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One potential move would be to coax Canada into joining the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, an entity the U.S. has declined to be part of. “It’s very important for China to win over Canada to join the AIIB, which would be a clever way for Beijing to isolate its competitor, the U.S.,” Shi said.

In an interview published last week with the China Youth Daily, Canada’s ambassador to China, Guy Saint-Jacques, said joining the AIIB was under “active consideration.”

“We had some questions early on about the governance issues related, but we have been reassured,” he said in the video interview.

At the G-20 meeting, Canada will be engaging European states to press for ratification of a trade deal with the European Union. International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland, who will accompany Trudeau on the trip, appointed a new envoy last week to help ratify the pact, while saying the G-20 talks overall will focus on ways to spur growth.

Still, if Trudeau is going to diversify trade and spur economic growth, China will be a crucial partner.

This year’s oil investment figures were driven in part by a US$1.3 billion purchase of a stake in some of Husky Energy’s pipelines and storage tanks in Alberta and Saskatchewan by companies controlled by Li.

Although merchandise trade between Canada and China totaled US$75 billion in 2015, up 20 per cent from 2010, that’s only an eighth of the value of total trade between Canada and the U.S. Trudeau’s call for a “more balanced” relationship evokes data that show Canada’s imports from China are worth almost double that of its exports to the country.

“We need to ensure that access to markets for our producers is there,” Trudeau said Friday. “These are the interests we are going to be strongly and carefully balancing as we engage with the economic powerhouse that is China.”

Bloomberg News