China's audacious ploy to woo former US allies

Telegraph

24-04-2025

Confronting President Donald Trump's repeated calls to make Canada the 51st American state, Canadians have become accustomed to fighting talk from politicians and diplomats recently. So, remarks from Ottawa this week were not out of the ordinary.
'Faced with the US's unilateral bullying, Canada has not backed down,' a suited official declared. 'Instead, Canada is standing on the right side of history, on the right side of international fairness and justice.'
What was different was that the speaker was no Canadian politician, but instead Wang Di, China's ambassador to Ottawa. It is the nicest thing any Chinese official has said about Canada in years. It is also an abrupt volte-face that underscores China's determination to capitalise on the White House's alienation of America's traditional allies.
Canada is not alone. Britain is also being love-bombed by Beijing. This Wednesday, Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, telephoned David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, to say they were willing to 'eliminate all distractions' in its relationship with the UK so the two could stand up to Mr Trump's 'rampant unilateral bullying'.
The same day, Japan's Kyodo news agency reported that Li Qiang, China's premier, had sent a letter to Shigeru Ishiba, Japan's prime minister, calling for a coordinated response to American tariffs.
From Canada to Cambodia, Chinese officials have been on a charm offensive. Their message is a simple one: While Donald Trump's America tries to dismantle the global trade system, China can still be relied on to play by the rules. Join Xi Jinping in his mission to save globalisation, they suggest, and your country and China can prosper together – and be shielded from Mr Trump's next bout of vindictiveness.
'China doesn't have alliances in the way we think of them,' said Charles Parton, a distinguished fellow at the think tank Council on Geostrategy who spent 22 years working on China as a British diplomat. 'But if you are talking about forming blocs, then yes, they are clearly trying to pose as the champion of the way international law should work.'
Not that China is a paragon in this regard, says Mr Parton, given accusations that it abuses World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, is flexing its muscles territorially in the South China Sea, and allegedly committing human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang province. 'It is quite rich, really,' he notes.
Yet Beijing's charm offensive has already created some previously unthinkable, headline-grabbing moments. On March 30, the trade ministers of China, South Korea and Japan met for the first time in five years. A picture of the trio holding hands in a collective gesture of defiance made the front pages across East Asia. The Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard called it ' one of the most striking economic defeats suffered by America ' that he had ever witnessed.
Since then, Xi Jinping himself has led the charge in Southeast Asia. Earlier this month, he visited Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia, all tentative American allies who were hit hard by Mr Trump's tariffs (before he announced a 90-day pause). It is an audacious gambit. And there are signs that China may be overreaching in its effort to lead a vanguard of free-traders against Donald Trump's protectionist America. After the trade ministers' meeting in Seoul, for example, Chinese state media said the three had jointly agreed to respond to US tariffs. South Korea called that an exaggeration. Japan said there had been no such discussion.
In a similar vein, the Foreign Office said Mr Lammy's call with Mr Yi covered the war in Ukraine and China's denial of entry to Hong Kong for Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse, but would not confirm whether Mr Trump or tariffs were mentioned. 'We will continue to take a calm and steady approach on international trade, to protect the UK's interests,' a Foreign Office spokesperson said.
Still, China's overtures towards Canada are astonishingly bold. After all, relations between Ottawa and Beijing have been in the deep freeze since 2018, when Canadian police (acting on a US warrant) arrested Meng Wanzhou, a senior Huawei executive. That same year, China arrested two Canadian citizens, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, in what Canada called a blatant act of hostage diplomacy (the two were released in 2021).
Since then, the two countries have been locked in a death spiral of diplomatic expulsions, retaliatory tariffs, and allegations of meddling in one another's affairs. The most recent clash came just last month, when it emerged China had executed four Canadian-Chinese dual citizens on drug charges. Quarrels like that do not usually go away overnight.
There are three big obstacles to Xi Jinping capitalising on Donald Trump's alienation of his trade allies, said one Taiwanese China watcher: it has a large surplus of goods that could overwhelm other countries' markets; a poor record of abiding by the spirit of free trade rules; and, at least so far, has little to put on the table to convince other countries to side with it over America.
'The UK, Brazil, India – all of these countries are already not very happy about China's trade practices. Even Japan and South Korea have serious complaints,' said Mr Parton.
'In the short term, the Americans are taking a bashing. But it would be pretty premature to say China is the more reliable partner.'
Consequently, China's message to some potential partners has been less carrot and more stick. In Vietnam and Cambodia, for example, Xi Jinping issued a warning not to put Chinese interests 'on the table as chips with the United States' after both countries said they would crack down on Chinese companies using them as re-export routes.
'I also know that there's some discussion in Taiwan, maybe Japan as well, about building a trading bloc without the US. But the question is, how possible is it when the US is their biggest market? Would China be included, or actually is this a non-China, non-US trading bloc here we are seeing?' said the Taiwanese source, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive trade talks.
'But on the non-economic, geopolitical side, I think it's a great opportunity for China to boost its influence. Even with the closest US allies and partners, relations are warming,' the source added.
Japan and South Korea are showing a willingness to make gestures, if not to capitulate entirely to Chinese demands.
Xi Jinping's visit to Vietnam, a country that has increasingly aligned itself with the United States in order to balance the threat from Beijing, is particularly significant.
The news that EU leaders will visit Beijing in July for a summit with Xi Jinping is being taken as a sign of a warming of ties with Europe too.
'Definitely there are openings,' says Ben Bland, the director of the Asia Pacific programme at think tank Chatham House. 'Certain countries have reopened lines of dialogue. Because of the unpredictability of the Trump administration, they want their own lines to Beijing.
'And China is more predictable. Whether people like what it's doing is a different question. For China's neighbours, there is no future in Asia without a close relationship with China.'
None of that makes trade tensions and territorial disputes vanish into thin air, however. So while Mr Trump has created obvious opportunities for the Chinese Communist Party, it is hardly an open goal.
'They are all hedging,' said the source in Taipei. 'Biden spoke about American-led multilateralism. [Now] under America First, there's nothing multilateral: It's just America tells you what to do, and maybe that's not in your interest. So you have to align with your own interests to manage who else you can get along with to minimise the damage.'