Canada should be cautious about deepening trade with China, says Tokyo-based academic
Kazuto Suzuki, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Public Policy, is delivering presentations in Toronto, Ottawa and Calgary addressing the similar challenges facing Canada and Japan.
Ottawa should be mindful of the risks of deepening trade with China because Beijing could leverage it for economic coercion in the future, says a prominent Tokyo-based academic on a Canadian speaking tour, sponsored by Japan’s government.
Prof. Suzuki is delivering presentations in Toronto, Ottawa and Calgary addressing the similar challenges facing Canada and Japan – both of which are trying to reduce dependence on a major foreign market. Canada is trying to lessen reliance on the increasing protectionist and unpredictable United States under Donald Trump and Japan is undertaking to reduce dependence on China for strategic goods.
“If you increase dependency on China, be careful, be aware of the risks that China could use that as a weapon against you,” Prof. Suzuki said in an interview Thursday.
He was speaking of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s efforts to attract Chinese investment and boost trade with Beijing. Mr. Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to meet next month at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen and talk about next steps in a “strategic partnership” struck this year.
“Interdependence can hurt you. That is the reality today,” he said. “So we have to be prepared because the rules do not protect us.”
Relations between Japan and China have fallen to their lowest point in about 15 years. Beijing has imposed trade restrictions and export controls on Japan, effectively cutting off shipments of key rare earth minerals used in electric-vehicle magnets, protective coatings and other high-tech products.
This follows Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s late 2025 comments that under certain conditions, a Chinese attack on the self-governed territory of Taiwan could trigger a military response from Tokyo.
Prof. Suzuki noted Beijing’s aggression towards Japan began shortly after Mr. Trump met Mr. Xi in Busan. He said he believes one of Mr. Xi’s takeaways from the Oct. 30, 2025, meeting was the “conviction that the United States is not going to intervene in the Japan-China relationship.”
In September, China escalated its economic coercion to formal trade duties on Japanese chip-material suppliers, announcing provisional anti-dumping deposits of up to 99.2 per cent on Japan-made dichlorosilane, a chemical used in chip manufacturing.
China has demanded Ms. Takaichi retract her Taiwan remarks and has said it will take further measures if she does not. Beijing has not ruled out the use of force to annex Taiwan, which it considers a breakaway province, and in the last few years has stepped up large-scale encirclement military exercises around the island. Japan has steadily built up its southwestern island defences since 2016, with surveillance units and missile bases on islands near Taiwan.
“China sees Japan and Taiwan as enemy No. 1,” Prof. Suzuki said.
Japan is trying to be “more independent and autonomous from the Chinese supply chains,” just as Canada is diversifying trade away from the U.S., he said.
Japan takes Mr. Carney’s call for middle powers to form coalitions amid an erosion of the rules-based international order seriously, Prof. Suzuki said.
His own remarks to Canadian audiences talk of a “world without leadership” where the U.S. no longer wishes to lead and China is not interested in taking over as the hegemon, but rather in expanding its own sphere of interest.
Still, Prof. Suzuki said, Mr. Carney’s message would have more impact in Asia if the Prime Minister spent more time focusing on the region.
“I think he has more interest in doing business with Europe, and he hasn’t paid much attention to Asia, and if he’s serious about the middle power coalition, there are lots of middle powers in Asia,” he said.
In recent years, Japan identified 16 categories of critical products – many of them imports – which it needs to keep in stock because it cannot afford to face shortages. These include goods such as antibiotics, magnets, aircraft parts, semiconductors, natural gas, critical minerals and drones. Tokyo is paying companies to build up domestic supply of everything on the list.
Prof. Suzuki proposes Canada and Japan co-operate to form a coalition of the “rule-based order.” He said the 12-country Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), of which Canada and Japan are both members, is a good vehicle and should be expanded to create a secure and reliable supply chain for its signatories from Southeast Asia to Canada, Mexico and South America.
Since the World Trade Organization (WTO), a referee of global commerce, is no longer effective, the CPTPP would probably be the largest functioning multilateral trade agreement, he said. The WTO has been weakened as the U.S. has used its veto to block all new appointments to the organization’s appellate body, leaving it below the quorum needed to hear appeals and rendering it effectively dead.
“We would be a shining beacon on the hill,” Prof. Suzuki said of a strengthened Trans-Pacific trade pact.
