The Beaver & The Dragon Book Launch, Toronto
TORONTO, November 29, 2025: The Beaver and the Dragon Book Launch
Tibetan Canadian Cultural Center, 40 Titan Rd
3:00 to 5:00pm Opening Remark 3:30
Optimum Publishing is pleased to invite you to the Ottawa launch of he Beaver & The Dragon; How China Out-Manoeuvred Canada’s Diplomacy, Security, and Sovereignty. It is a sobering account from one of Canada’s leading academics of how China’s manipulation of Canadian diplomacy has put our very freedom at risk
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. From Tiananmen to hostage diplomacy, this book captures the history we lived through but failed to understand. 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. These essays, spanning 2009 to 2025, expose the sharp power tactics and global ambitions that define Xi Jinping’s China. But Burton also leaves us with a challenge ― and a hope ― that democratic resilience can reclaim the future.
“In The Beaver and the Dragon, Charles Burton, one of the world's most knowledgeable and perceptive China analysts, explains how the Communist Party of China is eying the northern part of the Western Hemisphere,” says Gordon Chang, author of The Coming Collapse of China. Featured on CBS’s Eye On The World, The Ben Mulroney Show & CTV News, Burton has been widely recognized as a foremost expert on Canadian-Chinese relations, and his work serves as a harrowing warning for our times.
Join author Charles Burton on November 29, at the Tibetan Canadian Cultural Centre, 40 Titan Rd, Etobicoke, at 3:00pm for the launch of The Beaver & The Dragon:How China Out-Manoeuvred Canada’s Diplomacy, Security, and Sovereignty, with guest speakers;
Consiglio Di Nino, former Canadian Senator, 1990-2012
Sherap Therchin, Executive Director, Canada Tibet Committee
Dean Baxendale, Publisher, Optimum Publishing International
