Criticism of Kevin Rudd’s approach to China has been all over the place since he became Prime Minister.
Early on, he was the Sinophile, toadying to Beijing at the expense of our traditional relationship with Japan. Later, he was too aggressive towards the Chinese, daring to lecture them in Beijing about human rights and, worse, doing it in Mandarin. Then he was letting too much Chinese investment flow into the economy. The Stern Hu affair then prompted criticism that he was too weak and unwilling to go to the rhetorical barricades for an innocent Chinese-Australian thrown into a Shanghai hellhole on trumped-up charges.
There’s something about China that makes politicians, journalists and commentators lose all capacity for balanced analysis.
Throughout it all, the Prime Minister appears to have been quite consistent: he wants a strong relationship with China, which is critical to our economic future, but is a far more ready to criticise China about human rights than his predecessor, even in the face of Beijing’s fury.
And thus, this week, even after the media began switching off the fate of Stern Hu in the wake of evidence that bribery had indeed occurred, Rudd and Stephen Smith, whose quietly-spoken manner is eminently suited to his job, were continuing to criticise the Chinese about their legal system.
Even after the Chinese reacted with the inevitable fury about this disgraceful intervention in their internal affairs, Rudd went back to have another crack at the Chinese yesterday.
Well, obviously there are always going to be bumps in the road in our relationship with China. We run completely different political systems, and they are completely different judicial systems as well. I would say to our friends in Beijing, however, that the responsible course of action is to ensure that your judicial process is transparent, that when people are brought before your courts, that those trials are held publicly. I believe that’s the responsible course of action for the future, and I would say that with great respect to our friends in Beijing. China is an emerging power, but I think the world is also watching the way in which China evolves its judicial system, including the importance of ensuring that all trials, particularly those of a criminal nature, are held in a public and transparent manner.
None of that is particularly new, and only a tyrannical and murderous regime might find something to object to in those remarks, but Rudd’s doggedness in politely insisting on his point about China is striking. The complexity of China and its relations with the West is a particularly tired cliché, but Rudd appears to understand that Australia’s messages to Beijing can be complex as well without somehow endangering our long-term interests.
After watching the ongoing Australian policy development of suppressing concerns in relation to human rights, political corruption, nepotism and bribery which are rampant in China on the altar of trade, I now understand how Australians continued to supply scrap iron to Japan right up until the commencement of hostilities in 1941.
The then Prime Minister Robert Menzies became known as “Pig Iron Bob” as a consequence of the 1938 decision to force waterside workers to load scrap iron to Japan whilst Japan was pursuing its bloody campaign of suppression, murder, rape and pillage in China. This campaign included “Rape of Nanking : (in which over 200,000 Chinese were brutally murdered) and which the Japanese have never formally acknowledged.
Prime ministers including Rudd, Howard, Keating and Hawke have all been prepared to supplicate themselves to the Chinese for the benefit of their union mates and their close associates in industry and commerce.
Accordingly the whole Australian community shares the guilt of trading with an economic power that does not respect our civil liberties or our social and judicial structures (whatever their faults as we see them). Stern Hu is an Australian citizen denied what we believe to be natural justice by an economic power that murders its own citizens, and continues to maintain an oligarchy with nepotism and cronyism and corruption at its core components.
Kevin Rudd knows this only too well but he also understands that if he pushes the Chinese too far that the Australian citizens will get very upset if their standard of living is affected by a Chinese backlash. Accordingly it is better to let an Australian citizen rot in jail with a few mild protests so that the majority of Australians can continue their comfortable lifestyle by feeding a raw materials to China and facilitating the destruction of Australia industry by importing undervalued Chinese products.
The Chinese like the Japanese before them have no respect for weakness, and they have demonstrated that through coercion, intimidation and blackmail that commercial interests in China must now supplicate themselves to a corrupt political and judicial regime lest they also fall foul of the system.
The really disgusting aspect of this whole business is that it is well known that in order to do business in China that the payment of bribes is a necessary precondition of commercial success. I am sure the message will be out in China that the bribes should just continue and that this was just an unfortunate sabre rattling exercise for commercial advantage.
Sure Bernard
But what’s the point of this article?
An observation that the Prime Minister is making comment on China’s judicial system. That it should be more transparent and that you think a reaction to such comments can only come from a:
‘tyrannical and murderous regime might find something to object to in those remarks’
Clearly highlights your obvious disgust and bias agianst how the country is run.
It’s not that there isn’t contention about how the legal system is run in China. It’s that, for an Australian citizen to get 10 years jail for an alleged bribery charge, that was held behind closed doors – resulted in our Prime Minister saying that he wishes we could have seen the whole proceeding.
Rudd has said the least possible he could in that circumstance. We could expect nothing, nothing, less from our leader.
What you should have written about is why China is the way it is and in this case, outline the faults of it’s system.
Not a very standard media response from a politician.
If Kevin Rudd were to stand up and declare that Australia would no longer be selling its resources to a “tyrannical and murderous” regime, that may rattle the Chinese. Otherwise the Chinese will just toss another bone for Kevin and Bernard to fight over to see who is the toughest.
Oh BK tell us again in case we missed it “Rudd is a hero”
The attacking posts here are pretty juvenile. Given that it is hard to argue with the result – Hu is guilty of accepting large bribes and while it is difficult to know whether he is guilty on the other charges taking bribes suggests a willingness to engage in corrupt behaviour – then the only proper course is to take issue with the process, as Rudd has done.
All this chest-beating about getting tough with China is strictly only for adolescent boys, not mature political leaders.