Ottawa | China bankers the divisions of democracies, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned in an interview with Global Television, calling on Western nations to “work together” to better counter these pressures.
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“We must do our best to oppose each other and prevent China from playing into our divisions against each other,” Trudeau said.
“We are competing with each other and China is very intelligently opposing each other in an open market,” the Canadian Prime Minister argued. Instead, he called on the West to “show a united front.”
On December 8, Justin Trudeau announced that Beijing would boycott the Winter Olympics, following in the footsteps of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.
Canadian athletes will compete in the Games, which begin on February 4, but none of the Canadian government officials will travel to China.
There is ample evidence of tension between Canada and China from the unprecedented diplomatic crisis surrounding the arrest in December 2018 of the daughter of the founder of the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei in Canada.
Meng Wanzhou and two Canadians detained in China were released in September after three years of so-called “hostage diplomacy”.
