This is part two of an Inq series on China-Australia relations in the age of Trump. You can read the first part here.
Is there a chance there might be armed conflict between the United States and China — even by accident — before the US elections in 90 days?
Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd thinks so and has described the “strident, uncompromising, and seemingly unending” sabre-rattling between the two countries as creating the most dangerous moment in the relationship since the Taiwan Strait crises of the 1950s.
The prospect of conflict with China is also the theme of a major security speech today by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who is pointing to the dangers of unprecedented militarisation in the Indo-Pacific region while calling for relations to be governed by agreed rules and norms.
As Rudd, writing in Foreign Affairs magazine, said: “The speed and intensity of it all has desensitized even seasoned observers to the scale and significance of change in the high politics of the US-Chinese relationship.”
Amid the fevered hostility between the two — fomented by an unmoored US President Donald Trump — Australia’s business community fears where the China-Australia relationship is heading.
Record trade results yesterday show the tension is yet to translate into a loss of business.
However, in a recent survey, 72% of Australia-China businesses nominated tension in Sino-Australian relations as their greatest risk. In 2018 the number was 45%, according to member surveys by the China-Australia Chamber of Commerce in Beijing.
‘A steadily unravelling relationship’
The spike in tension is linked at least in part to the uncertainty which has infected the relationship. “Businesses like having a predictable environment,” one business operator active in China told Inq. “But when you don’t know what Australia will say and how China will react then it becomes difficult.”
The changing mood on the ground is also the culmination of a steadily unravelling relationship, starting from Australia’s decision in late 2018 to ban Huawei. The Morrison government’s call earlier this year for an independent international investigation into the origins of COVID-19 and China’s trade retaliation accelerated the trend.
A Lowy Institute poll published in mid-June underlined the collapse in the public’s view of China. It found Australians’ trust in China was at its lowest point in the history of the poll. Only 23% said they trusted China a great deal or somewhat “to act responsibly in the world”.
It also found that nine in 10 Australians (94%) wanted the government to find other markets to reduce Australia’s economic dependence on China.
The question of Australia’s economic dependence on China loomed large at AUSMIN defence consultations in Washington last week attended by Defence Minister Linda Reynolds and Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne.
Australia and the US agreed on a mix of soft and hard power actions including:
- Stepping up health efforts in the Pacific islands to combat COVID-19 and more investment in infrastructure
- Countering the “infodemic” of disinformation around the pandemic
- Establishing a US-funded strategic military fuel reserve in Darwin and ramping up installations for US military “platforms and components” in Australia.
But there was a key focus on securing sources for critical goods should China decide to use its dominance and, in the worst case, cut off supply to Australia and the US. These goods include essential medical equipment, pharmaceuticals and “critical technologies”.
The communique also rings the bell on the supply of rare earth minerals which, as Reuters explains, are essential to a vast range of products — from rechargeable batteries for electric and hybrid cars to fibre optics and superconductors.
Some are also essential in military equipment such as jet engines, missile guidance systems and missile defence systems. Every F35 fighter reportedly uses half a tonne of rare earth products.
China has a near monopoly on the world’s production of rare minerals because of, the US-Australia statement alleges, “market-distorting practices”, including attempts to drive out competitors and deter market entrants.
In a belated move to counter this US Department of Defense has commissioned the Australian ASX-listed rare earths mining company Lynas to do a feasibility study for production in the US.
The rare earths example shows that if it came to a trade war, China holds any number of aces against Australia beyond tariffs on barley which it used earlier this year. It also shows how slow Australia’s industry and government has been to act to secure essential resources.
There is a rare earths industry in the Northern Territory but over the past decade China has been the main investor. Analysts warn it may take several years for Australia and the US to produce the volume of rare minerals industry needs.
Australian industry has no real plan B
The coronavirus-induced strains on the Sino-Australian relationship, exacerbated by US election politics, reveal the extent to which Australian industries have taken the China option — from Chinese students to Chinese tourists to Chinese property buyers — with no real plan B.
In the battle between think tanks to shape public opinion, China hawks — supported by defence contractors and defence-friendly former politicians (as we reported yesterday) — are in the ascendancy.
A growing panic has beset the China business lobby. China Matters — a group of industry, academics and old China hands — argues Australian business can ill-afford to stand silent as others shape what it calls “a more hostile approach” to relations.
“Media commentators and defence and security analysts do not have a monopoly on the political judgement required to manage relations with the PRC,” its chief executive Michael Clifton wrote last month. “They simply have a different view.”
(Clifton might have had in mind a piece by Australian Strategic Policy Institute head Peter Jennings under the headline “Party’s over for the Bullies of Beijing”.)
Bottom-line message is: ‘Get real’
China Matters has some big names on its board. The chairman is Kevin McCann, once chairman of Macquarie Bank and impeccably connected with Liberal politics. Professor Stephen Fitzgerald was Australia’s first ambassador to the PRC. Its backers include mining company Rio Tinto, management consultants PwC, and rail freight company Aurizon. It also receives federal government funds.
It has a blunt bottom-line message: Australia needs to get real because China will “most likely” be more economically powerful than America, which will “fundamentally change” the foundations of Asia’s strategic order as it exercises “more power and influence”.
“Our leaders need to say this out loud,” the group says. “A new narrative must provide a guide for how we can start trying to shape this order to our advantage.”
For its part the Business Council of Australia (BCA)wants Australia to pursue a “China and” rather than “China or” policy: developing other Asian markets.
But China Matters and the BCA never really address China’s ugly side: building a surveillance state; attacks on democratic values; mass detention and enforced slavery of Uyghurs; increasing cyber attacks on Australia; meddling in Australian politics and academic freedom.
Inq asked the BCA to say how it suggests handling China’s growing authoritarianism, the elephant in the room when it comes to the business relationship. We got nothing back.
China Matters insists that advocating for ongoing engagement with the PRC does not make it a stooge of the Communist Party of China: “One can call out the government in Beijing and at the same time strongly support — in the national interest — engagement with the PRC.”
One might want to ask Hong Kong about that. Or businesses such as the University of NSW which rescinded criticism of China’s actions in Hong Kong this week, under pressure from Chinese nationals.
Are we at a moment of history? Are the tectonic plates shifting as the US sinks under Trump? Maybe. Maybe not. But a Joe Biden victory might at least restore hopes of predictable diplomacy and, perhaps, the “rules and norms” Morrison is advocating to replace a series of power plays.
I suggest;
1. Locating a piece written by John Pilger, in the last day or so, and published at places like Counterpunch and Consortium News.
2. Locate a piece (e.g. at John Menadue’s ‘Pearls & Irritations’) written by former Fairfax Asia Correspondent , Hamish McDonald (the other one), in mid July, where he writes;
“….a new Chinese language website called Decode China was starting in Australia, funded by a London-based outfit called the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, described as a non-profit that “works with the US Department of State to disseminate and manage grants around the world.”
The report said Feng Chongyi, an associate professor at the University of Technology, Sydney, and Wai Ling Yeung, former head of Chinese Studies at Curtin University, were listed as directors of Sydney-based Decode China Pty Ltd. Maree Ma, general manager of Falun Gong-connected media group Vision Times, is listed as company secretary. These are all critical of Beijing.
Ma herself is an increasingly influential player, as is Yeung. Both are on the advisory board of the federal government’s new National Foundation for Australia-China Relations, which replaced the longstanding Australia-China Council in February and comes under DFAT….
Appointment of a figure from Falun Gong, dedicated to the overthrow of the Chinese Communist Party, seems additionally barbed….”
3. Locate the 2002 UN Security Council resolution – which is still ‘active’, and recently updated – headed;
“EASTERN TURKISTAN ISLAMIC MOVEMENT”
Which opens with;
“In accordance with paragraph 36 of resolution 2161 (2014) , the Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee makes accessible a narrative summary of reasons for the listing for individuals, groups, undertakings and entities included in the Al-Qaida Sanctions List.”
And, explains (note the ‘birthday’);
“Reason for listing:
The Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement was listed on 11 September 2002 pursuant to paragraphs 1 and 2 of resolution 1390 (2002) as being associated with Al-Qaida, Usama bin Laden or the Taliban for “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf or in support of” or “otherwise supporting acts or activities of” Al-Qaida (QDe.004)….
The Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) is an organization which has used violence to further its aim of setting up an independent so-called “East Turkistan” within China. Since its establishment, ETIM has maintained close ties with the Taliban, Al-Qaida (QDe.004) and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (QDe.010). It was founded by Hasan Mahsum from Xinjiang, China, who was killed by Pakistani troops in October 2003. ETIM is currently led by Abdul Haq (QDi.268), who was also a member of Al-Qaida’s Shura Council as of 2005….”
4. Locate the Grauniad piece, from Nov 25th, 2013, that is headed and subbed;
“Islamist group claims responsibility for attack on China’s Tiananmen Square”
“Group releases eight-minute audio clip which warns of future attacks in Beijing”
That piece is about the ‘work’ of the “Turkestan Islamic Party” within China, work such as bombing railway stations, and driving vehicles at speed into crowds in public places.
5. Locate the work of Danny Haiphong (a US citizen of Vietnamese heritage), and/or Cynthia McKinney (a former US Congresswoman) who, along with 4 other US citizens, travelled to Xinjiang Province in China, late last year, moved around unmolested, filmed and photographed what they liked, spoke to whomever they chose, and have reported extensively on what they saw and found.
6. Locate the work of Carl Zha, a Canadian of Chinese heritage, who has been in Xinjiang very recently, and did and reported much the same as Haiphong, McKinney & Co did late last year.
Then, maybe, a few more might be able to extract themselves from the gravitational pull of the ‘echo chamber’.
First they de-industrialise Australia based on the free market idea of comparative advantage. Then when the Australian economy can’t make anything and we are dependent on China both for imports and as a trade partner , they take us into a cold war with China. At what point will these dim witted cold war security creeps realise there is a fundamental contradiction in these two policies?
They could tell us we needed to hate and fear the Soviets consistently because we did not much trade with them and they were export competitors anyway. They can also tell us to hate and fear the Jihad-is because we do not trade with them at all.
But the Chinese, FFS?
Get us back our industrial economy before going in to a new cold war.
“A Lowy Institute poll published in mid-June underlined the collapse in the public’s view of China. It found Australians’ trust in China was at its lowest point in the history of the poll. Only 23% said they trusted China a great deal or somewhat “to act responsibly in the world”.” and no wonder given the incessant anti-China campaign being run in the Murdoch and Nine/Fairfax media which is fuelled by the intellectual dwarves at the IPA and the ‘warm war chappies’ at the ASPI. Of course the likes of Peter Dutton and ‘Captain’ Hastie and James Paterson and ‘Tiny Timmy’ Wilson and Commander Pezullo and the Australian ‘intelligence’ community do nothing to quieten things down and tell the Australian population the truth while being quite content to adoringly follow the idiots in Trump’s thrall like Pence, Pompeo and Navarro
Good call, agree. Journalists and media could be more careful with polls which rather than being neutral assessments of voter opinion, directly reflect selected issues repeated and reinforced in media, for political reasons, then most (instinctive) responses e.g. antipathy towards PRC are a fait accompli.
Australian politicians, media, think tanks and commentators have apparently just realised that PRC is an authoritarian one party state, with significant influence as a global trading nation in goods and services… while ignoring several major states in Asia with whom Australia also trades with (vs. assumption Asia = PRC = our sole trading partner = bad = crash it aka Trump), from which we are being nudged away from culturally…. god knows what they think of Australia…..
Meanwhile our culturally specific and right leaning political and media classes look to and are influenced by the US radical right libertarian messaging and actions; ably supported by NewsCorp and the IPA. For example, needing to crash multilateral trade agreements and/or splitting trade blocs to avoid regulatory constraints (by mostly US global corporates); it is presumably not done on behalf of nebulous ‘Anglosphere’ partners but fawning to the US’s interests….. Australia was going embrace our region, but no, Trump’s US and Brexit UK need to be catered to over our own interests…..
As with quite a few journalistic pieces on tensions between China and the US, the article speculates about China but says hardly anything about the one country that seems to exercise great influence over Australia. The US started tensions over trade and Huawei some two years ago. I was reminded of the propaganda campaign over Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, which led to the Iraq war. Our media seemed to go along with the Americans, even though a simple piece of analysis could have led any journalist to conclude that the US campaign was contrived to justify correcting for what HW Bush did, when he quite properly simply expelled the Iraqi’s from Kuwait and did not go on to take control of Iraq, as he could easily have done, since Iraq’s forces were thrashed. Years later, why would the Iraqi’s, who could be under no illusions as to how easily their forces could be defeated in their weakened state, want to provoke an invasion over alleged possession of chemical and biological weapons, when US and UK forces were well equipped to fight in a war in which those weapons were used and the likely result would be their defeat and condemnation by other countries?
I did that piece of analysis at the time and I concluded that Saddam would have to be stupid or insane, which no one thought he was, to have weapons of mass destruction and so, I was opposed to the Iraq war from the beginning.
What then is the significance of US hostility to China? I think the US is simply trying to disrupt China’s economy, so that it cannot overtake the US economy by 2030, as China’s leaders plan. Why should Australians be drawn into painting China black for a reason that matters more to the US than it does to us? Apparently, our journalists from the ABC to, not surprisingly, the Murdoch papers, and most other places want to help the US, despite it not being in our national interest to engage in disrupting China’s economy, however noble US Secretary of State Pompeo thinks we should be in sacrificing our trading relationship with China to benefit the US.
Of course, we should have differences with China: we rightly now say that there is no basis to China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea; we can urge China not to commit crimes against humanity in forcing some Uighurs to drop Jihadi Islam. We should not, though, claim that Hong Kong is not part of China, since we agreed with the UK treaty that returned Hong Kong to China. We can accept refugees from Hong Kong, who now may reasonably fear persecution for urging that Hong Kong become independent of China. We can urge that any resolution of the conflict over who should rule Taiwan be peaceful but we have already agreed that it is part of China.
As for the Lowy Institute’s research showing that only a small minority of Australians, after two years of anti-China publications in our media, now expect China to play a responsible role in world affairs, when more than half expected that over two years ago, these results are hardly surprising, given our media’s recent change of tune on China. For myself, I can only hope that China plays a responsible role and acts with restraint, despite US provocations. I have not much confidence, however, that it will act more responsibly than the US, which concerns me.
“we can urge China not to commit crimes against humanity in forcing some Uighurs to drop Jihadi Islam. ”
So that’s all it is!
Kinda WW. China (the PRC) has heaps of minorities and they mostly live on the western border which is the most picturesque part of China. The more ‘propertied’ Hans holiday there.
As to the Uighurs the issue is very much less about Isalm than about proselytising which is NOT tolerated anywhere in China. Turning up with a bible in a public square will earn the evangelist a government holiday. However, ScoMo and his merry flock could do what they pleased behind closed doors anywhere in China.
As with (frankly) everything the press (1) dumbs the issue down until it is no longer recognisable and (2) keeps it as an issue to sell more product. Covid-19 is a case in point.
A few of the references provided by David Thomson (above) need to be understood prior to a Quixotic campaign being assembled on behalf of the Uighurs – who, incidentally are by no means the only minority in the region. The matter is a tad complicated and there is a lot of drivel sloshing about on social media with Karen as the expert.
Well done David. This only topic deserving of discussion for the foreseeable future and it is interesting to observe the more informed and balanced heads contributing (which is refreshing).
Let’s begin at the end David. You didn’t receive a reply to “handling China’s growing authoritarianism .. when it comes to the business relationship” because it is a damned silly question. Just who enquired as to how the USA ought to be “handled” after the unhinging the Philippines from Spain or kicking off the events in Vietnam in 1962 or planting warheads into Turkey during the same year. We could
move to Chile in 1973 and into Central America. Chomsky has written books on this stuff.
Now, there is a President who intents to ignore (or rewrite – take your pick) the Geneva Convention as it pertains to the location of an Embassy and is ok with the trashing of a 1948 UN resolution in respect of annexation.
Point made or do you wish me to continue?
You have a message to “get real” which is always good advice. Ok. Agreed David; let’s get real. Xi is NOT monkeying about. Everything that the PRC does has a long term object. The development of Shenzhen at the expense of HK was the main cause of all the trouble (which never really sunk in with Crikey despite some effort by yours truly) and the South China Sea is a given in the same way as the Silk and Belt.
As to HK you will find in the archives that I said it would end in tears and it did and the message is directed in very clear terms to Taiwan. It is not a matter of ‘liking or disliking’ the proceedings but it is a matter or getting real (as you put it). The region is about to become under new management : end of story!
These objectives have half-century goals at least and they will come to be managed by the kids beginning school this September. I know of no example in the West that reflects such strategic planning.
The options are actually painfully obvious. We either line up with Trump’s zero sum game for the region or we (surprise) conduct our own diplomacy, cultural exchanges and pursue interests in research; most notably 5G. If it is thought that Huawei can attach a back-door chip to a board then so can Cisco or anyone. As an aside, no such doors have been reported in the German technical press which is a major volume market for Hwawei.
Yet Oz is encumbered with the lower orders of the electorate who would not recognise a text on International Relations if it had teeth. The same goes for the majority of the House and the Senate judging from useful autobiography of past members as they have evaluated the acumen of their peers.
I have lived in both 1st and 3rd world countries and I suppose I could, anticipating the forecast of Lee Kuan Yew 40 years ago, live in Oz as it becomes a “white trash” 3rd world country but there is a choice in respect of Lee’s forecast not being realised. So, contrary to your assertion, Australia, very definitely, has a Plan B which may not be available after the application of the USA orientated Plan A. That is the point!