This article is part of a series the CIC has offered to host commissioned by the China Policy Centre, in cooperation with the University of Alberta’s China Institute, and the support of Global Affairs Canada.

China’s foreign policy under President Xi Jinping has entered a new era. Xi has jettisoned Deng Xiaoping’s low profile foreign policy of “biding time in the shadows” to openly proclaiming China as an example for developing countries and the goal of “national rejuvenation” as a bid to take a place as a leading global power.
To protect its domestic political order China under Xi challenges the universality of liberal values and seeks to reform global governance assure that China’s own political system and its cultural tradition are accommodated within its normative structure. This poses an unprecedented challenge to Canadian foreign policy at a time when the US under Donald Trump increasingly forces its allies to choose sides and support the primacy of US power.
Chinese diplomacy under Xi is itself determined to draw “red lines” around its core interests and to punish countries who disregard its preference. The article concludes that while the rise of China poses unprecedented challenges for Canada’s postwar role and traditional diplomatic behavior, we should avoid seeing the rise of China and the US response in zero-sum terms.
Core liberal principles can be defended alongside accommodating China’s effort to claim normative space for itself within the global order. We must strive to avoid casting the challenge of a rising China as a showdown between the West and “the rest.”