarian mindset based on ruthless power transactionalism.

China wants a world in which it is the dominant state in the international system. Whatever the problems we have with the United States, if the United States collapses or you know is otherwise constrained to being a minor regional power one day, that is terrible for Canada.

So we we need to be clear. China's agenda, its broader agenda is fundamentally adversarial to Canadian interests and values. And we don't need to be we don't want to be supporting that agenda. We don't want to be supporting the Communist Party in any way that we h unless we absolutely gain a clear absolute benefit from doing so.

Um so no, you cannot have a normal relationship with a country that is so obviously adversarial. What you can have is a respectful diplomatic relationship that tries to have stability in interactions and predictability in things.

So we are trying to avoid surprises at least and minimize manage the problems we can but we should have no illusions that similarly with when President Xi met uh President Trump recently and they reached certain agreements.

This is not a sea change in in world politics. This is temporizing. It's both sides buying time to prepare themselves more for a new reality.

And that reality could include ultimately hot war in East Asia over a flash point like Taiwan or the South China Sea.

>> Well, should we should we be turning a blind eye to that lengthy list of irritants between our two countries in order to sell them grain and canola?

>> It's a great question. I mean, that that is the fundamental conundrum that China presents compared to, let's say, the Soviet Union during the Cold War, right? we had virtually no trade with the Soviet Union.

Um should we sell things to countries that we don't agree with and don't share values with? I think the short answer is some things in some sectors when there it meets a net benefit test for Canada if can you know

we're also not interested in engaging in economic self harm. We want to make Canada stronger, more prosperous, more productive and more resilient.

And so selling some products to China if for example there's no risk of transfer of uh high technology that could benefit the people's liberation army um there isn't a risk of IP theft within boundaries yes you can have trade

the key is diversification so if I if I had one piece of advice to the government going you know between now and Prime Minister Carney visit to China it's keep calm and diversify

>> well that diversification card was the one we're supposed to be playing with China because of the United States. They're supposed to be our answer to diversification, right?

There's a lot of juggling going on here, isn't there?

>> It is. This is a this is a new game that Canada is really having to play and it is much more complicated. But the Indopacific strategy, which is only three years old, right?

And strategies take time to roll out. That strategy labeled China as a disruptive power in East Asia. China doesn't like that label, but that label is entirely earned.

And the strategy is all about leaning into relations with other countries in East Asia, in the Pacific, Philippines, South Korea, Japan, Assan, India, you know, particularly new rising giants like Indonesia.

What we should be doing is incentiv investment is firmtofirm decisions, right? It's Canadian business people deciding what to do, whether to prioritize trying to open up India as a new market for their products and vice versa.

that flows naturally. The government can facilitate and incentivize business people to look to new markets to not just reflexively think well if I want to shift from the United States at all I'm going to look to China.

China can be part of a holistic strategy to diversify but it shouldn't be the main part of it because it is so much riskier and more challenging to deal with.

You know, we're not worried about South Korea or Japan or Malaysia using trade with those countries for leverage to coers us to do things.

That is a risk with China. So, you can increase your trade with China provided that you also increase your trade proportionally with India, the European Union, Africa, Latin America, so that it balances out.

And no one great power, I mean, in some ways that's what it's really about. No, we don't want any one big power having too much leverage over Canada and Canadian policym through one particular sector or company that is vulnerable

and that affects not just canola, the obvious one that everyone's been talking about, but critical investments, right? I think part of what the Canadian government is is doing in terms of improving political relations is providing some protective cover for Canadian investments in China,

but I don't think that we should be encouraging deeper investment in China because that tends to give the Chinese Communist Party leverage over us.

When the prime minister of Canada says that he intends to raise the issue of Chinese interference in our elections with the general secretary of the communist party of China.

Uh a do we take him at his word and b will that have any impact whatsoever with them?

I think sometimes it can be useful to raise things with President Xi because despite the top- down control and the you know the fear-based hyper control of a Leninist system like that it's such still such a huge sprawling government and bureaucracy

there are different FFTs and different ministries and organizations don't always know what the others are doing right so the security ministries in China which are often involved in foreign interference and espionage and things like that the the ministry of foreign affairs may not always appreciate what they're doing and there is bureaucratic competition.

So if you have if you can make it clear that this is an issue to President Xi, you may get some traction in dialing it down. But I would not put very much faith in that.

If you recall, President Obama once upon a time raised with with Shei the extraordinary levels of cyber espionage that China was engaging in and called on him to stop.

According to cyber security experts, it did stop for a few months and then it ramped right back up again. So

>> you come away with the conclusion saying there's no point.

>> So raise it's important to make the point so that they understand that this is not something we're going to turn a blind eye to. But the main thing that needs to be done there is actual defensive efforts for Canadian companies to ramp up their cyber security defenses for CEUS and the RCMP and others to have well-trained officers who understand how to protect against these things and to have a Canadian society that is sensitized to these threats.

That's how you defend yourself and working with our allies sharing information and having much better coordination particularly on national security issues even with the United States as best we can.

And I mean the reality of the Canada US relationship is that in defense and security areas it is still relatively stable.

>> Well, okay. Having said that, and I'm not sure you thought you'd ever see polling numbers like these, but Angus Reed recently did a survey which showed that Canadians have a more unfavorable view of the United States than they do of China.

And I wonder how you think that, to the extent it could or should change the calculus of how we deal with those two countries.

I don't think it needs to affect the actual policies but because I think what those numbers reflect is the gap between expectations and reality right we don't ex we never expected China to be our you know best friend and n and closest neighbor.

I think most Canadians have an understanding uh at at least a basic level of the nature of China's authoritarian system and its relatively hostile agenda even despite the nice language that Chinese diplomats are using now with the United States.

we were expecting different treatment and interactions and it's the shock of that that has led to numbers like that. So, I can understand why people would feel that way, but the reality is we still have far more in common with the American people, if not certain individuals in its government, right?

>> The people, yes, but maybe not the president of the United States. And it very much feels like we're between a rock and a hard place right now. Two lousy alternatives.

>> It does. Yeah.

>> Is that in fact the case

>> to some extent, but that doesn't mean there's either a moral or a strategic equivalence between those alternatives. Uh, from a democratic perspective, the United States may be a flawed democracy.

Now it may there may be a backsliding but it would have to fall very very far to still get to the same sort of level of problematic actor as the Chinese Communist Party. It's not there yet and I hope it doesn't get there.

But but the other thing is that if you're talking about geopolitical triangulation, we don't have strategically the option of somehow pivoting to China and aligning to China.

The United States would never tolerate that and our other allies wouldn't tolerate that. It's not a feasible option. What you can do is have some bounded interactions with China in certain sectors where it's in our economic interests and that's really about all you can do.

Maybe in some common areas of global governance, but even there, China's agenda to reshape global governance is antithetical to ours. So, it's not a reliable partner.

What we need rather is a much more multilateral alliance with genuinely like-minded states, mainly western liberal democracies, but also a number of Indopacific and other countries that share the same interest as we do as a small or middlesized power in a world of uh increasingly transactional and aggressive uh great powers that we need to defend ourselves from.

>> 20th century was very much defined by World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam. It was not a peaceful century.

I'm wondering as you kind of get up there and look from 30,000 ft what you hope the current century were a quarter of the way through will be defined by.

>> I think that's a great question. We are right now in a decisive decade, a pivot point of that century, right?

since the Russian invasion of Ukraine um since everything that's happened south of the border and since the rise of China um that these are transformative

I think for the you know the challenge we have in the next 10 20 years is to constrain the influence of autocracies that are trying to reshape the world to constrain China not to interfere in its politics not to do any harm to the Chinese people but to constrain the ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party to become hegemonic in its region and dominate and reshape world order.

We need to work with our allies to do that just like we need to be smart about climate change and take a longer view to reshape things

because in in the case of China, I think over time economic and political contradictions in the country and demographics will likely slow down, you know, and its overall power level.

But right now, it has been building a massive military to be able to project power and coers. It has been building a massive industrial machine. It has been trying to capture the commanding heights of technology.

We need to work with other like-minded countries, Europe, the UK, and across the Indopacific, and still with the United States to develop a western tech stack that hopefully Canada is part of to revivify our industrial bases and maintain our technological advantages

because ultimately from a conflict perspective, war is now very much an industrialized process, right? It's about who has the most effective AI and drones and other technologies.

And so we need really to have both the private sector and defense procurement significantly improve its ability to shore up our defense and to maintain deterrence so that we don't have the middle of this century defined by a third world war for example.

>> I want to be mindful of your time. So a couple of more questions.

I remember as a kid when Pierre Trudeau opened the door to China before the United States did and that was more than 50 years ago and we you know there was a moment when we thought we could have pretty good relations with China and now we are where we are.

I know crystal ball gazing is awfully difficult to look 50 years in the future. But if things go the way you hope they will, what can our relationship look like a half a century from now as compared to a half a century ago?

>> That's a that's very far in the future. I'm mainly looking at the getting through the next 5 to 10 years without a war over Taiwan or the South China Sea, for example.

I think that's really what we need to focus on in terms of the the horizon of predictability is maintaining deterrence, building alliances across the Indoacific, diversifying our economic relations uh with as many countries as possible, revivifying the productivity in the Canadian economy.

Um th those are things we can realistically focus on. What China is going to be like in 25 years is very hard to predict, but it's obviously still going to be large and systemically important.

>> Do you think the regime will survive that long?

Leninist regimes are quite robust and can get through a lot of difficulties without collapse.

Um so they're also brittle. So that kind of thing is unpredictable. I think the real it is entirely it is within the realm of possibility that things could dramatically change in China and we should keep in mind that possibility.

At the same time, we've got to deal with the China that we've got, with the Chinese Communist Party and the agenda that it has, the ideology that it has, and the worldview that it has, and the ambitions it has.

And all of those are deeply challenging for Canadian values and prosperity. And so, we need to invest in protecting ourselves.

Ultimately, the challenge and the priority we need to focus on is doing more to protect Canada and Canadians and our economic and security interests from hostile powers that wish to reshape the world and undermine our own society.

And we need to do more to be aware of that to elevate our China competence and knowledge and protect ourselves. That's what this is about.

>> Michael, my last question is a bit personal. This country took three years of your life away and subjected you to psychological torture and a whole lot of other horrible things that thankfully very few people in this country have to experience.

And I'd like to know how long it takes or if it's even happened yet for you to get over what I presume is a significant amount of hatred that you probably had for that regime at some point in your life.

I don't I try not to hate anybody or anything actually. I don't think that's a healthy focus on things. I try to understand.

and as difficult and searing and painful as that experience was for me and for my family and for my loved ones and for this country in many ways, it was also uh I think it wasn't a wakeup call for me, but I think it was for Canada and other democracies.

And so in that respect, it served a purpose uh that I'm still dedicated to. uh you know I'm not I'm not a vindictive or vendetta oriented person.

I want Canadians to understand what that episode taught us about that system. And if there's one thing again I I I use the term strategic empathy before

I saw some of the darkest places in China both as a diplomat traveling around the country and then in that experience I already knew what that system was capable of doing.

the difference was experiencing it personally rather than through cases of talking to victims of it elsewhere.

Um so I have a visceral understanding of the one of the fundamental problems and with that system and the difference between them their system and ours is the utter disregard for human life.

the willingness to use humans as poker chips or as um instruments in the pursuit of she's grand dystopian vision of Tienia all under heaven centered around China and the great rejuvenation and rise of China as a great power.

Humans are just means to an end for them. And in our society, we never use humans just as a means to an end. Humans are ends in themselves and have value in themselves.

And people need to understand that fundamental difference between our systems. But all of the individuals that I met in that system and there were some nasty ones and some nicer ones.

The thing we need to realize is those people are trapped inside that system. The cellmates that I had there who had been working all their year lives for the Chinese government were as much victims of that system as I was.

So the Chinese people as a whole are much greater victims of that system than I ever was. And we need to recognize that that they are trapped. They are the hostages.

They are trapped inside an authoritarian Leninist one party state that is extracting rents and value from 1.4 billion Chinese people and the people in that system can't get out of it.

What we need to do is protect ourselves from that system. Um so that's what I took away from it. I focused on learning things, not on hating things.

>> Do you think you can lead a normal life after having gone through all that?

I do my best to lead an interesting life.

>> I think you're succeeding at that.

>> It's a pleasure to shake your hand.

>> Thank you, Steve.

>> Thank you, Michael, for joining us today.

>> And that is our time. I do want to thank our guest, Michael Kri. I want to thank the Omni King Edward Hotel for hosting us. I want to thank the Wilson Foundation for making it all possible.

Our TVO crew here at the hotel. And of course, Hillary Clark right over there who produces these segments. You can see previous conversations in this series at tvo.org/tvoto org/tvotoday live or of course we're on the YouTube thing. That's TVOT Today on YouTube. I'm Steve Pen. Thanks for joining us from downtown Toronto. Until next time.

TVO Today Live is made possible by the generous support of the Wilson Foundation.