e encounters with the Xi type // (Scott Johnson).

China’s president for life Xi Jinping reprimanded Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, for leaking details of their informal conversation at the G-20 summit in Bali. Trudeau is instructed by him not to behave like this — “otherwise, it would be difficult to tell the results.”

What did Trudeau leak about Trudeau? According to a Canadian official, Trudeau and the Wall Street Journal spoke informally on Tuesday. Trudeau raised serious concerns about the interference activities in Canada that Ottawa claims China orchestrated. This concern was raised publicly by the prime minister before the G-20. Canadian media outlets traveled with the prime minister to report some details of the Tuesday meeting. The video below is helpful for the subtitles and accompanies this Journal story. It’s also available on Twitter ( here), for example.

This background is included in the Journal story:

The Wall Street Journal published last month a detailed account of China-Canada and U.S. negotiations that resulted in a prisoner swap in 2021 that freed the Canadian executive and released the Canadians. It revealed that China had blocked Canadian diplomats from entering the country, but Mr. Trudeau was able to speak briefly with Mr. Xi during a G-20 meeting in 2019, after passing him a note. This story was based on interviews of current and former U.S. and Canadian officials as well as extensive documentation.

This Orwellian note concludes the story.

On Thursday, Mr. Trudeau appeared to have his account blocked on China’s Weibo platform. Although Mr. Trudeau’s Weibo account was not deleted, search results for his verified social network handle came up empty. Searches for Mr. Trudeau’s Chinese last name returned scattered results. There were no posts from ordinary users and only approved news sources shared the posts.

It is hard not to wish that the once free world was represented by statesmen capable of dealing with China.