Ottawa:
If that reporting is accurate, Canadians should pause.
This is no longer a debate about personalities or election cycles. It is a debate about the future architecture of the international order and the principles upon which it should rest.
The United States has already made its strategic choice.
Over the past decade, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, Washington has increasingly concluded that the People’s Republic of China is not merely an economic competitor but its principal long-term strategic rival. Economic security has become national security. Supply chains are now viewed as strategic assets. Technology has become an instrument of geopolitical power. Trade policy has become an extension of national defence.
Whether one agrees with that assessment or not, it is no longer simply the policy of one administration. It has become the organising principle of American grand strategy.
Canada now faces a more fundamental question.
If the United States is redefining its relationship with China around strategic competition, can Canada simultaneously deepen its alliance with Washington through CUSMA, NORAD and NATO while also viewing Beijing as an essential partner in shaping the next international order?
That is not simply a diplomatic question, it is a philosophical one.
My answer begins with a framework called Ethical Realism.
Ethical Realism begins with a simple proposition: prosperity follows liberty, not the other way around. Free markets require the rule of law. Capitalism depends upon private property protected by independent courts. Investment requires confidence that contracts will be honoured regardless of political influence. Governments exist to serve citizens, not the reverse. Business ethics cannot be separated from political ethics because economic systems inevitably reflect the values of the governments that oversee them.
This is not idealism.
It is the historical observation that societies governed by accountable institutions, independent courts and the rule of law have consistently generated greater innovation, stronger alliances and more durable prosperity than societies in which political power ultimately directs economic life.
That is why governance matters.
On July 1, China’s National Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law came into force. Presented by Beijing as legislation promoting national cohesion, it further strengthens the Chinese Communist Party’s authority over questions of identity, culture and political expression. Critics argue that it provides an additional legal foundation for policies already affecting Uyghurs, Tibetans, Southern Mongolians, Hong Kongers and other communities whose identities the Party seeks to reshape within a unified national narrative. In fact, the law projects to and seeks to control all those who speak out against the regime and is the backbone of transnational repression agenda.
Whatever one thinks of Beijing’s justification, the law illustrates a fundamentally different conception of the relationship between the individual and the state.
Under one model, governments derive their legitimacy from protecting liberty under law.
Under the other, rights exist within limits ultimately defined by the state.
This is not merely a human rights debate but rather a debate about governance itself.
China has made no secret of its ambition to play a larger role in shaping international institutions during the 21st century Its influence is everywhere you look. Every great power seeks influence. That is neither surprising nor illegitimate.
The question for liberal democracies is not whether China should have a seat at the table. It already has one. The question is whether democratic nations should help reshape that table according to principles fundamentally different from those that created the post-war international order, and some seem to have already bought in.
That is why the Wall Street Journal’s reporting matters.
If Prime Minister Carney believes the democratic world has become structurally overdependent upon the United States, Canadians deserve an equally open discussion about the principles that should anchor whatever comes next.
None of this argues for isolating China. Nor does it require unquestioning agreement with every decision made in Washington.
Diplomacy requires engagement with competitors as well as allies. Trade remains essential and dialogue remains indispensable but engagement without strategic clarity is not strategy at all.
The Chinese Communist Party is not simply another government pursuing commercial interests. It is a party-state that integrates political authority, industrial policy, finance, technology, intelligence and diplomacy into a single Comprehensive National Strategy. Democracies should engage China with confidence and realism, but never by pretending governance models are morally interchangeable.
Canada’s choice, therefore, is larger than choosing between Washington and Beijing.
It is choosing which conception of international order best secures our future.
One begins with liberty, accountable government, independent institutions and the rule of law, believing that free societies create lasting prosperity because citizens remain free to challenge power.
The other places the state at the centre of political and economic life, asking markets, institutions and ultimately individuals to serve broader strategic objectives defined by government. These are not merely competing economic systems but rather competing philosophies of order.
Every generation inherits a defining strategic question.
Ours is not whether America will remain the world’s leading power as history will answer that in time.
Our question is whether liberal democracies still believe that liberty, the rule of law and accountable government are the indispensable foundations of prosperity, or whether those principles have become negotiable in the pursuit of a new international order where articles are traded for temporary economic gains.
Before Canada decides where it stands in the world, it must first decide what it stands for.
This is part of three column series focus’s on the geoeconomics and trade and security.
* Dean Baxendale is Columnist, Author and CEO of Optimum Publishing International.
Next Week Why Liberty Still Wins: The Economics of Ethical Realism
