(Ottawa) China is playing on the divisions of democracies, denounced Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in an interview with the Global television network, calling on Western countries to “work together” to better resist these pressures.
“We need to work better to resist together and prevent China from playing on our divisions against each other,” Trudeau said.
“We are competing against each other and China is playing us very smartly against each other in an open market,” argued the Canadian Prime Minister. The West should instead “display a united front”, he pleaded.
Justin Trudeau announced on December 8 a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, following in the footsteps of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.
Canadian athletes will compete in the Games, which start on February 4, but no government officials will be visiting China.
There are many sources of tension between Canada and China, which have just emerged from an unprecedented diplomatic crisis linked to the arrest, in December 2018, of the daughter of the founder of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei in Canada.
Meng Wanzhou and two Canadians who were detained in China were released in September after three years of detention in what has been called “hostage diplomacy.”