How is China different than another belligerent nation, such as the one directly to the south of Canada? Thousands of vehicles with OnStar, Teslas, etc.? Ring? I mean the list goes on.
this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2025
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There's two answers to this,
The first is that China has shown repeatedly that it's willing to be an absolutely belligerent asshole, and weaponize it's companies in that undertaking against most of it's trading partners. The US, despite also being a belligerent asshole, has not shown evidence of weaponizing it's companies in this manner. It generally only plays asshole through government channels, at worst restricting exports to specific countries.
The second answer, is that China would benefit more from taking such action in a global conflict. If China got into an actual fight with the USA, crippling parts of the Canadian economy would be a great way to harm the US directly given that we're one of their largest trading partners, even with the bullshit that's happening now. The US doesn't benefit from harming us in a global conflict, because despite how stupid they're being, we'd still be on their side. Going against the US militarily would be suicide for Canada, even if we didn't like what they were doing. We'd fall faster than France did to the Germans.
I think you can just as easily flip that on its head.
USA consistently weaponizes its companies through sanctions. If a country wants to be part of the global economy you need to do business with USA banks (eg SWIFT) and tech, and if your country is sanctioned, it cannot. Speaking of tech, the tech companies actively participates in wiretapping and that’s really old news - who knows what they’re doing today.
China is typically careful about throwing its weight around because of its high dependency on exports and limited deployment capability of its army.
In terms of a shooting war with the USA, China has a strategic advantage in being able to shut down Canadian transportation remotely, agreed.
I think recent events have shown, however, that there’s no guarantee that the USA would automatically be on the side of Canada. I’m thinking more it’s more along the lines of how Germany and Austria were “on the same side” in WWII ie Annexation.
I guess it's a case of the "the enemy I know" vs "the enemy I don't"?
Reminder: this is a paper owned by US private equity pretending to be Canadian
Imagine if that were fighter plane who have weapon systems locked in cloud in a belligerent nation
Even the USA spies on us
And we spy on the US, and China.
The problem is more that the US has far less reason to harm us, if they wanted our country they could take it tomorrow.
China harming Canada harms the US though, and that's something China would absolutely love to do.
Trump is already harming us unprovoked. Imagine if we goes full full against the USA imperial policies like being consistence with our values and start doing real strong actions against Israel colonial policies .
I'm sure he's totally impartial on the topic.
As an addition, there is a comment published by thehub .ca. I don't completely with everything, but it has many good points regarding China:
China is not the answer for Canadian prosperity -- (Archived link)
... Strengthening ties with like-minded partners—through our trade agreements with the European Union, South Korea, or through the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership—builds resilience without compromising our principles. True diversification extends our reach while reinforcing our values, not undermining them.
[There are] profound obstacles to “restoring relations” with China. They are not mere irritants, but deep incompatibilities between Canada’s democratic values and Beijing’s authoritarian conduct. Since joining the World Trade Organization in 2001, China has gamed the rules of global commerce by propping up state-owned enterprises, dumping subsidized products, and weaponizing non-tariff barriers against its critics. Its human-rights record at home and abroad is appalling. Domestically, the persecution of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, and underground Christians; the crushing of Hong Kong’s freedoms must not be ignored.
Here in Canada, the election interference and the intimidation of Chinese-Canadians through fake police stations should not be overlooked. Not to mention the imprisonment of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor for 1,019 days on fabricated espionage charges. To gloss over these realities is to erode the moral foundation of our foreign policy ...
Emphasis mine.
Canada has values? Which ones?