In all the coverage of the AUKUS announcement and the government’s continuing criticisms of China, one question has received too little attention: why has Australia gone from the Tony Abbott Coalition hosting Xi Jinping in the Parliament in 2014 to celebrate a trade deal to now pursuing a new Cold War with China?
It’s a difficult question not merely for the Coalition, which feted Xi and denounced any criticism of the trade deal as racist, but for its supporters at News Corp, which lauded the deal as a major historical event and the entry of Australia into a close “orbit” of China — rather like AUKUS has now been declared a key moment in Australian history.
The primary response from China hawks is that Xi somehow began unmasking himself after 2014 — though not so quickly that, in early 2017, the Turnbull government wasn’t seeking to ratify an extradition treaty.
But Xi is said to have dramatically ramped up his interference in Australia, to have escalated cyber attacks, to have become more aggressive in the South China Sea, and to have unleashed “wolf warrior” diplomats.
The problem with this narrative is that, even if correct, it was merely a change of degree, not kind, and certainly not some surprising revelation. Anyone who witnessed Chinese government-orchestrated attacks on protesters against the Beijing Games torch relay in 2008 couldn’t have been in any doubt as to the willingness of Beijing to interfere in Australia. And anyone who saw the eagerness of both sides of politics to receive donations from Chinese billionaires with connections to the Chinese Communist Party could have been in no doubt about the willingness of both to overlook that interference.
And China significantly increased in aggression in the South China Sea several years before Abbott’s trade deal and its program of militarisation in that area drew criticism from the United States in 2015. As for a ramping up of Chinese cyber-aggression — seriously? Journalists were able to accumulate lists of the greatest hits of Chinese hackers in 2010, the year before China was known to be behind the hacking of prime minister Julia Gillard’s email account and accessing cabinet material.
Certainly China became dramatically more aggressive in trade terms, binning the trade deal and slapping tariffs on Australian imports other than iron ore, but that was mostly in response to Australia’s (wholly justified) call for an investigation into the circumstances of the spread of the coronavirus, just as earlier criticism from China had been prompted by Australia’s (again, wholly justified, if clumsily implemented) foreign interference laws and the exclusion of Huawei from telecommunications infrastructure.
But nothing accounts for near-total reversal of Australian policy from near-fawning Sinophilia to a new Cold War, with Australia needing to embrace nuclear power to ward off Chinese aggression.
Who drove this reversal? Much of it has come from the most secretive and unaccountable area of the federal government, our intelligence and security agencies, which have escalated warnings about the threat of China publicly and via friendly journalists — and, purely coincidentially, enjoyed significant increases in funding from taxpayers as a consequence.
Much of it has been directed against the pro-Beijing influence of a sycophantic business community, who have no concerns about anything Beijing does provided they can keep making money, and their media mouthpieces like The Australian Financial Review. The security establishment has defeated the business establishment in influencing Australia’s attitude to China.
And much of the reversal has been driven by the domestic political needs of the Coalition and its main media ally, News Corp, which is why Labor was attacked as being Sinophobic a few years ago and is now portrayed as too soft on China.
But in the absence of a convincing rationale for such a comprehensive reversal, Australians — and other governments — are justified in wondering what the core driver of foreign policy under the Morrison government that has remained consistent when entirely opposite outcomes have resulted — or whether those outcomes are simply the result of the vicissitudes of an ongoing contest between different parts of the governing class for influence.
There has been one consistent theme of both Coalition and Labor foreign policy: a willing embrace of a role in the US military machine.
Australia has much to offer the US by way of its geography. We have long provided a southern hemisphere base for global surveillance and espionage operations, a welcoming port for the US navy and, increasingly, a base for US troops — an initiative of Labor under Gillard. Traditionally we have brought less in the way of manpower and hardware to US military adventurism — our contribution to Iraq was risible and we struggled to deliver even that — but under AUKUS we’ll eventually pay for a fleet of submarines effectively under US control and based, handily, in the region to be contested with China.
Australia’s future as a giant spy station/naval stop/permanent aircraft carrier/junior sheriff for the US military appears assured. But at what point will its economic interests reassert themselves, led by an influential business lobby, or will domestic political considerations prompt a re-embrace of China? Will Australia be feting Xi in 2025, complete with welcome op-eds about being pulled into China’s orbit?
The Anglo-sphere has dominated the world for two centuries and now it looks like losing ground to China as possibly the next world-dominant power and we don’t line it. Or the US doesn’t like it. And we cling to our colonial roots.
I thought Morrison’s demand for a. Inquiry into China re the origin of the virus was ignorant, inept and insulting and no wonder that China retaliated. An inquiry may have been a good idea but there were diplomatic ways of doing this, and why did Morrison lead the push? He must have known it would make China angry and what was in it for Australia?
Because he was desperate to kiss up to the Giant Orange Turd-Trump….Putin’s man in the US. Which was funny given that-even at the time-it was pretty clear that Trump was going to be a one-term wonder.
Agree. Had Morriscum actually contacted China and said “we really need an independent investigation into this Virus, how about Australia and China issue a joint statement” the response from China would have been extremely different.
To then blame China for implementing targeted sanctions and call it “economic coercion” (simply exercising their right to buy from others who, you know, treat them better) just made it worse. That came on top of Australian criticism over the 2019 HK Riots and resulting NSL Legislation and he still either doesn’t understand, or doesn’t care, that constantly criticising another country has consequences.
Oh the perils of typing on ones phone when the keys are misaligned to the actual characters. ‘Line’ of course should be ‘like’.
Morrison is adapt atn pointing the gun at others and then shooting himself in the foot.
He tries to hide all the failings, misteps of his inept Government by blaming someone else the look over there theory, whilst he and his minions are stumbling about.
Someone with a bit of political nous, someone who could have diplomatically approached China to ask the question as opposed to this (all) guns blazing approach.
How would have K.Rudd done it differently?
Morrison has caused more angst in Australia, blustered around with no idea, no plan, no agenda as he digs us into situations that create a scene of total buffonery throughout the world aka French as well as China
Morrison would have us all believe that his as-yet-unformulated nuclear submarine project is not a Trojan Horse for a domestic nuclear industry…Bongiorno
Indeed.
Ignorant, inept and insulting, you left out dumb…
Agree (just commented before reading), it’s much to do with the radical right libertarians and their propensity for an ‘Anglosphere’ as a vehicle for particular sectors and ideology, backgrounded by eugenics and the ‘great replacement’ leading to a dilution of Anglo or WASP exceptionalism i.e. the ‘top people’, trade and economic power compared to e.g. China, Asia, EU, hence, manipulating voters towards Brexit and Trump.
Why am I not surprised by “Agree (just commented before reading)…”?
Like Shorten eschewing, thrice before the cock creweth, that he did not know what his (sic!?) PM had said but he “… agreed 100%!”
Someone concurring about an article and comment should be criticised, meanwhile avoiding the article theme?
My issue with crusty conservatives, being used by libertarians, is that they never offer anything constructive nor enlightened versus negativity and destructiveness; modus operandi of those afraid of their own masters acting as an unempowered praetorian guard shutting down debate?
“It’s not you it’s me….”
China hasn’t changed (spots and all – “we” didn’t notice them when we just wanted their money) …. but now we’ve got an election looming?
Back in the good ol’ daze we kept a copy of the “The Illustrated Political Kama Sutra” by the hammock – just in case.
Obama’s Pivot to Asia policy from around 2011 was the game changer. China’s economic influence had to be checked. Suddenly the South China Seas were a weak point to leverage China that could strangle China’s crucial shipping lanes. It was only then after in 2013 that China aggressively started to militarise the South China seas in response. Then a proliferation of NGO’s appeared all demonising China for various reasons appeared. Western media followed suit. A soft war had begun to destabilise China. As to the spying, every country does it and we are not innocent and perhaps a leading aggressor as well. We host Pine Gap for the US for starters. We are not the 51st state but are basically an unincorporated US territory. They have total control of our sovereignty.
Bernard asks a good question and I think this is a good answer. Despite new legislation against foreign interference, the US has suddenly decided that China threatens its economic and technological supremacy. What has changed is that China’s Huawei rather than a US firm came up with the cheapest most advanced 5G technology. Another change is that China, while still spending less than 50% of what the US does on its military, although its economy is now 85% of the US economy, now spends enough on its military that it is no longer clear that it would suffer defeat by the US in a conventional war and clear that a nuclear war would result in mutual destruction. These threats to the US position have influenced our government to line up for a policy of China containment, designed to check its technological advance and divert its spending into defence.
As Bernard says, all the criticisms of China remain unchanged, except that China has clearly interfered in our internal affairs in a way that it would deplore if any other country similarly pressured it to change its decisions in the way it has pressured Australia over its decision on whether it would use Huawei to build its 5G network.
The drums of war talk in Australia is just propaganda to make the Australian public more hostile to China. China, though it makes baseless claims to sovereignty over the South China Sea, would be daft to go to war over the issue, since it does not have enough stake in the South China Sea to close it to others and would fight at a strategic disadvantage, as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq did when It tried to take over Kuwait. It would not be clear that we would be make a US decision to go to war over Taiwan any less disastrous for all concerned. Will the countries of the Asia Pacific stumble into war with China as the UK, France and Russia stumbled into war with Germany and Turkey for even less good reason than they had? Let’s hope for the sake of our grandchildren’s future that they do not.
When will you consider the US’s baseless claims to sovereignty over Guam, Hawaii, then maybe consider all of the baseless claims the US has used to wage war throughout the world and then maybe look at China’s proximity to the South China Sea. In other words, take a reality check, Mr. Hunt.
How has China interfered in our internal affairs?
Just look at most countries that supported U.S Bases..Okinawa wants them.out,Philippines kicked them out along with other countries like Germany who have had issues with bases there.
Morrison is what he is and that has been scary, stories he is used to frighten kids in bedtime stories.
He is a abhomonation, a blight a bufoon who has no idea leading his inept useless rabble of liars, ship of fools that seem to be leading us to despair ( i think most of us already there) I personally cannot abude watching, hearing him in any form.
As Hugh White has pointed out, Australia has three security options where China is concerned:
There are many reasons why the first of these options is untenable as hitching a ride with an egregious totalitarian dictator ship is somewhat at odds with the open society that Australia enjoys. Not to mention how many enemies we would make if we did this.
The second option, and the one I prefer is to manage our security without relying on treaties with great and powerful friends, however there are some problems. Just as Britain and France did at the end of WWII they didn’t rust the American to protect them from Germany and a little later the USSR. So both countries went nuclear under their own “steam”. There are those unkind people who say that if the French had the bomb so must the British as you can’t trust the French. We would have to become a nuclear armed power if we wanted any credibility against the Chinese and US should they decide to be unfriendly towards us. If we abandoned our treaties with the US and UK we would have to do all of the nuclear development ourselves as they would be unlikely to help us. This would take fifteen to twenty years, but it is doable. Iran, North Korea and China all worked out that if you wanted to look after your own security and deter the two hundred pound gorillas that are the US and in the past the USSR you have to have nukes. It’s not rocket science although you may need rockets to launch them.
The third option is where we are now. The US is a society of inverted totalitarianism where the elites of the large corporations, fossil, Wall Street and Silicon Valley run things in a way that makes them fabulously wealthy at the expense of the ordinary American and the ordinary people of the vassal states. For those who wish to understand what inverted totalitarianism is read Sheldon Wolin’s “Democracy Inc”.
Now you don’t need a crystal ball to work out which of these options our politicians of all persuasions would pick. Yes it’s number three. The cargo cult mentality of our politicians where they perform diplomatic rituals to attract our great an powerful ally ensures that any thinking about independent security is as likely as the National Party acknowledging the harm done by fossil fuels.
Now why has Australia suddenly become so muscular towards the PRC? Well it may have something to do with intelligence, however there have been a number of important interactions with various princes of the USA. The first of these occurred in 2017 when a patronizing Senator John MCain visited to talk about security and politics in the Asian region. According to a report by the ABC:
“The former Republican presidential candidate is a foreign policy hawk, and has recently been calling for an increased US military presence in the Asia-Pacific, accusing China of behaving like a “bully” and saying the US needed to adapt by taking a more muscular stance.
Peter Jennings, from the Australian Strategic Policy, said Senator McCain might urge Australia to take a more forceful approach to China.
“He may be setting out a list of expectations of what he thinks allies can do, so it will be interesting to see what he says about [Australia] countering China in the South China Sea, and working with the US on North Korean contingencies,” Mr Jennings said.
“He’ll be wanting to us to step up the plate.”
Now when one of the Princes of the US says jump, Australia doesn’t delay in asking “how high”.
Circa March 2020. Mike Pompeo the US Secreatary of State came out all the way to Aus and met Marrissa Paine amongst a lot of photo-ops and speeches. According to a US Embassy Spokes man the meeting was:
“Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo met with Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne today to discuss coordination of U.S. and Australia policy in the Indo-Pacific, including through the annual Australia-U.S. Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN), as well as trilateral infrastructure cooperation with Japan, and Quad coordination with Japan and India.
Secretary Pompeo and Foreign Minister Payne reaffirmed their commitment to engage with ASEAN, which remains at the heart of our respective visions for the Indo-Pacific.
They also discussed the need to protect freedom and sovereignty in the Indo-Pacific and the importance of promoting human rights, especially in Xinjiang and Tibet. Secretary Pompeo thanked Foreign Minister Payne for Australia’s important contributions to the campaign to fight ISIS.”
The Tyrants of the Ptomac hate the long flights to Australia from the land of the Indespensible Nation. They only come when they have very serious instructions that they wish us to follow. For two of them to come out within three years of each other shows how serious they are.
Pompeo in an interview whilst in Australia made veiled threats that the US would disengage from Australia if any Australian Government State or Federal got too close to the Chines. This was aimed squarely at the Victorian Government MOA with China on the “Belt & Road” initiative. He back-peddled on this as they always do, but the message is clear, do as we tell you or you will suffer.
Just as the Chinese are doing to us now.
The current US Secratary of State met with Paine et al on 16 September so nothing has changed from the Trump game plan with Biden in power. He was just making sure there were no illusions that US foreign policy is independent of whichever part is in power and the MIlitary Industrial complex has decided to make China their next enemy.
The US has given us our instructions to muscle up against China and like we always do we doff our caps, lick there boots and say, “Yes uncle.”
Yup. We are dealing with the real Deep State.
I was really interested in the answer to ‘so what’s behind it’? But there’s no answer other than ‘it’s politics’. But what politics exactly? Bernard Keane’s sharp eyesight deserts him when it comes to China. He’s be happy to ratchet the boycotts, the human right accusations and quite likely ‘regime change’. His historically nostalgic ‘classic’ liberalism, trashed by the vulgar neoliberals who high-jacked it, has no answer to what’s going on either domestically or in China. He’s great at critique but there’s no structural or historical explanation of how we got to where we are or how we might get out of it. In this he is akin to John Daley, whose last report Keane eulogised, which basically thinks all we need to do is to re-establish the bi-partisan ‘good government’ of the 80s and 90s, failing to note that that is responsible for many of our current woes.