Chinese Foreign Minister to Visit Canada for First Time in 10 Years

China’s foreign affairs minister, Wang Yi, is set to visit Canada next week, marking the first bilateral visit to Canada by a Chinese foreign affairs minister since 2016.

Wang will meet with Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand in Ottawa on May 28 to “advance pragmatic engagement and the implementation of the updated Canada-China Strategic Partnership,” Global Affairs Canada (GAC) said in a May 22 news release.

GAC says the meeting will include discussions on trade and investment, global security, and “respective bilateral issues.”

Wang’s visit comes after Prime Minister Mark Carney visited China with Anand in January.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun announced the visit at a press conference in Beijing on May 22, saying the meeting comes at the invitation of Anand.

Ottawa and Beijing signed several agreements during Carney’s visit in January, including on electric vehicles, law enforcement cooperation, energy, and finance.

Carney’s visit marked the first visit to China by a Canadian prime minister since Justin Trudeau visited in 2017. The Carney government has sought to diversify trade beyond the United States, including by expanding trade relations with China.

Trudeau had also sought closer ties with Beijing at the time, but engagement with China came to a stop after Canada executed a U.S. extradition warrant in late 2018 against Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. In apparent retaliation, Beijing arbitrarily detained Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor for more than 1,000 days.

During the 2025 election campaign last spring, Carney said China is Canada’s “biggest security threat” and “one of the largest threats with respect to foreign interference.” However, his tone has since changed as his government forges closer ties with Beijing, a move which has been criticized by opposition parties, China experts, and the U.S. administration.

Concerns about foreign interference and transnational repression by China have intensified in Canada in recent years, with a public inquiry looking into the topic extensively. The final report of the Foreign Interference Commission said China is the “most active perpetrator of foreign interference targeting Canada’s democratic institutions.”

Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo warned of deep infiltration of Chinese agents in Canada at an Ottawa conference earlier this month, and said Carney’s efforts to get closer to China in the face of U.S. tariffs are “misguided.”

Previous Visit

The last time Wang came to Canada in 2016, he lashed out at a Canadian reporter who raised the topic of human rights at a joint press conference he held with then-Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion.

An iPolitics reporter asked about the detention of a Canadian, Kevin Garratt, in China on espionage charges. Wang reacted angrily, calling the question “irresponsible” and said it was “full of prejudice against China and arrogance.”

Wang said Chinese people are in the “best position” to comment on China’s human rights situation, and other people “don’t know better than Chinese people.”

Dion responded to the same question by the journalist, saying he raised Garratt’s case with Wang and the two had “honest and frank conversations” on human rights and consular affairs. He was, however, criticized by the Conservatives and the NDP for not defending the reporter’s right to ask the question.

Dion later said he felt the reporter could stand up for herself. Then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he has “expressed our dissatisfaction to both the Chinese foreign minister and the ambassador to Canada the dissatisfaction with the way our journalists were treated.”