Trudeau lays out China approach ahead of Biden meeting

CNN  — 

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau laid out a three-pronged vision of engagement, competition and confrontation with China in a CNN interview on Thursday, ahead of a much-anticipated meeting with US President Joe Biden in which the two Western leaders are expected to cover a number of security issues.

Speaking with CNN’s Paula Newton, Trudeau said that in areas like climate change, Canada aims to “engage constructively” with Beijing, while still challenging its approach in areas such as human rights and security. “We’re going to have to continue to be wide-eyed and clear about the threat that China poses and wants to pose to the stability of our democracies,” he said.

Trudeau will meet with Biden later Thursday, marking the US President’s first official overnight visit to the country since entering the White House more than two years ago. The trip is anticipated to underscore the neighbors’ close diplomatic, economic and security ties.

“Growing our economy, creating good jobs for people in a changing world, how we’re going to be holding off the rise of authoritarianism, defending our democracies, how we’re going to be continuing to step up on the fight against climate change …there’s so much that we can do together and so much greater impact that we have around the world when we do it together,” Trudeau said.

Trudeau, the longest-serving leader in the G7, has been an ally to Biden in providing military and financial assistance to Kyiv since Russia’s invasion in February 2022. At home, the US and Canada also share a number of domestic security concerns, from foreign election meddling to the handling of a suspected Chinese spy balloon over North America in recent months.

“One of the things we have to remember is China is the second largest economy in the world and continues to grow. We are going to have to – in some circumstances – engage constructively with China like we did around the conference on biodiversity that we hosted with them in Montreal,” he said, referring to the United Nations COP15 summit in December.

“There’s other places where we’re going to have to be stiff competition to China in terms of market access (and) in terms of investments in the Global South. We need to be able to show that the Western democracies are there to make those investments and they’re as competitive to China,” he said.

“But there are also areas in which we’re going to have to directly challenge China, whether it’s on human rights, whether it’s on security behaviors, whether it’s on cyber attacks or concerns like that. We’re going to have to continue to be wide-eyed and clear about the threat that China poses and wants to pose to the stability of our democracies.”