Christopher Pyne: Why Paul Keating is dead wrong on China

Paul Keating seems to think China is like an adolescent growing up, and we should ride out its muscle flexing. He couldn’t be more wrong, says Christopher Pyne.

Former prime minister Paul Keating delivered a speech to the National Press Club last week, making his first appearance there in 25 years.

He would have been better off staying away.

His subject was the rise of China and the relationship between China and Australia and the wider region, including the United States.

One couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps the former Labor leader has been living in a version of augmented reality that removes the truth about China’s human rights record, treatment of their neighbours and international posture.

This augmented view replaces the truth with the version of China that existed before President Xi, maybe even going right back to 1991-96 when Keating was prime minister.

Unfortunately, China is not a benign superpower. We all wish it were so, but the reality is the much-hoped-for opening to more democratic principles and practices that was expected to come with greater affluence has not eventuated.

Former Prime Minister Paul Keating via video at the National Press Club earlier this month. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Instead, the leadership of China in Beijing is more nationalistic and, in some cases, bellicose than it has been since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

Listening to Keating on China, you could be forgiven for thinking that his China is a place where the persecution of the Uighur minority is not happening, the crackdown on democracy protesters in Hong Kong is a myth, China lives peacefully with all its contiguous neighbours and doesn’t threaten Taiwan on a weekly basis.

The reality is quite different.

China has border disputes with almost every one of its neighbours and has done so for more than 70 years.

Only last year, Indian and Chinese soldiers killed each other in the Ladakh region with their bare hands, using rocks to bash each other’s brains out. The last land war in Asia was fought between Vietnam and China in the summer of 1979-80.

Democracy activists in Hong Kong have been arrested, questioned, often imprisoned and certainly barred from standing for election to the Hong Kong legislature.

Hong Kong is a long way from the “one country, two systems” promised when China resumed control of Hong Kong from Great Britain.

Thousands of Uighurs live in internment camps in northwestern China, euphemistically known as training and education facilities.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army soldiers during military training at Pamir Mountains in Kashgar, northwestern China’s Xinjiang region in January. Picture: STR / AFP / China OUT

I doubt they resemble our much more sedate TAFE colleges.

Chinese military sorties over Taiwan airspace are almost a daily occurrence. China has also militarised reefs and shoals in the South China Sea that, in the event of war, would allow it to try to deny that space to other military forces in the area. It’s not exactly behaving like Switzerland.

Keating’s thesis appears to be that China’s emergence has the hallmarks of an adolescent growing up, realising their strength and literally throwing their weight around.

He seems to suggest that we should ride these testosterone-fuelled ups and downs and try not to get hurt in the process.

I guess that’s a view. But it isn’t real world.

The truth is nations need to coexist. That means mutual respect and shared outcomes that benefit the many, not the few.

Right now, China wants to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). It is a free-trade agreement that currently includes 11 Indo-Pacific nations that was led by Japan and Australia. The United States pulled out under president Trump but will probably want to join at some point in the future.

China has indicated that it would be interested in joining.

How could Australia acquiesce to China joining a free-trade bloc when right now China is deliberately squeezing our economy and blocking wine, seafood, timber and curtailing the import of many other products from Australia for no good reason?

Would Keating suggest that we should simply pretend that isn’t happening?

China needs to not just mouth the rhetoric of free trade and co-operation, it needs to practise it too.

Keating was a reasonable treasurer. Many of the policies he introduced were supported by the then-opposition, led first by Andrew Peacock and then by John Howard.

That was fortunate for him because Labor did not control the Senate and without opposition support elements of his program would not have been implemented.

Keating was also fortunate that Bob Hawke was on the political scene at the same time as him.

Hawke was “one out of the box”. He had a love affair with the Australian people that lasted for four election wins in 1983, ’84, ’87 and 1990. That election-winning streak allowed Keating to be a successful treasurer.

As a former prime minister, Keating should be shown respect. But on this occasion he is dead wrong.

He is in danger of being remembered for cranky speeches about a world that no longer exists, rather than for his many achievements as treasurer and then prime minister.

Australia must stand up for its values and its national interest. Whether anyone likes it or not, that means sticking close to the United States, which is the world’s superpower and shares those values and beliefs.

Paul Keating might not like it, but that’s the simple realpolitik.