Carney, right, and Xi make their way to their seats after shaking hands at the start of a meeting in Gyeongju on Oct. 31, 2025.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Colin Robertson is a former diplomat and host of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute’s Global Exchange podcast.

Whenever Prime Minister Mark Carney eventually takes Xi Jinping up on his invitation to visit China, expectations should be set deliberately low. This will not be a reconciliation, nor a return to the expansive engagement that once defined Canada–China relations, but a guarded reset: a pragmatic effort to stabilize a necessary but adversarial relationship amid intensifying great-power rivalry.

Success begins with realism about China’s leadership. As longtime China scholar Orville Schell argues, Beijing’s external behaviour cannot be separated from the internal logic of the Chinese Communist Party – or from the formative experiences of Mr. Xi himself. The Chinese President is not merely an assertive nationalist responding to China’s rise; he is a political survivor forged by trauma, ideological struggle and relentless internal competition.

Purged alongside his family during the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Xi learned a defining lesson: power is never secure, and weakness invites destruction. That worldview continues to shape Chinese diplomacy. China’s foreign policy is not simply........

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