No surprises, no public lectures: Carney on how Xi wants to be treated

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney outlined his personal formula for dealing with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump as he used a visit to Australia to call for middle-sized nations to work together to ensure that great powers cannot “dictate outcomes”.

Making his

first visit to Australia as leader

, Mr Carney delivered a sober warning about the changing global order but insisted that middle powers can “write our futures”. Noting that the world will “always be driven by great powers”, he shared candid insights into his dealings with the world’s two most powerful leaders.

Discussing his encounters with Mr Xi, he revealed that their first official meeting was at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation

summit in South Korea in November 2025

and that the Chinese President had effectively told him: “Don’t lecture me in public”.

“He chose to spend the first 10-plus minutes discussing how he wanted the personal interaction to be,” Mr Carney told the Lowy Institute think-tank in Sydney on March 4.

“If I were to summarise (his message): No surprises, if you really care about something be clear... And, he didn’t say it this way, but I interpret it as: ‘Don’t lecture me in public, bring issues to me directly’.”

Mr Carney said Canada, like Australia, had endured tense relations with China in recent years and both had been subject to effective trade sanctions. He said the “lesson” that Mr Xi encouraged was “to be very clear about where we’re looking to cooperate and where we’re not”.

Mr Carney, who has held cordial meetings with Mr Trump despite fiercely resisting his tariff threats and

references to Canada as the US’ “51st state”

, also gave insights into his personal dealings with him. He said it was important to show Mr Trump “respect not obsequiousness”.

“It’s not easy,” he said, referring to managing personal ties with the President. “You don’t want to say anything in public that you can’t back up… It’s quite different in private. He is more interested in your viewpoint on various things in private and that creates an ability to work through things.”

Mr Carney addressed Australia’s Parliament on March 5 in a rare visit by a Canadian leader that highlighted their shared current predicaments as traditionally staunch US allies who are both struggling to respond to Mr Trump’s “America First” foreign policy and sceptical approach to alliances.

In his address, Mr Carney warned that the global architecture was “now breaking down” and that smaller countries need to form coalitions to protect their interests.

“Great powers can compel, but compulsion comes with costs, both reputational and financial,” he said.

“In the post-rupture world, the nations that are trusted and can work together will be… more effective in their responses and more proactive in shaping outcomes… Middle powers like Australia and Canada hold this rare convening power because others know we mean what we say.”

Mr Carney said cooperation on critical minerals was an example of an area that Canada and Australia – both vast, resource-rich nations – could work together to expand their processing abilities and limit reliance on countries such as China, which dominates the sector.

Canada and Australia produce 34 per cent of global lithium supplies, 32 per cent of uranium supplies and 41 per cent of iron ore.

Making the first address to the Australian Parliament by a Canadian leader since 2007, Mr Carney announced that Australia will join the Group of Seven advanced economies’ Critical Minerals Production Alliance, which he described as the “largest grouping of trusted democratic mineral reserves in the world”.

The two countries also agreed to deepen defence ties and to advance their three-way partnership with India on developing artificial intelligence and digital technologies.

Mr Carney said Canada was seeking to build “different coalitions for different issues, based on common values and interests”. The alternative, he said, was to “let the hegemons dictate outcomes”.

“Rather than lamenting the fall of the old order, let us redouble our efforts to build the new one,” he said.

Echoing his widely discussed speech at the

World Economic Forum in Davos

, Switzerland, in January, when he warned that the “old order is not coming back”, he added: “When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.”

Sharing Mr Carney’s global assessment, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Parliament that Australia and Canada were “middle powers in a world that is changing”.

“We cannot change it back, but we can back ourselves, back our citizens and back each other,” he said.

Professor Mark Beeson, an international affairs expert from the University of Technology Sydney, told The Straits Times that Canada and Australia had much to gain from encouraging middle powers to work together at a time when the White House was increasingly willing to flout international law and multilateral agreements.

He said Canada and Australia had similar backgrounds as English-speaking Commonwealth countries and were well-placed to pursue “creative middle power diplomacy”.

“They could recruit other like-minded middle powers and have a sort of coalition of the unwilling where they won’t reflexively and blindly support the US, no matter what it does,” he said.

“If ever there was a potential love match, it would be between Australia and Canada. They have really similar interests and their relationship with America is difficult to navigate.”

Mr Carney told The Lowy Institute that Canada and China had focused their relationship on areas of strong alignment, such as agriculture, but the two countries were “not heavily integrated”.

In contrast, he said, he talked to Canberra about “absolutely anything, from intelligence to (agriculture) to defence cooperation”.

Fresh from a visit to India last week, where he attempted to rebuild ties after a fallout over Ottawa’s allegation that Delhi was involved in assassinating a Sikh leader in Canada in 2023, Mr Carney said ties with India are “somewhere in the middle – wider than China but nowhere near as deep as Australia”.

He said Canada had become increasingly vigilant on issues such as transnational repression and foreign interference but believed in maintaining contact with countries that engage in such conduct.

“Vigilance alone isn’t going to be enough,” he said.