Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said Ottawa will continue to have “hard conversations” around human rights issues with Beijing, when pressed by reporters on whether Ottawa still considers China a “disruptive” global power.
“We will be at the table to have those conversations. At the same time, we need to continue building the Canadian economy,” Anand told reporters in French in Beijing on Jan. 14.
The term “disruptive” is a reference to Canada’s most recent policy toward Asia, the 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy, which called China “an increasingly disruptive global power.”
When pressed to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ about China being “disruptive,” Anand said it’s a “very complex relationship” and there are “many issues we need to address.”…