I think it's critical for us to continue to ensure that we are an independent stakeholder with regard to our bilateral relationship with China and also our relationships within the Indo-Pacific. There is a danger that if we align too closely with the United States, particularly on a securitized approach to dealing with China, we will become another victim of U.S. policy.
China understands—and they often use the expression that you kill the chicken to scare the monkeys—that the best way to pull apart a U.S. approach to the region is to work on its weaker partners. The weaker partners include Canada, Australia, South Korea—to a certain degree—and European countries.
We need to ensure that as we engage with China, we have a policy that is less securitized than that of the United States, and we need to find opportunities to use Canadian diplomacy to work with China. At the same time, I think it's very critical that, again, we work with the United States, Japan, Australia and other partners in concerted ways to promote trade, to promote a rules-based order, to fight against the human rights violations within the region, and to really send the message to China that as we work to shape its behaviour, Canada does have a slightly different approach. I think that is going to continue to be important so that we can build an awkward coexistence with a rising state that really does have values that are different from ours.