A few years ago, Huawei was on its way to becoming a household name in Canada through its sponsorship of the ever-popular “Hockey Night in Canada” broadcast by Rogers Communications. Huawei smartphones were becoming competitive with Apple and Samsung devices. And Bell and Telus had been partnering with Huawei in deploying their high-speed networks. So, what went wrong?

Amid the wreckage of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States and its allies have turned their sights on China. University of Victoria professor emeritus and historian John Price examines the rise of the coalition of Anglo settler colonial states of Canada, the United Kingdom, the US, Australia, and New Zealand, and how they are today fomenting war in the Asia Pacific.

The Chinese state today wields enormous power, economic and coercive, and how it uses that power matters. As the war drums beat on, misinformation will proliferate and the danger of conflict will also escalate. Finding a path for peace is possible but not easy given that the world is already facing a climate crisis, an enduring pandemic, and the continuing effects of two centuries of settler colonialism.

Today, the world faces a terrible pandemic, the deepening and disastrous effects of climate change, and an increasing danger of global war. We are concerned about Xinjiang and welcome ongoing investigations to determine what is actually happening and what might be done. But we should align ourselves with emancipatory goals, and not fall into the trap of reviving a declining, imperial ‘West’ against the rest.

Vote No. 23 specifically targets China as a threat to Canadian “values” and demands the government table a plan to “combat China’s growing foreign operations.” In the midst of the pandemic, this motion (and the agenda behind it) have not penetrated most people’s bubbles. We ignore it at our peril. Vote No. 23 represents the thin edge of a wedge that would cleave the world in two and potentially lead to unmitigated disaster.

The current hearings on the extradition of Meng Wanzhou are a tangled web of legal arguments that obscure a simple truth: the Canadian government is enabling a witch hunt on the part of the Trump administration against a Chinese capitalist rival—the telecommunications giant, Huawei. This is putting Canada in the crosshairs of the US and China, aligning us closer to wayward American foreign policy.