Before meeting President Xi Jinping next weekend at the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau needs to reflect carefully on what his government’s strategic approach to China will be, not least because, in many ways, the 21st century is rapidly becoming the China Century.

By some comparisons, notably purchasing power, China is already the world’s biggest economy; the largest market for vehicles, oil and smartphones. While China’s annual GDP growth has dropped below double digits, at around 6 per cent to 7 per cent, it is still more than twice that of Western economies, or Canada’s paltry 1.4 per cent.

It is not just on economic growth where the new weight of China is being felt globally. Whether it’s territorial disputes in the South China Sea, or broader geopolitical issues, China’s swagger under Mr. Xi marks a new global assertiveness, which is souring relations with its neighbours, and with the United States. Whatever the outcome in the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 8, don’t expect relations to get any better.

Earlier hopes that globalization would generate greater common interest between China and the West have evaporated. Instead, the prospect for greater tension, if not outright confrontation, is rising, threatening global stability....

When Mr. Trudeau meets with his Chinese counterpart he will have to weigh carefully the shifts under way globally, and the extraordinary manner in which China is moving to centre stage on both the global economic and security fronts. The China of today is not the China of Mr. Trudeau’s father, when the country was weak and looking to make new friends...

This has been excerpted from a 29 August 2016 editiorial by Derek Burney, Canada’s ambassador to the United States from 1989-93, and Fen Osler Hampson, a distinguished fellow and director of global security at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and professor at Carleton University, for Globe and Mail.