James Kynge

I think we're going to see this in many different areas, including cars, including cellular modules, including wind farms, maybe, and some of the other areas in which Chinese companies collect data throughout Europe.

So that's my prediction.

What about you?

And I'm James King.

Well, it really feels to me a little bit like we've gone through the looking glass these days.

I must say, so much is in flux in the international order that it's hard to disentangle cause and effect.

It's hard to know which is a move and which is a counter move.

But in what I'm calling the tumble dryer of international affairs, I think a couple of big moves into China's orbit really stand out.

The first was, as you just mentioned, Alice,

Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, going to China last week.

And the other big move is the intended visit to China by the UK Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, at the end of the month.

Both of these countries are the staunchest and longest standing allies of the United States.

And now we can see, certainly in the case of Canada, it's cozying up to China.

And it was

clear that China lost no opportunity to make propaganda capital out of this move at the expense of the United States.

Let me just tell you a couple of things that the Chinese media was saying.

The China Daily, which is an official Chinese newspaper, encouraged the Canadian government, Ottawa, to adopt what it called, quote, strategic autonomy from Washington.

And the longer quote was...

If Ottawa still chooses to subject its China policy to the will of Washington again in the future, it will only render its previous efforts to mend ties with Beijing in vain.

So it was a very clear warning that the Canadian government should not backslide, having made this visit and expended all this political capital to cozy up to Xi Jinping, that it shouldn't backslide from this position in the future.