China isn’t the answer for Canada’s trade troubles, says Taiwan envoy

OTTAWA - China doesn’t hold the solution for Canada’s economic issues and isn’t a trustworthy partner, Taiwan’s top representative to Ottawa said following Prime Minister Mark Carney’s tariff deal with Xi Jinping.

The Canadian and Chinese leaders

reached an agreement last week

to lower trade barriers and rebuild ties, a milestone reset after years of poor relations. 

The deal will see Canada open its market to a small number of Chinese electric vehicles at a low tariff rate, while China will reduce its import taxes on canola, an important western Canadian crop.

US President Donald Trump’s high tariffs have pushed Canada to urgently try to diversify its US-dominated export markets.

“If this trip to China is genuinely looking for an economic remedy for Canada, I don’t think you can find an answer in China,” Mr Harry Ho-jen Tseng, Taiwan’s representative in Canada, said in an interview. “If this trip to China is trying to create political leverage of some sort, domestically or internationally, I don’t know – it’s another matter.”

A free trade deal is “unachievable between Canada and China, simply because China is not a market economy,” with many restrictions on aspects of its own market, the former deputy foreign minister for Taiwan said.

“The contraction or the expansion of their market is actually a result of political calculation,” he said. “Those who come to buy from Canada will be from the state-owned enterprises. It is not the consumers,” meaning “the state can stop buying at any time.”

Officials with the Chinese embassy in Ottawa didn’t reply to a request for comment. 

Mr Ho-jen Tseng is Taiwan’s equivalent to an ambassador. The island doesn’t have formal diplomatic recognition in Ottawa due to Canada’s policy, shared by other Western nations, of neither challenging nor endorsing China’s claim to the self-ruled democracy.

Taiwan was Canada’s 15th-largest merchandise trading partner in 2024 with C$6 billion (S$5.6 billion) in goods exchanged, according to the Canadian government. The services trade between the two was C$1.9 billion. 

The Canadian government’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, published in late 2022 when Mr Justin Trudeau was still prime minister, called China “an increasingly disruptive global power” that disregards international rules and norms. That document is a “very good road map,” Mr Ho-jen Tseng said.

But comments from Mr Carney’s Cabinet have suggested that strategy is not set in stone – and the global political and economic landscape has changed radically since it was written. When asked on Jan 14 if Canada stood by that description of China, Foreign Minister Anita Anand said: “This is a new government with a new prime minister, a new foreign policy and a new geopolitical environment.”

Mr Ho-jen Tseng also said it was “totally unnecessary” that Canadian lawmakers from Mr Carney’s Liberal Party cut short a trip to Taiwan last week to avoid overlapping with Mr Carney’s visit to Beijing.

Parliamentary visits to Taiwan have been a normal practice for years and are the best way for Canadian lawmakers to understand the island nation’s challenges, the diplomat said.

Canada should also sign a trade cooperation framework agreement it has drafted with Taiwan “as early as possible,” he said. BLOOMBERG