TORONTO — Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is due in China on Tuesday for a much anticipated visit, hoping to reset what had been an up-and-down relationship under the previous government. Closer ties, Mr. Trudeau says, would release untapped prosperity at home and promote Canadian values like good governance and the rule of law in China.

But many Chinese-Canadians say the opposite is happening. They say the growing economic clout wielded in Canada by China, Canada’s largest trading partner after the United States, is leading to an erosion of their own freedom — specifically their freedom to speak openly about China’s authoritarian state. Journalists who write for the many Chinese-language publications in Canada, along with activists and others, say they are under increasing pressure to promote the interests of the Chinese government.

“It’s gotten worse and worse,” said Jonathan Fon, 67, a Toronto paralegal, freelance writer and critic of China’s Communist rulers. Mr. Fon, who emigrated from China in 1992, said publications that had once printed his opinion articles now routinely rejected them because of worries about political and financial fallout. “They will not take my contributions, even though we’re friends,” he said.

In the past decade, China has embarked on an ambitious effort to promote its image abroad, including a multibillion-dollar overseas expansion by Chinese state media and a network of Confucius Institutes, which teach Chinese language and culture while disseminating the Communist Party’s viewpoints. In Western countries, analysts say, the party exerts influence over Chinese immigrants and students through embassies, consulates and community organizations, as well as business interests with the financial leverage to shape local Chinese-language media coverage.