Left media blind to Chinese bullying agenda (paywalled)
Chris Mitchell
The Australian
December 6, 2020
What does China really want from its punishment of Australia, supposedly a partner in a bilateral free trade agreement, and why such differences in media analysis of its actions?
First up, journalists should remember public shows of strength by “president for life” Xi Jinping and his predecessors are usually aimed at a domestic Chinese audience.
Second, left media here, including those who had nothing but praise for the China expertise of former prime minister Kevin Rudd – he of the infamous “Chinese Ratf..kers” slur – will never acknowledge when Scott Morrison does well. Before the offensive and fake Afghan war crimes tweet by a minor Chinese Foreign Ministry official last week, Morrison had been sending conciliatory signals to the dictatorship.
In the Howard years, admittedly with a less aggressive Chinese regime, the ABC and the former Fairfax newspapers could never acknowledge the good work of foreign minister Alexander Downer in managing a formula under which we quietly gave China annual feedback about human rights issues. Nor do the ABC and Guardian Australia today acknowledge it was former Coalition PM Tony Abbott and trade minister Andrew Robb who negotiated the 2015 China free trade agreement.
The left media here has let Labor write its script on Australia-China relations since Gough Whitlam’s recognition of China in December 1972. They are usually wrong.
China may be the No.2 economy in the world but it is not a rich country – GDP per capita is $US8130. Here it is $US54,200, and in the US is $US53,240. The role of the Chinese Communist Party in driving growth in the world’s most populous nation should always be acknowledged.
But it was not always so: 60 million Chinese died, largely from famine, under Mao Zedong in the late 1950s and early ’60s. Today’s China is at the forefront of technological development, largely because under Mao’s successors pure Marxist ideology was dumped. Xi is putting Marxism front and centre for the first time in five decades. It is not clear this will work.
An insightful piece about his leadership was published in the US journal Foreign Affairs in its May/June edition. Author Minxin Pei cites concerns in China’s bureaucracy and academia about the regime’s mishandling of early stages of the coronavirus and about an economic slowdown in China triggered by the global pandemic.
Foreign Affairs discusses the concentration of power under Xi since he declared himself supreme leader for life. Whereas once the decision-making processes of the Central Committee were slower, they were also less susceptible to individual misjudgment. Central Committee members could play devil’s advocate and, while cumbersome, not too much went wrong over the past two decades.
Xi has embarked on political and academic purges of his critics, many of whom have risked their positions and lives. In Confucian theory dynastic change follows loss of the “Heavenly Mandate”, as this column and online journal Quillette have pointed out. Critics in China argue the virus and the slowing of the economy are signs Xi is losing moral authority.
The Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday published Professor Anne-Marie Brady, one of the few academics in this region – with our own Professor Clive Hamilton – willing to call out Chinese influence in Western universities. Prof Brady said the Turnbull and Morrison Coalition governments had “taken a principled stand on … freedom of navigation in the South China Sea”, had passed laws ‘’prohibiting systematic Chinese political interference activities” and asked for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19. The Coalition had also banned Chinese telecom giant Huawei from the national 5G rollout. Prof Brady said of the Afghan tweet: “Morrison’s request that China apologise for the actions of its diplomat … is no more or less than what China itself would have done under the circumstances.” China had demanded exactly such an apology on November 23 after the ABC broadcast an allegedly racist children’s program showing an Empress eating rats and insects.
SMH political and international editor Peter Hartcher hit the mark on December 1, arguing “the evidence reveals that the supposedly mighty regime of strongman Xi Jinping is the one feeling the strain”. Hartcher said China’s Ambassador Cheng Jingye gave the game away in April when he publicly threatened Australian exports of wine, beef and barley, and hinted at disruption to tourism and international student flows to Australia. Those threats were in response to the suggestion from Morrison that the source of the pandemic should be fully investigated. Fair enough, thought 130 other countries.
Wrote Hartcher: “Xi’s regime saw Australia as defiant. Worse, Australia’s defiance was encouraging other countries.” He quoted Harvard academic Ross Terrill on China’s problem: “It is a state that is oppressive, yet also afraid of its own people.”
The false Afghan tweet and the list of 14 Australian “offences” the Chinese Embassy gave to Channel 9 a fortnight ago have only hardened public opinion here, and created support for Australia around the world.
Trade is at the centre of Xi’s problems but we are not his trade problem. The US, and specifically tariffs imposed by President Trump, are. Xi and many in Beijing believe China’s handling of the coronavirus shows how much stronger it is than the US, racked by 15 million cases and 280,000 deaths. Yet Xi can do nothing to change the will of a US president.
In my view, he will change course after the inauguration of President-elect Biden and the pressure will come off Australia. Xi has been kicking us because he is not strong enough to kick our ally yet needs his people to believe he is. He portrays action against us, a long-time US ally, as a sign of his strength. It is in fact a sign of his weakness.
Many in the Australian media have always supported the Labor lines of former prime minister Paul Keating and former NSW premier Bob Carr: that our economic future rests with China, which will inevitably become the world’s most powerful nation militarily and economically.
It’s been the line from the Department of Foreign Affairs for decades. But events may yet prove it wrong. And we can of course trade with China and preserve our US alliance.
The positive for us from China’s bullying is a new community acceptance we need to diversify our markets. Of course Morrison must try to settle the trade relationship with China. But he also has to try to keep the US engaged in the Pacific while strengthening Australia’s regional trade and defence ties with India, Japan and Indonesia.
China will do whatever it wants in its own interests. We can neither depend on it nor influence it. And like Japan before it, China may face many more economic hurdles than its boosters admit. The transition from factory for the world to modern economy driven by domestic consumption will be difficult.
Without a free-floating currency and with all the rigidities of a Marxist centrally planned state there are many landmines ahead for the Dragon, as Rowan Callick described in Inquirer last Saturday week.
