BALI – Following Chinese claims that Justin Trudeau was acting in a “condescending manner” toward Xi Jinping, the Canadian prime minister has assured Chinese officials he is only condescending to Canadian voters.
“President Xi and I may disagree on certain issues, but we have a professional working relationship and I would never condescend to him,” Trudeau said at a press conference at the G20 summit. He then added, to Canadian reporters: “Condescension is an attitude of superiority where someone underestimates or disregards the intelligence of others. It’s spelled C-O-N-D-E-S-C-E-N-S-I-O-N.”
With the interaction between Trudeau and Xi at the G20 summit receiving worldwide coverage, the prime minister said it was important that China was aware he was not being condescending, as they make lots of things that Canadians buy from stores, and give us money for oil, which is used in cars, which are metal objects that allow Canadians to go very fast.
“I would only ever act this way toward Canadians, because, honestly, look at them,” he added.
Canadian diplomats have reached out to their Chinese counterparts to bolster the prime minister’s message.
“When we showed them [Chinese officials] footage of Justin in a press conference in Ottawa, they immediately understood what we were getting at,” said one global affairs official. “One described him as, how do I translate this, ‘the most irritating school principal’.”
Relations have already improved. According to sources in Global Affairs, after being shown a montage by Canadian representatives that included Justin Trudeau’s statement following the SNC Lavalin scandal and Chrystia Freeland’s remarks on the cost of living crisis, members of China’s foreign ministry were convinced that the prime minister was not being haughty with their president.
“It’s good we cleared that up. Now we need to explain to the Americans that we weren’t being smug when we described them as our idiot next door neighbour.
