Throughout 2020, as our relationship with China collapsed and our economic opportunities evaporated, Canberra has clung to a homely analogy. Beijing is just a schoolyard bully, and if we stand up to them they will soon slink away.
That makes it all look easy, but the analogy is dangerously misleading. This is not a schoolyard, China is not a schoolboy, it hasn’t slunk away, and nothing about our predicament is as easy as the government would like us to believe.
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Hugh White is the emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University.
