By Promit Mukherjee<\/p>\n
OTTAWA, May 29 (Reuters) – China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi said on Friday that Canada could surpass its goal of increasing exports to China by 50% by 2030, during a \u200cmeeting with Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand.<\/p>\n
Wang said he thought Canada’s exports to China could increase \u200cby 100%, building on momentum between the countries.<\/p>\n
“Canada is focused on growing our economy and diversifying our trading relationships,” Anand said during the meeting. “The Canada-China \u200beconomic relationship is significant,” she said.<\/p>\n
Wang is on a three-day visit to Canada, the first by a Chinese foreign minister in a decade and the latest step to improve ties. On Friday afternoon, he shook hands with Prime Minister Mark Carney ahead of a private meeting.<\/p>\n
In a statement issued after the meeting, Anand’s office said the two leaders discussed a wide \u200crange of topics including trade, human rights \u2060and foreign interference in a “frank and constructive manner.”<\/p>\n
“Both ministers reiterated the importance of maintaining stable and reliable channels of communication at all levels to deepen cooperation and remove irritants where \u2060possible,” her office said.<\/p>\n
Canada and China struck an initial trade deal in January to slash tariffs on electric vehicles and canola, when Carney became the first Canadian prime minister to visit China since 2017.<\/p>\n
China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner, and Carney has sought \u200bto \u200breduce his country’s overwhelming reliance on the United States after \u200bit became a target of U.S. President Donald \u200cTrump’s tariffs. Amid an ongoing trade war with the U.S., Carney has vowed to double Canadian exports to other markets in the next decade and has signed more than 20 economic and security deals in the last year.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Carney delivered a speech in New York calling for a “new partnership” with the U.S., saying that a stronger Canada would “help make America great again.”<\/p>\n
SOVEREIGNTY AND SECURITY<\/p>\n
The Chinese foreign minister’s Ottawa visit comes after the Canadian warship HMCS Charlottetown completed a \u200croutine transit through the Taiwan Strait on May 23. China said \u200bon Friday it firmly opposes any attempt by any country to \u200bundermine its sovereignty and security “under the pretext of \u200bfreedom of navigation.”<\/p>\n
China claims sovereignty over democratically governed Taiwan and the strategic Taiwan Strait, while \u200cTaipei rejects those claims.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Conservative Canadian lawmaker \u200bMichael Chong travelled to Taiwan, \u200bwhere he met with Taiwanese President Dr. Lai Ching-te and other senior officials.<\/p>\n
Chong said in a statement his visit was intended to “show solidarity with a democracy at the front lines of intimidation from the People’s Republic of \u200bChina” and to assert Canada’s sovereignty, after \u200ca warning from the Chinese ambassador to Canada regarding politicians visiting Taiwan.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Promit Mukherjee in \u200bOttawa and Frances Gao in Toronto; Additional reporting by Daphne Psaledakis, Maria Cheng, Ismail Shakil and \u200bBhargav Acharya; Editing by Caroline Stauffer, Rod Nickel and Edmund Klamann)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Promit Mukherjee OTTAWA, May 29 (Reuters) – China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi said on Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3916,17,11340,822,337,25282,111,12870,24644],"class_list":["post-66925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-anita-anand","tag-canada","tag-canadian-exports","tag-canadian-prime-minister","tag-china","tag-chinese-foreign-minister","tag-mark-carney","tag-minister-of-foreign-affairs","tag-wang-yi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}