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How Australia sabotaged its own interests in relations with China.

 


By TONY KEVIN | On 6 December 2020

 

 

The destruction over the past five years of Australia’s mutually beneficial diplomatic and trade relationship with China was probably a successful ’Five Eyes’ information warfare operation,  facilitated by the Australian political class’s own foolish arrogance and ignorance towards China.  Australia is now back in the laager,  an American strategic satellite and odd man out in the Asia-Pacific region and with a weakened economy.  

The address to Federal Parliament by Chinese President Xi Jinping on 17 November 2014 marked a highwater mark in bilateral relations.  Xi was in Australia for the G20 summit in Brisbane hosted by PM Tony Abbott. His theme was that China was committed to peace but ready to protect its interests.

Since then the relationship has gone downhill – first slowly and haltingly, but over the past two years with sickening acceleration. Now the relationship seems irretrievable. For educated Chinese, Australia is now an object lesson in Western arrogance, hypocrisy and betrayal of friendship.  The dinner party has ended in upended chairs, shouts and bitter accusations as both sides angrily walk away.

After the high symbolism of the Xi speech, all seemed well. In 2015 the Darwin Port was leased to a Chinese company for 99 years.  Growing numbers of Chinese students and tourist visitors to Australia were becoming mainstays of Australia’s thriving higher education, tourism and property sectors. China as an Australian export market grew steadily in significance: last year it represented nearly 50% of Australian commodity export earnings. Victoria in 2018 signed a memorandum of understanding with China to work with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

From the beginning, there were signs that powerful forces were determined to cripple Australian-Chinese engagement: and they have now seemingly won.  The present breakdown is tragic for Australian economic and political interests. Many innocent Australians’ livelihoods are being harmed by our own government’s and political class’s stupidity.  It is hard to see now how the damage done to Australia-China relations may be healed anytime soon.

Controversially, I contend that Australia has over the past six years lived through a textbook experiment of covert foreign policy interference by powerful Anglo-American influences, subtly working through local sympathisers in public life here.  Australian political elites – already culturally predisposed to trust Anglo-American friends, and naive as to their power and guile  – have been persuaded to adopt increasingly adversarial positions against China across a broad front.  This essay can only hint at the breadth and skill of this classic Five Eyes information warfare operation: it would take a book to expose it fully.

Clive Hamilton’s notorious attack on China, ‘Silent Invasion’, was published early in 2018. Hamilton had been China-bashing on the fringes of Australian academe for some years beforehand but was still being generally dismissed as an embarrassing outlier. Andrew Podger’s 21 March 2018 review in the Conversation was typical of the Australian mainstream rebuttal of Hamilton’s views, then considered extreme:

‘Perhaps Hamilton’s book is a useful reminder that we must not be naïve about our relationship with China. But his prescription, premised on China being our enemy and determined to achieve world domination, is precisely the wrong direction for addressing the genuine issues he raises. We should engage more, not less.’

Meanwhile, negative views of China’s agenda, supported by well-funded Canberra think-tanks like Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Lowy Institute, were quietly gaining influence in strategic areas of Australian governance.  Attorney-General Christian Porter, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, backbencher Andrew Hastie and Senator Eric Abetz emerged as vocal critics of China. On the Labor side, Penny Wong and Kimberley Kitching seemed ready to join the pile-on. Others were silent, anxious not to be tagged as ‘panda-huggers’.

In 2018, the influential and US-sympathetic Joint Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade supported Malcolm Turnbull’s Foreign Interference Legislation, pressed by Australian security agencies and aimed principally at China. The law was passed in 2019.

Chinese academics and journalists, even a senior NSW parliamentarian, have been harassed and vilified under its powers.  Now, a further bill will strengthen Commonwealth control over state and university links to foreign governments: again, the prime target is China, and any Australian premiers who may dare to enmesh their states economically with her. Victoria’s and Western Australia’s Labor premiers are particular targets.

On the foreign policy front, Australia, misled by obviously foreign encouraged  street violence against the Hong Kong government, became a vocal critic of China on democracy issues there. Australia criticised alleged human rights abuses against the Uighur ethnic group in Xinjiang Province. But we do not criticise human rights abuses in India and Palestine. Australia conducts repeated naval freedom of navigation exercises in the South China Sea, in protest against Chinese consolidation of its military control over islands there. Australia supported a bogus US-influenced South China Sea case against China in the International Court of Arbitration, a case bitterly condemned and rejected from the outset by China.

Since 2018, Australia responding to American pressure has banned Huawei from telecom operations here, causing a major rift. The philosophy of economic engagement expounded by Abbott and Xi in 2014 is since 2018 under direct frontal attack. In August 2020, a non-strategic Chinese purchase of a large Australian dairy company was vetoed.  The message had now become, Australia wants to go on profitably exporting minerals and foodstuffs to China but to have as little to do with China as possible at the human level. Chinese students here have been accused of doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party, and concerns raised about Chinese influence in our universities.  Chauvinism and Sinophobia in Australia have grown.

COVID-19 caused further major rifts in 2020. Scott Morrison clumsily mishandled a peremptory Australian demand to WHO  – reportedly originating in a request to him from US President Trump – to mount an intrusive international investigation in Wuhan into the origins of the ‘Chinese virus’. China saw that act in particular as a gross act of treachery by a friend.  Morrison never apologised.

The tone of Australian mainstream media commentary on China has by now changed utterly to hostility.  Establishment commentators and leader writers compete on who can season their journalism with the strongest anti-Chinese language. All pretence of objectivity or straight reporting of tensions is gone: this is now advocacy journalism.  Dissenting opinions are discouraged. As media increasingly runs with the ball of Sinophobia, Morrison has began to try to step back. He and Turnbull having started the hares running,  now call unconvincingly for moderation.  Not just the Murdoch Press but the Australian Financial Review is full of anti-Chinese polemic. China is bitterly criticised as seeking to dictate terms to the world. The Western media outside Australia are picking up the cue.  The campaign has taken on McCarthyist, even racist-tinged tones: how dare these Chinese presume to stand up to our Western ‘universal values’ ?

Every Chinese effort to rebut the growing abuse is taken as sign of further Chinese bullying. Their Canberra embassy’s circulated ‘fourteen grievances’  – an effort to list the problem China  has with Australian behaviour towards them as a basis for public discussion –  were  mocked. China is falsely stereotyped as the provocateur and Australia the victim.

Around a few weeks ago, China would have finally decided that Australia could no longer be regarded as a trustworthy and decent partner in dialogue.  They would have given up on Australia. The Brereton Report with its reported SAS murders in Afghanistan was an irresistible opportunity for what the West has offensively labelled ‘wolf warrior’ Chinese diplomacy.  The photoshopped image of a SAS baby murder, illustrating a tweet by a senior Chinese foreign ministry official criticising Australian hypocrisy,  was emphatically condemned by Morrison, who demanded a Chinese apology. China refused. 

La commedia e finita.  Australian politicians have swung in behind Morrison, while our traders and growers look on with helpless horror. How can what was a good relationship in 2015 it have degenerated to this in just five years? Senior people in industry and trade – like Morrison’s own COVID recovery adviser Nev Power  

https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/china-dispute-of-great-concern-nev-power-20201201-p56jgm

 pleaded on 2 December for a diplomatic solution to ease tensions between Beijing and Canberra. But those who want to see Australia decoupled from China in as many ways as possible stay contentedly silent, looking back with satisfaction on their hidden work of destruction. Australia is safely back in the Five Eyes laager, and those who hoped economic rationality would triumph over global geopolitical exclusion games have been defeated.

Australia’s all-important Asia-Pacific region quietly draws a different lesson from this sad story: the lesson is, do not behave as Australia has done in dealing with China. Treat China with normal diplomatic respect and courtesy, as befits friendly neighbours. Even regional countries that have clashed militarily with China know not to provoke her needlessly, as Australia has done.

Morrison probably sees stoking up anti-Chinese prejudices as a useful distraction from his many governance failures at home: on Robodebt, on COVID-19 preparedness, on bushfires and climate change. Sock the Chinese as if there are no consequences for us.

But the consequences will be great. Australia will be needlessly poorer, more isolated from our region, and more dependent on the uncertain protection of faraway Five Eyes friends. Without a dialogue with China, our necessary engagement with our region will be handicapped. Lee Kuan Yew’s friendly warning – ‘be careful or you will be the poor white trash of Asia’ – comes back now to haunt us.

 

 

Read more:

https://johnmenadue.com/how-australia-sabotaged-its-own-interests-in-relations-with-china/

 

Tony Kevin is a former Australian ambassador to Poland and Cambodia, an Emeritus Fellow at Australian  National University, Canberra, and the author of ‘Return to Moscow’ (2017)

a diplomatic play aimed at pressuring the scomo government...

The dossier of 14 disputes was handed over by the Chinese embassy in Canberra to Nine News, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in a diplomatic play that appears aimed at pressuring the Morrison government to reverse Australia’s position on key policies.


foreign investment decisions, with acquisitions blocked on opaque national security grounds in contravention of ChAFTA / since 2018, more than 10 Chinese investment projects have been rejected by Australia citing ambiguous and unfounded "national security concerns" and putting restrictions in areas like infrastructure, agriculture and animal husbandry.

 

the decision banning Huawei Technologies and ZTE from the 5G network, over unfounded national security concerns, doing the bidding of the US by lobbying other countries.

 

foreign interference legislation, viewed as targeting China and in the absence of any evidence.

 

politicisation and stigmatisation of the normal exchanges and cooperation between China and Australia and creating barriers and imposing restrictions, including the revoke of visas for Chines scholars.

 

call for an international independent inquiry into the COVID-19 virus, acted as a political manipulation echoing the US attack on China

 

the incessant wanton interference in Chinas’s Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan affairs; spearheading the crusade against China in certain multilateral forums

 

the first non littoral country to make a statement on the South China Sea to the United Nations

 

siding with US’ anti-China campaign and spreading disinformation imported from the US around China’s efforts of containing COVID-19.

 

the latest legislation to scrutinise agreements with a foreign government targeting towards China and aiming to torpedo the Victorian Participation in B&R

 

provided funding to anti-Chine think tank for spreading untrue reports, peddling lies around Xinjiang and so-called China infiltration aimed at manipulating public opinion against China.

 

the early dawn search and reckless seizure of Chines journalist’s homes and properties without any charges and giving any explanations.

 

thinly veiled allegations against China on cyber attacks without any evidence

 

outrageous condemnation of the governing party of China by MPs and racist attacks against Chinese or Asian people.

 

an unfriendly or antagonistic report on China by media, poisoning the atmosphere of bilateral relations.

 

Read more:

https://www.voltairenet.org/article211799.html

 

Note some spelling were adjusted by Gus...

chinese cooling for aussie coal...

Chinese state-owned media appears to have confirmed that Australia has been excluded from a list of countries no longer subject to clearance restrictions when importing coal.

The news comes amid reports there are 66 ships that have been anchored off Chinese ports with more than $500 million worth of Australian coal.

The vessels are said to have been prevented from docking and unloading their cargo since September and The Global Times news report, sanctioned by the Chinese Government, appears to confirm why.


 

In a move designed to stop steelmakers and power plants from accepting Australian coal, China will throw open its doors to other suppliers including Mongolia, Indonesia and Russia.

It follows a meeting of China’s National Development and Reform Commission and will allow coal imports without clearance restrictions for those other countries, but not Australia, the report said.

Chinese authorities had originally blamed “environmental quality” problems for refusing to accept coal from dozens of Australian bulk carriers that have spent several months stranded at sea.

Through China’s state-run media, Beijing has for the first time signalled – although indirectly – an end to Australia’s role as a major coal supplier to China.

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2020/12/15/china-ban-australian-coal-imports/

 

Read from top.

This could be a great opportunity to keep coal in the ground and become sustainable.

 

beijing is less vindictive than washington...

 

by Doug Bandow 

 

Never underestimate the fury of a totalitarian state scorned. That seems to be the lesson of China, which is angry with Australia. Xi Jinping’s government is acting like, well, the Trump administration, using its economic clout as a weapon. And average folks Down Under are paying the price.

The People’s Republic of China began hitting Australian exports shortly after Canberra advocated an investigation into Beijing’s role in spreading COVID-19. Australians are lucky that China is less vindictive, or at least less dominant, than Washington, which increasingly uses financial and secondary sanctions to force the entire world to join America’s de facto economic blockades.

However, last month the PRC doubled down, imposing a variety of restrictions on about $6 billion worth of Australian exports—barley, coal, copper, cotton, lobster, sugar, timber, and wine. It was a painful hit for Australia, which sends, or at least previously sent, a third of its exports China.

Australia also benefits greatly from Chinese college students and tourists. The COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged both of those industries, which remain moribund. However, next year should bring a dual revival, and no one knows if Beijing will allow them to proceed once the health emergency subsides. Despite its professed outrage, the Xi government still puts number one first. Chinese oenophiles may be forced to suffer, but the PRC so far has left alone imports of iron ore, which account for half of Aussie exports, an apparent testament to Beijing’s determination not to hamper its own industrial activity.

The Chinese bill of particulars against Canberra could have been written by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who favors ultimatums to other nations, demanding that they sacrifice their sovereignty and meekly submit to Washington’s will. This approach has yet to work for America, but the PRC decided to try the same strategy.

Foreign Minister spokesman Zhao Lijian declared: “The Australian side should reflect on this seriously, rather than shirking the blame and deflecting responsibility.” Beijing compiled a list of 14 complaints, including media criticism of the PRC’s behavior and the national government’s opposition to state participation in the Belt and Road initiative.

Reported the Sydney Morning Herald, “The list of grievances also includes: government funding for ‘anti-China’ research at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, raids on Chinese journalists and academic visa cancellations, ‘spearheading a crusade’ in multilateral forums on China’s affairs in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang, calling for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19, banning Huawei from the 5G network in 2018 and blocking 10 Chinese foreign investment deals across infrastructure, agriculture and animal husbandry sectors.”

An anonymous Chinese official explained that it “would be conducive to a better atmosphere” if Canberra changed course. That is, abject submission highlighted by a mix of cowering and groveling would help improve relations. The Chinese representative added ominously: “China is angry. If you make China the enemy, China will be the enemy.”

During the Cold War, U.S. operatives gained a reputation as “the ugly American,” officious, arrogant, obnoxious. Now we see “the ugly Chinese” at work, doing everything possible to make others hate them and their government. Beijing is doing a better job making the case for Australia’s alliance with America than could Washington.

The Morrison government has stood fast. Trade Minister Simon Birmingham said, “The ball is very much in China’s court to be willing to sit down and have the proper dialogue.” Treasurer Josh Frydenberg indicated Canberra’s willingness to conduct a “respectful and beneficial” discussion but insisted that his nation’s interests were “non-negotiable.”

The redoubtable Aussies are capable of making their own way in an unfriendly world, but an enraged PRC remains a daunting foe. Indeed, Canberra is not Beijing’s only target. After South Korea decided to participate in America’s THAAD missile defense system four years ago, the PRC retaliated economically, including with consumer boycotts and tourist restrictions. Such attempts to threaten and intimidate smaller states one by one demonstrates the need for democratic solidarity. Australia deserves support. But what kind?

The place to start would be citizen solidarity. Australian wine tasted good before China start firing its big economic guns Down Under. It is even more appealing today, with Canberra under economic siege and confronting a Sino challenge similar to that facing Washington. American individuals and companies should take an extra look at Australian products now barred from or limited in the PRC market. Aussie exporters already benefit from a bilateral free trade agreement, but Washington should minimize any remaining barriers on targeted Australian goods.

Moreover, American (and other Western) consumers and businesses should look to increase purchases of other traditional Aussie exports to the U.S.—most importantly, meat, dairy, nuts, aluminum, and optical and medical instruments. When COVID-19 fears finally subside, Australia would also be a fine tourist destination (I speak from experience, having visited a half dozen times over the years!). The purpose in doing so would be as much to show support as repair economic damage.

Although private action would be helpful, more is needed. For instance, some analysts proposed that the U.S. indemnify Canberra and other friendly states under economic attack. However, Washington, which ran a $3.1 trillion deficit last year and might end up facing a similar amount of red ink this year, cannot act like an ATM machine for the world. Moreover, a general subsidy would encourage other states to repackage preexisting disputes to trigger America’s new geopolitical “insurance policy.”

An alternative, advocated by some, would be for Washington policymakers to levy economic war on other nations’ behalf, imposing countervailing tariffs and more on the PRC. But the U.S. already overuses and misuses its economic clout to do what China is doing, penalize other nations that refuse to submit to Washington’s inconsistent, wide-ranging, and ever-changing dictates. Sanctions are an effective policy tool only if they do not threaten core interests of the target state and there is a diplomatic off-ramp. Moreover, intensifying America’s ongoing confrontation with the PRC would further poison the overall relationship and put friendly states at even greater risk.

Writer Tanner Greer contended that Beijing’s “attempt to undermine the American alliance system demands a firm response from Biden as soon as he comes to power.” However, with that alliance system the U.S. already does more than its part, defending at great expense much of the known world, including a couple score of prosperous and populous states that could do much more to protect themselves, including Australia. None of them reciprocates by contributing to America’s defense, unless agreeing to let American taxpayers underwrite their security is viewed as a “contribution.” Australia is more serious about its military than many other U.S. partners, but still benefits greatly from America’s propensity to insist that other states allow it to defend them.

Better for Washington to engage allies and friends in Asia and Europe to discuss how to collectively deal with China’s threatening behavior. After spending three years bestowing air kisses on Xi Jinping, along with compliments for his response to COVID-19, President Donald Trump announced he was the PRC’s greatest critic. He demanded that allies join his newly launched Sinophobic campaign even though previously he had waged economic war against those same allied states—Canada, South Korea, and the Europeans, most notably—while attempting to win a trade war against China. It was a foolish, myopic, and incompetent effort. Additional evidence that the administration botched this issue came last week, with the announcement that Europe had negotiated a new market-opening agreement with Beijing. Imagine if the Americans and Europeans had joined in 2017 to present a combined list of issues requiring resolution to the PRC.

However, the Biden administration offers a new start. An important objective should be to begin serious discussions over how to deal with Beijing’s attempts at economic coercion. Among possible steps would be creating a multilateral fund to support countries and industries under attack; opening markets for products banned or limited by the PRC; limiting or prohibiting Chinese sales to governments (China gained about $2.5 billion in procurement contracts from the European Union this year); and retaliating more broadly, including general trade penalties along with narrow restrictions on particular industries and services.

Such a discussion should also include the plight of private companies that come under similar attack. The demand that airlines change their website designations for Taiwan; the insistence that athletes remain silent about Chinese human rights abuses lest teams and leagues be punished; the spectacle of Hollywood filmmakers cleansing their offerings of anything that might offend anyone in Zhongnanhai. At the very least, firms and industries should be legally enabled and publicly encouraged to cooperate in resisting Beijing’s dictates. Other ideas include implementing counter-restrictions via law or regulation, barring firms from setting domestic policy in response to foreign demands.

Commitments from many countries would be necessary; such an effort shouldn’t become yet another plan to mulct Americans by making them pay, yet again, to defend the rest of the world. Such efforts could end up being quite costly. Indeed, the biggest victims of Trump’s misguided trade war were American companies and consumers.

Moreover, commerce is one of the best remaining connections between China and other nations as the Xi regime leans toward Maoist totalitarianism. Both sides will lose if every aspect of the relationship is politicized and weaponized—especially since isolation would likely make Beijing more hostile and dangerous not less.

Nevertheless, the PRC will continue to penalize weaker nations as long as there appear to be minimal to no consequences. In most cases, the real intent is not to force the target government to give way in that specific case, but rather to preemptively submit next time. Countries that know Chinese retaliation is likely, even inevitable, while assistance from others is unlikely, will be more likely to adjust their behavior to satisfy Beijing.

Australia will survive the PRC’s economic assault. But Canberra shouldn’t have to fight alone. Like-minded states should cooperate to discourage Beijing’s worst behavior. The objective would not be to start an economic war, but rather to end one the Chinese appear ready to start. The Biden administration should take center stage in such an effort, repairing the damage done by Trump’s foolish economic fusillades against friend and foe, irrespective of cost and harm.

 


Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/australia-faces-an-angry-china-what-should-america-do/

 

 

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Remember when Prime Minister Whitlam decided Australia would not support the American war adventure in Vietnam anymore? The US cut their quota of Aussie beef and lamb instantly...

 

Is the US a totalitarian regime? It may not be to their own people but it is to the rest of the world.