Canadian domestic politics have helped magnify the most recent dispute between Beijing and Ottawa into a full blown tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats.
While some experts who track relations between China and Canada play the spat down — one called it “pretty trivial” — it’s one more crack contributing to a far more dangerous long-term rupture.
Labelled “global fragmentation,” the issue was raised at a recent International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington, D.C. The current Canadian dispute may represent a further fracturing of the world into competing trade blocs that will not only make us all poorer, but impede crucial talks on shared global threats, including climate change and artificial intelligence.
Diplomacy’s economic impact
Critics of
