November 18, 2023, San Fransisco: Canada and China must keep in touch. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he told Xi Jinping during a chance encounter this week at the annual economic summit of Pacific Rim leaders wrapped up Friday in northern California.
Xi’s four-hour meeting Wednesday with U.S. President Joe Biden was the highlight of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit about building an economic bulwark against China’s growing influence.
Trudeau’s run-in was, by all accounts, purely perfunctory — they happened to be side-by-side during Thursday’s traditional family photo — but he took a shot at some summit-sideline diplomacy of his own.
“I talked about how we need to keep our officials and teams working together to try and create constructive dialogue around issues that matter to us individually but also matter to the world,” Trudeau said.
“This is part of the ongoing engagement that Canada needs to have around the world, including with countries we disagree with.”
So, what did Xi say? “He acknowledged what I said,” the prime minister said.
It was a fitting bookend to a summit that seemed dominated from the beginning by the presence of the Chinese president, who apparently left his heart in San Francisco during his first visit to the U.S. in 1985.
Xi struck a largely conciliatory tone all week, acknowledging U.S. concerns with the flow of illegal fentanyl from China and the geopolitical importance of his military having open lines of communication with the Pentagon.
