Commentary
Prime Minister Mark Carney has begun to outline what he calls “guardrails” for Canada’s renewed engagement with China. Artificial intelligence, critical minerals, and defence, he says, will remain off limits for deep cooperation. Trade diversification, meanwhile, is presented as a prudent hedge against overreliance on the United States.
On its face, this sounds sensible. In practice, it rests on a flawed assumption: that China can be engaged selectively, compartment by compartment, without strategic consequence.
China does not operate that way. Beijing does not separate economics from power, technology from influence, or commerce from coercion. Artificial intelligence, critical minerals, academic exchanges, market access, and diaspora pressure are not independent files. They are integrated tools of statecraft. To imagine that Canada can draw neat boundaries around engagement is to misunderstand the nature of the regime we are dealing with….