ANALYSIS: How Public Opinion Has Long Swayed Ottawa’s China Policy

Given Canadians’ mistrust of China, Ottawa-Beijing relations cannot be “reset,” Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said this week. This follows a historical trend of public concerns restraining leaders from courting Beijing, despite the push from some quarters to do so. Similar sentiments as those of Ms. Joly’s have been expressed by other Canadian leaders in the past, although less candidly. Toward the end of his term in 1993, former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney held a private dinner with China’s vice president in Ottawa. Only a few years had passed since the Tiananmen Square massacre, when Chinese police opened fire on pro-democracy student demonstrators, and many democracies shunned the communist regime at the time....