Xi invites Canadian PM to China in first meet in 8 years

Chinese President Xi Jinping said China is willing to work with Canada to bring China-Canada relations back to the right track. (Yonhap/AP pic)

GYEONGJU: President Xi Jinping on Friday invited Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to China, in the first formal talks between the nations’ leaders since 2017, before also holding first discussions with Japan’s new premier.

Canada’s relations with China are among the worst of any Western nation but both are at the sharp end of Donald Trump’s tariff onslaught, even after Xi and the US leader’s deal Thursday to dial back tensions.

“Recently, with the joint efforts of both sides, China-Canada relations have shown a recovery toward a trend of positive development,” Xi told Carney as they met at an Apec summit in South Korea, inviting the Canadian to visit China.

“China is willing to work with Canada to bring China-Canada relations back to the right track,” Xi added.

“In recent years, we have not been as engaged,” said Carney, accepting Xi’s invitation.

Tha Canadian leader pointed to “constructive and pragmatic dialogue” as a route to addressing their “current issues”.

He also cited dialoque as a way “to help build a more sustainable, inclusive international system”.

Ties fell into a deep freeze in 2018 after the arrest of a senior Chinese telecom executive on a US warrant in Vancouver and China’s retaliatory detention of two Canadians on espionage charges.

In July, Carney announced an additional 25% tariff on steel imports that contain steel melted and poured in China.

Beijing announced the following month it would impose a painful temporary customs duty of 75.8% on Canadian canola imports.

Canada is among the world’s top producers of canola, an oilseed crop that is used to make cooking oil, animal meal and biodiesel fuel.

But Canada and China have both been heavily targeted by Trump’s global trade onslaught.

Trump said on Thursday he would halve fentanyl-related tariffs on China to 10% while Xi agreed to keep rare earths flowing and boost imports of US soybeans.

But the average US tariff on Chinese imports remains at 47%, Trump said.

The US president on Saturday said he was hiking tariffs on Canadian goods by an additional 10% and terminated all trade talks.

This followed what Trump called a “fake” anti-tariff ad campaign that featured the late ex-president Ronald Reagan.

“(The) old world of steady expansion of rules-based liberalised trade and investment, a world on which so much of our nations’ prosperity — very much Canada’s included — (is based), that world is gone,” Carney told the Apec gathering.

He also talked up Canada’s potential as an “energy superpower” and major supplier of liquified natural gas (LNG) to Asia.