Policy Brief No. 204 — June 2025
Canada at Economic War: Being Outplayed by Beijing Raquel Garbers
Key Points → The United States and its allies are being outplayed by Beijing. In failing to arrest China’s economic warfare against them, they have de facto subsidized their own downfall. → Beijing’s economic attacks have shifted the balance of military power away from the United States. China has secured control over critical supply chain choke points, eroded Western industrial capacity, pre-positioned attack assets in Western systems and erased the technology gap on which deterrence depends. → The United States has decided to fight back. Allies that provide defence assets secured against Beijing’s economic warfare will be powerful players in the new world order. → Canada must make radical changes to defend itself. The wrong choices will see China aggress us, allies bypass us and the United States treat us as a dangerous liability to be forcefully managed.
Introduction The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is waging a highly sophisticated campaign of aggression against the United States and its allies. To advance its preferred strategy of “winning without fighting,” it is leveraging its growing military power to openly harass and intimidate other states while simultaneously intensifying its below-threshold attacks on their political, economic and social systems. Intended to strike below the threshold that, if crossed, would provoke a target state to defend itself, Beijing’s belowthreshold attacks are deliberately crafted to hide its fingerprints; obscure its intent; exploit human weakness (greed, fear and so on); and make progress only in small steps (each of which is in itself seemingly inconsequential). Insofar as its use of traditional military coercion and below-threshold attacks together succeed over time in manipulating, corrupting and coercing foreign states — including at the expense of their own national interests — Beijing is effectively ensuring that they will not (or cannot) fight back.