If Ottawa intends to navigate the Indo-Pacific with its “eyes wide open,” as Industry Minister Mélanie Joly insists, it must confront a vulnerability, there is a catastrophic asymmetry in human capital and mutual literacy between Canada and China.
According to Canadian government data, approximately 125,000 to 130,000 Chinese nationals held study permits in Canada in 2024. They come Canadian cities to learn languages, absorb culture, and understand markets. Conversely, pre-pandemic estimates suggest a mere 3,000 to 6,000 Canadians were studying in China. That is a staggering 20-to-1 deficit. Canada exports its educational resources while importing almost zero on-the-ground intelligence in return.
Prime Minister Mark Carney framed China as an unavoidable “strategic partner” rather than a disruptive power. Yet, true strategic partnership, or effective strategic competition requires nuanced literacy. Building this literacy requires a new generation of Canadians to study in both China and Taiwan.
Crucially, we must distinguish between the two destinations. Taiwan is an open, vibrant democracy and a critical hub for global technology. Studying in Taipei offers Canadians an unfiltered immersion into a free society that operates entirely in Mandarin, allowing them to witness a thriving Mandarin-speaking democracy. China, conversely, is a closed, authoritarian superpower that is hardening, not softening is Marxist-Leninist governance model and its ethno-nationalist, Han-centered identity. Both are essential for Canadian foreign policy and commerce, yet Canada’s presence is woefully inadequate.
The few Canadians venturing across the Pacific often find themselves sequestered in English-language “expat bubbles.” To truly understand ordinary Chinese citizens, Canadian students must be integrated into the actual Chinese educational ecosystem. They must navigate the exact same curriculum that local students take. This means sitting in the same lecture halls and participating in the mandatory ideological coursework that forms the bedrock of modern Chinese education, including Xi Jinping and Mao ZeDong Thought and standard university military related courses.
But this raises profound questions: How does Canada prevent returning students from advancing CCP agendas? How does Canada protect students from arbitrary detention in China? Does the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) want Western-educated students sitting alongside its own youth?
First, rigorous pre-departure training in democratic resilience and mandatory post-return security debriefings will mitigate CCP indoctrination risks.
Second, Ottawa must counter arbitrary detention threats by securing strict bilateral safety guarantees and robust consular protection protocols.
Third, if Beijing is serious about global leadership, it must reduce this asymmetry by opening its domestic educational doors through more visas, relax educational ideology, and offer robust scholarships.
Here is the problem. Beijing tightly controls its domestic narrative. Integrating sharp, observant Canadian students into local classrooms introduces a high risk of ideological contamination. Imagine Canadian students discussing the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, hostage diplomacy or re-education camps for Uyghurs in a Beijing cafeteria. Imagine them challenging state propaganda by pointing out that modern Japan is a peaceful, democratic nation, rather than the militaristic bogeyman portrayed in Chinese textbooks.
Most dangerously to the CCP’s internal legitimacy, Canadian students would carry the lived reality that the United States, despite its deep societal flaws, polarized elections, and occasionally unorthodox presidents is still a rising, dynamic superpower. This directly contradicts the core ideological dogma pushed by the Politburo Standing Committee and the CCP’s political brain, Wang Huning, who famously argued in America Against America that the West is paralyzed by internal contradictions. The CCP relies on the narrative that the West is in terminal decline while the authoritarian East rises. For Beijing, the presence of articulate, Mandarin-speaking Westerners who can dismantle these narratives in real-time is a terrifying prospect.
The obvious question is who should foot the bill for this massive educational push. The burden cannot fall solely on the government or the students themselves. Corporate Canada stands to be the primary beneficiary of a workforce equipped with native-level fluency in Mandarin, deep cross-cultural competence, and firsthand experience navigating the opaque bureaucracies of Beijing, Shanghai, and Taipei.
If Bay Street banks, multinational agricultural exporters, and cutting-edge tech firms want executives who can successfully close lucrative deals in Shenzhen or navigate complex semiconductor supply chains in Taoyuan, they must pay for the training. Businesses must step up to fund targeted scholarships, comprehensive paid overseas internships, and lucrative post-graduation job guarantees for students willing to take the plunge. The private sector profits from this geopolitical literacy; it should finance its development.
If Prime Minister Carney’s ambitious vision of a strategic partnership is to materialize, and if the “eyes wide open” doctrine is to be more than a hollow diplomatic talking point, Canada must aggressively close the 20-to-1 student deficit. Canada needs Canadians on the ground, fluent in the language, and deeply immersed in the culture of both democratic Taiwan and authoritarian China. Until Canada are willing to study them as closely as they study us, Canada will be navigating the “Asian century completely blind”.
Unfortunately, Canada is not alone in its lack of Chinese linguistic and cultural literacy. Most, if not all nations in the Global North and South lack the necessary skills to negotiate with China on equal terms.
