The Beaver and the Dragon

For decades, Canada believed it could gently shape China into a responsible global actor through diplomacy, commerce, and cultural exchange. But as this clear-eyed, searing account reveals, it was China that ended up reshaping us. In The Beaver and The Dragon, acclaimed sinologist Charles Burton takes readers inside Canada’s most fateful geopolitical miscalculation. Drawing on a lifetime of engagement — from dorm rooms at Fudan University to behind-closed-doors diplomacy in Beijing — Burton chronicles China’s strategic ascent and the naïveté that allowed it to happen within Canada's political and corporate boardrooms.

From Tiananmen Square to hostage diplomacy, this book captures the history we lived through but failed to understand that has allowed China and Beijing's authoritarian model to quitely infiltrate all of Canada's institutions including the halls of parliament. These essays, written in real time across four Canadian governments, expose the illusions of engagement and the emergence of an authoritarian power that seeks to dominate the 21st century at democracy's expense.

The essays combined with his new insights expose the sharp power tactics and global ambitions that define Xi Jinping’s China and how Canada has become a proving ground for its totalitarian ambitions. But Burton also leaves us with a challenge — and a hope — that democratic resilience can reclaim the future.

His solution for Canadian policy makers and businesses is to understand that China is not interested in friendship for Win-Win trade but rather total dominance and global hegemony at the expense of our nation. With those lessons learned engagement must be about every element of the Chinese regimes internal and external policy dynamics.