We appear to be at a curious “hinge moment” in history where great powers are engaged in intense rivalries but at the same time are finding ways to cooperate.
Congress and President Joe Biden have just told China to sell TikTok, the social video-sharing app, or it will be banned in the US. It has also just voted to send $8 billion in military aid to Taiwan, a move the Chinese have described as a “dangerous provocation.”
At the same time, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in China attempting to thaw relations. He follows on the heels of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and recent calls between US and Chinese defense chiefs to discuss their differences.
Similar dual-track diplomacy is happening in other Western countries. Germany is “derisking” its relations with China, yet Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Beijing earlier this month. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese undertook a state visit to China in November, the first since 2016.
Canada’s government ordered a national security review of TikTok last September and has already banned the app on government devices. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada is watching the debate in the US, and observers have little doubt that Canada will follow Washington’s lead, if the app is banned – just as it did when it blocked Huawei from its 5G network in 2022.
Sino-Canadian relations are likely to get cooler before they warm up. Interim findings of a Canadian public inquiry into foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections by China will be released later this spring – details that are unlikely to lead to calls for rapprochement.
At the same time, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is sending her senior diplomat, David Morrison, to China as a prelude to an official visit.
The general sense is that we all have to coexist in the same neighborhood, albeit, in the words of US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, “in small yards with high fences.”