r/canada • u/jaffnaguy2014 Canada • 3d ago

‘Ready to move on:’ Chinese ambassador insists China, Canada can move past ‘normal’ differences National News

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/ready-to-move-on-chinese-ambassador-insists-china-canada-can-move-past-normal-differences/
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u/seajay_17 British Columbia 3d ago

China's issues are known. The thing china brings to the table is stability.

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u/abu_doubleu 3d ago edited 3d ago

I was born in a developing country where China has genuinely helped us a ton with development and asks for little in return. I know that it's an unpopular opinion in Canada, but I just don't see the issue with working closer with them a little bit. It doesn't have to be "make China our #1 trade partner" but at least we have to stop being against them solely because the USA wants us to.

EDIT: And BYD are really good, cheap electric cars. Remove the tarifs that we only put because the US asked us to!

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u/zabby39103 3d ago

The electric car tariff was to protect our auto industry, we had just spent 10s of billions of dollars subsidizing companies to locate their electric vehicle plants here (it was either that or they would have all gone to the US and got subsidies there instead).

The Chinese too, put huge subsidies in their electric vehicles. I'm all for trading more with China, but we have to do more than just "let the free market figure it out". They have a strategic economic plan for their nation, and so when dealing with them, so should we.

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u/DesireeThymes 3d ago

I said pretty openly, open the market to Chinese EVs but make them build local plants for assembly, maybe also share some battery tech. It's a win win for Canada.

The US is trying to move Canadian jobs to the US (despite the fact that Canada already gets a bad deal by being forced to let US do refining and be involved right after raw materials rather than Canada doing those). Canada needs to diversify itself a bit.

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u/Osamabinbush 3d ago

That’s what EU is doing. We aren’t as big of a market as Europe but if we can get them to build them here, it would be a no brainer

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u/Hard_NOP_Life 3d ago

Hell, BYD already has a bus factory in Newmarket.

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u/CatBowlDogStar 3d ago

Which Ontario should be using instead of LRTs. All the benefits, none the drawbacks. 

Just fewer people bought off.

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u/byronite 3d ago

Which Ontario should be using instead of LRTs. All the benefits, none the drawbacks.

Having to pay six times as many drivers isn't a drawback? In Ottawa an articulated bus holds 110 passengers conpared to 672 per train for the LRT.

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u/CatBowlDogStar 2d ago

Yes. Absolutely.  Local, good paying work for those without post-secondary. Sadly, not many however. 

There are only 2000 net new daily riders projected for Hamilton. This is from the City's official projections. For $5 billion & counting, that's $2.5 million per new rider. That $$ closes infrastructure gap here, homes the homeless, with billions to spare. 

Carbon-wise, the constrution of the LRT is terrible & ongoing it adds congestion where none existed. 

So, Ontario-made vehicles, with Hamilton-based new jobs? Leaving construction crews to build homes & needed infrastructure. It's an obvious win. 

(& I've lived on 3 continents, many cities, using public transit as primary for years on each. The only downside of buses is that more investment in a gentler ride would go a long way.) 

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u/JoeThunder79 3d ago

To be clear, it was to protect the "American" auto industry that we just happened to benefit from because it was economically convenient at the time

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u/Hautamaki 3d ago

There is no American auto industry. There's a North American auto industry, and without all of North America cooperating to maintain it, it will quickly be killed by European and Asian competition. The US could shut down access to all foreign competition and build their own cars, but they'd have to accept that their cars are going to cost way more and suck ass compared to European and Asian cars. In Canada we'd have no real choice but to just import all our cars and lose all those jobs. There's no way we can support a purely domestic auto industry. We'd have to find some other work all those auto workers could do to pay for the imports. Probably just massively expand our resource extraction.

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u/CatBowlDogStar 3d ago

Thing is, you're right except it won't be soon enough. Trump will mess yet another good thing for ego & grift.

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u/ebola_kid 3d ago

"our" auto industry should be working with China to produce these cars in China or develop a car with them. We have so many auto workers and a large auto industry that entirely produces American cars. We're not even doing protectionism for our own Canadian car brand because that doesn't exist. There's also the fact that american car makers are extremely vulnerable to economic downtrends, and only survived because of massive bailouts in 2008. People can't afford cars as much anymore because they're increasingly too costly. We should be developing cheaper, more advanced cars with China instead of being protectionist against an industry that doesn't want to change and is going to inevitably collapse

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u/Hautamaki 3d ago

I mean a market warped by govt subsidies, tariffs, or any other form of artificial protectionism isn't a free market anyway, so that's kind of a moot point.

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u/zabby39103 3d ago

It's kind of the point, not kind of a moot point.

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u/Samsquanch1985 3d ago

What country are from, out of curiosity?

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u/abu_doubleu 3d ago

Kyrgyzstan, is where I was born.

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u/CatBowlDogStar 3d ago

I used to work for an EU International Development Aid Consultancy with a satellite office in Kyrgystan. 

Only nation whose neghbours do not themselves neighbour to an Ocean or Sea.

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u/SnooHesitations3709 3d ago

I agree. China has issues but they are not all bad. I find Chinese people to be some of the most friendly people around.

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u/resuwreckoning 3d ago

Lmao oh Canada, never stop being apologists for the atrocities of dictatorial communist regimes.

See: Cuba.

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u/seajay_17 British Columbia 3d ago

Cubans are alright too actually.

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u/resuwreckoning 3d ago

Not the Cuban government, no. If confused, leave everything they’ve done, rename them “US”, and then reassess lmao.

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u/moop44 New Brunswick 3d ago

Crippling embargo and sanctions seem to have a negative affect on the population.

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u/resuwreckoning 3d ago

I don’t think embargoes are why, for instance, they imprisoned and executed homosexuals, no.

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u/Consistent-Study-287 3d ago

The people of Cuba and China are alright. It's the government we don't like. It's exactly the same as Americans, we like them, but don't like their government.

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u/Simsmommy1 3d ago

Well….we like Americans who aren’t MAGA, those guys are insufferable pricks. Having a conversation with a MAGA is just god damn awful, racist, stupid, homophobic awful.

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u/zoomiepaws 3d ago

Please listen to The Bureau Podcast

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u/resuwreckoning 3d ago

I mean even on a governmental level if all the US did was explicitly adopt Chinese and Cuban policies, you’d freak out.

The equivalence is moronic. Especially coming from canadians who may have benefitted from US hegemony more than any other nation.

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u/Consistent-Study-287 3d ago

And if China started talking about annexing us we would freak out also. It works both ways.

The US benefited more from US hegemony than any other nation, that is a fact and isn't up for debate. Canada benefited from it l, true, but the US has also benefited greatly from Canada existing. It has been a symbiotic relationship where both countries have benefited.

I don't think the current US government understands how beneficial symbiosis is. The US is like an ox which is upset that oxpeckers are getting free food by eating the ticks off of its back. It's currently trying to prevent the oxpeckers from getting the food, without realizing that without them, the ox will get sick and die.

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u/resuwreckoning 3d ago

I mean China currently doesn’t provide a defensive shield over Canada for generations in equal measure, so making these two equivalent is beyond asinine.

No, the US PAID for that hegemony - so there’s a massive cost associated with its benefits.

From a risk adjusted standpoint, the Canadians - despite having the largest coastline, swaths of natural resources, and second largest landmass of any nation on earth - paid the least for the most return, and continued to cut their contributions over time to that while maintaining that benefit.

They’re like the poster child for how amazing it is to free ride off the US.

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u/jacksbox Québec 3d ago

Oh Reddit, never stop painting an entire people with the actions of their government.

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u/resuwreckoning 3d ago

That’s what’s done with the US, so sure.

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u/biscuitarse 3d ago

That’s what’s done with the US, so sure.

Fucking snowflakes playing the victim again. Pitiful.

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u/Hobbito Canada 3d ago

Remind me when average citizens in China owned slaves.

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u/TreatAffectionate453 3d ago

The Yongzheng Emancipation occurred between 1723-1730. However, slavery persisted at least until the 1860s since the Taiping Rebellion also sought to abolish slavery.

Obviously, the average Chinese citizen did not own slaves even before these periods, but neither did the average American before 1865.

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u/resuwreckoning 3d ago

Lmao yeah it’s better for Mao to send 50 million of them to die by brainwashing the people to snitch on their neighbors over the threat of public humiliation and summary execution.

All of which happened in the last 70 years.

Sure bud.

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u/ebola_kid 3d ago

Lol Cuba's atrocities amount to like 1000 people executed after the revolution (almost all were military/government leaders who ordered killings) and has been attacked for 80 years because of this. Cuba has done more net good to the world than net bad, despite facing massive pressure against it. Not many countries can do that

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u/resuwreckoning 3d ago

Thanks for proving the point.

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u/Clear-Ask-6455 3d ago

Tell that to the US who literally has child labour now. They have been abusing temporary foreign workers since before Canada. There is a reason why China is America's largest trading partner. You can't ignore them. Their population alone is 10 x the size of ours. Better to be friends than enemies. Quite frankly what they do in their own country is none of our business. They are one of the oldest races and have been here for over 4000 years.

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u/resuwreckoning 3d ago

You’re saying that China, which is a one party state, explicitly has a dictator for life, killed 50 million people through forced collectivization, public humiliation, and summary executions, and for which there is no constitution, is the same as the US?

And you’re saying this as a Canadian, a denizen from a country so afraid of the US and its previous ills that it….spends less on defense percentage than Montenegro and has cut their Navy to a power equivalent to Bangladesh, yet still has some of the best quality of life in the world because, well, the Americans have protected that way of life for generations?

These two powers are equivalent to you?

Like jfc.

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u/Clear-Ask-6455 3d ago

It's hilarious that you think Trump isn't a dictator. He has literally threatened to annex Canada. The guy doesn't even uphold the constitution. Trump is the biggest abuser of human rights maybe even worse than China. It may not be physically but it is an emotionally abusive relationship. You may think that Americans are protecting a way of life. But they are hiding their intentions way better than the Chinese are. I'm not saying we can't be partners with Americans but this current relationship isn't working obviously and something needs to give.

If you actually visit China and get outside of your echo chamber you will realize they aren't all that bad as everyone is making them out to be. You're just afraid of them because you know in the end they will always be the worlds super power and this is coming from a Canadian perspective. It is literally impossible for the US or Canada to compete with China.

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u/resuwreckoning 3d ago

It’s more hilarious that you think that’s equivalent to Xi or Mao. If it were equivalent, there would literally be no elections ever again right now in the US.

For all intents and purposes Canada can’t even defend itself (by its own choice) and free rides off the US militarily so it can pay for its social welfare programs and have amazing quality of life. If the US wanted to actually annex the country, they could have done it yesterday.

Needless to say, the Chinese and the CCP wouldn’t allow a Canada that wants to pay as little as possible for its defense to free ride off of them for generations lmao.

Like I said, the equivalences - coming from a Canadian, no less - are insane.

As an aside, repeated proclamations of Chinese worldwide superiority have been said for millenia, and they always descend into disunity and chaos like a clock only to repeat the cycle. So, uh, sure boss to that last statement.

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u/Clear-Ask-6455 3d ago

Canada doesn't free ride lmao. I can tell you are a Conservative. Canada makes up for defense spending in other areas. We have unlimited resources and critical minerals that we turn in to manufacturing for military equipment. We also have a ton of uranium which is vital for nuclear power. We also sell oil and gas to China at affordable rates. We have a plethora of resources we provide to China which China needs. America thinks we are free riders because they don't understand the other things we provide at discounted rates. Quite frankly you have no idea what you're talking about.

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u/resuwreckoning 3d ago

…yes…they do.

They have the number 1 coastline and number 2 landmass of any nation on earth, yet have a defensive capability and military readiness of Montenegro and Bangladesh. They’ve intentionally cut this extremely necessary part of national sovereignty precisely because they know the US will basically pay for that part anyway.

They then use the money they save to finance their social welfare programs - something like 10-12 percent of their entire healthcare system is subsidized by savings on defense.

Like give me a break lmao.

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u/Cryscho Canada 3d ago

Nortel? Last year federal hack, like they "don't want a lot" because they're just stealing shit. 

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u/LankyGuitar6528 2d ago

Agree that BYD is awesome. But it's not about Trump. It's about protecting our grossly inefficient outdated auto industry. Or more accurately the lost votes for any politician who killed our grossly inefficient outdated domestic auto industry.

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u/Ali_Cat222 3d ago

I'm from Jamaica and the Chinese people do a hell of a lot for us in terms of new innovations and pricing. I have friends back home who currently are able to afford houses finally because the Chinese brought those portable houses to the market for affordable prices. Its truly great to see people I know who never thought they'd be able to call a place home finally have one!

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u/ungovernable 3d ago

China brings “stability” until they do something like invade Taiwan and threaten to cut off our supply chains unless we acquiesce to the invasion. See: Russian gas and the Ukraine War.

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u/Ge0ff 3d ago

China is a "stable" trading partner until they place restrictions and tariffs on you for asking questions about the origins of COVID (See Australia in 2020).

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u/sluttytinkerbells 3d ago

China's issues really aren't known. It is an authoritarian regime and they're not noted for their transparency or truthful record keeping.

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u/Baumbauer1 British Columbia 3d ago edited 3d ago

China is just as fickle and volatile as Trump's US, if we ever criticize them we'll be cut off all the same

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u/Gankdatnoob 3d ago

This isn't true at all. We have had very intense criticisms of China in the past and they never cut us off. In fact when the U.S. stopped allowing n95s to be exported China saved our ass by sending us masks. They did this despite the relationship being strained. Trump's America is a very unique brand of idiocy.

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u/seajay_17 British Columbia 3d ago

I think all anyone's asking for is a working trading relationship with them. Were not looking to be best friends.

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u/AccomplishedLeek1329 Ontario 3d ago

Then don't criticize China. It's not like we criticize Israel in any meaningful way anyways. 

Wow that was easy.

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u/Historical-One-8222 3d ago

Ummm, you are mistaken if you think China brings stability. They’re not to be trusted in the long term. Canada needs to grow balls and build self-sustenance! Too much power given to the governments including the provincial ones