china does not interpret canada as a sovereign country, but rather as a client state of the american empire. they would expect us to conduct our relations through washington - just as they would expect washington to conduct relations with the chinese clients through beijing.

a regional governor does not meet with a foreign emperor; that would be inappropriate.

in fact, the chinese no doubt view the mere act of sending a delegation as insolent and worthy of punishment. if tibet or hong kong were to send a delegation directly to washington (that boat has already sailed in taiwan), the chinese would no doubt punish them for it.

china is an empire with imperial ambitions, and sees the world as empires with imperial ambitions do.

so, what does canada do? this is the old, hard problem in canadian politics: how do we balance our sovereignty with our geography? in the case of countries with different ruling philosophies, careful balancing acts are required and necessary. i think it should be clear to everybody that this isn't possible in the chinese case, as they are making a point to interpret us as a province.

canada tends to prefer discourse to conflict, but if the chinese get their way then we become a state. it's hard to see how there's any room for compromise.

the actual reality is that canada is probably better off cutting it's losses and trying to cause problems on china's periphery by creating stronger alliances with the koreans, the vietnamese, the japanese, etc. so long as the chinese insist that we are an american client that must communicate with them through washington, we should do what we can to increase the independence of the countries on the chinese periphery, and insist that we do not need to go through beijing to get to them.

but, the canadian government is delusional if it thinks there is any future of normalized relations between canada and china. they don't see us as an independent actor, and we're not in their sphere of interest or their sphere of influence - and this is the language being used by the chinese and americans right now, as they carve up the world without us.

we're not invited.