The West should work to constrain China, not contain it – and Canada could have a big role to play

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Casey Babb is the author of the forthcoming book Digital Fortress: Strategies of Authoritarian Survival in Cyberspace, an international fellow with the Glazer Israel-China Policy Center at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, and an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

For years, national security practitioners, scholars, economists and politicians from around the world have been fixated on what many consider to be the greatest danger to global peace and security: the rise of China. Indeed, alarm bells have been ringing from Washington to Taipei regarding Beijing’s rapid ascent as one of the most powerful nations on Earth.

In response to China’s growth, and the country’s increasingly adversarial behaviour, a slew of policies, programs and pacts have been pursued and implemented in virtually every Western country. From new defence alliances and increased military exercises and troop rotations in the Indo-Pacific, to enhanced research security and foreign-investment measures, to large-scale industrial initiatives and beyond, the West has mobilized around a common objective: thwarting China’s rise.

In reality, though, China cannot be stopped. Despite several internal challenges which have cooled the country’s economy and poked holes in President Xi Jinping’s once impenetrable aura, China remains well on its way to upending the Western liberal order as we know it.

That being said, all is not lost. If the West pursues a co-ordinated strategy toward constraining Beijing, rather than containing it, it has the potential to influence China’s behaviour and the Chinese Communist Party’s risk tolerance, while shaping the coming power transition in its favour. Canada has an immense role to play in achieving this.

So, what does such a strategy look like? “A policy of constrainment, unlike containment, accounts for the current realities of economic interdependence and seeks to tilt them to Washington’s advantage,” wrote Matt Pottinger, Matthew Johnson and David Feith in Foreign Affairs. “Constrainment should seek to puncture Beijing’s confidence that it can achieve its aims through war and sap Beijing’s optimism that it can decisively accumulate coercive economic leverage over the United States and other democracies.” In essence, constraining China means turning the tables on Beijing, identifying where and how China needs the West, exploiting those dependencies to our advantage, and extricating ourselves from the most strategically injurious dependencies we have on them. In Canada, this will be a heavy lift – but it’s one that could determine what our country looks like for our grandchildren’s grandchildren.

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To start, Canada should take note of the important steps our allies have undertaken in terms of decreasing China’s ability to economically coerce its rivals and competitors. For instance, in October, 2022, the Biden administration rolled out a range of extensive measures limiting Beijing’s access to advanced semiconductors and the equipment used to make them. As one expert notes, this move deprives China of “the computing power it needs to train artificial intelligence at scale.” In Canada, we should seek to do similar things. This does not simply mean safeguarding our own sensitive technologies and assets, but rather, identifying those that Beijing relies on us for, and determining the terms in which they can be accessed. Naturally, this work would fall on the government, but Canadian businesses, scholars, entrepreneurs and industry leaders have a stake in this, too.

In addition, more must be done to control China’s access to top-tier scholarly and scientific Canadian talent. According to a recent report by the Canberra-based Australian Strategic Policy Institute, China is “attracting talent to the workplace from democratic countries” with nearly 22 per cent of the country’s “high-impact” authors having completed their postgraduate training in a Five Eyes country. Of the Five Eyes members – the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – Canada saw the third-highest amount of talent loss to China, far ahead of Australia and New Zealand, as well as more than both the European Union and Japan. Not only will controlling this talent loss be key if Canadian businesses and researchers want to ensure the country remains a leader in terms of innovation, economic development and competitiveness, it will send an important signal to Beijing: If you want what we have to offer, you’ll have to play by the rules.

Finally, greater effort is needed to counter what Mr. Xi refers to as China’s “discourse power,” particularly when it comes to social media and online communication. Content apps such as TikTok – made by companies that are headquartered in China, and are thus governed by laws that could allow Beijing to compel data-sharing if the government deems it relevant to state intelligence work – could serve as extremely efficient tools the regime could use to censor and manipulate information to its advantage. Yet about 26 per cent of adult Canadians are actively engaged on TikTok. This is a serious vulnerability which could result in China influencing the views of millions of Canadians on a wide range of issues. As the authors noted above suggest, not only should these apps be banned, but they should also be replaced by digital platforms designed in and controlled by Western firms.

Cumulatively, these and other measures could turn the tables on China, and signal to Beijing that while China’s rise might be inevitable, its government’s ability to bully, disrupt and destabilize has been significantly diminished. To echo Mr. Pottinger, Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Feith: “The contest between democracies and China will increasingly turn on the balance of dependence; whichever side depends least on the other will have the advantage.”

Well, it is up to us, then – do we want the advantage, or not?