Piers Akerman: Australia must stand up to China for our own sake before the beast gets too ambitious

Even from this distance we should recognise the monstrous abuses routinely carried out by this totalitarian thug, especially for the safety of some 100,000 Australians living and working in Hong Kong, writes Piers Akerman.

Former foreign minister and former NSW Labor premier Bob Carr says China can’t afford to ignore the millions of protesters in Hong Kong who have turned out in recent days terrified, no doubt, by the administration’s proposed extradition bill.

As the former politician and diplomat is well aware, his mild admonition will have zero effect in the halls of Beijing.

To put the Hong Kong demonstrations in perspective, somewhere between a quarter and perhaps as many as one third of the island’s population demonstrated against a proposal put forward (and now put on hold but not withdrawn) by the Chinese government-backed chief executive Carrie Lamb that would have permitted Hong Kong citizens to be extradited for trial to the mainland.

Protesters hold banners and shout slogans as they march in Hong Kong on June 16. Picture: Anthony Kwan

Hong Kong is officially a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China. The PRC currently has an estimated million Uighur people held in camps on its Western border because they are a Muslim minority.

Its treatment of the Tibetan people (the PRC claims Tibet is an integral part of China while a Tibetan government-in-exile maintains that Tibet is an independent state under unlawful occupation) has been equally harsh.

Mr Carr, who has regularly railed against concerned Australians who have raised fears of growing Chinese influence in Australia, raised three points during an interview with The Daily Telegraph’s Jack Houghton but missed the major fear.

According to Mr Carr, there is a huge Australian professional and business presence in Hong Kong and it’s one of the nation’s most valuable economic relationships.

Mourners hold flowers pray for a man who fell to his death on Saturday after hanging a protest banner. Picture: Kin Cheung

True enough, it is estimated that there are some 100,000 Australians working in Hong Kong and the tiny island was our twelfth largest trading partner in 2017 trade in goods and services worth nearly $19 billion.

Second, Mr Carr said we support as an important Australian value the universally applicable value — the independence of the judiciary — and “where that is diminished I would expect Australia to say something”.

Yes, when we see seven million people lose such an important bulwark of their society, we would expect someone in government to offer more than the usual platitudes.

Mr Carr’s third point was little more than sugar coating for the mild rebuke he was backhandedly offering China.

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He reaffirmed Australia’s support for the Chinese principle regarding Hong Kong “one nation, two systems” — but China’s attempt to smash the 1997 agreement under which the territory was ceded is a blatant display of its ambition for one nation, one system.

The current Australian foreign minister (and one can understand why we need reminding) is Marise Payne, who spectacularly served her nation as a senator since 1997 (appointed, not elected, and has held the human services, defence and women’s portfolios without perceptible impact, offered an even more anodyne comment.

“Australia supports the right of people to protest peacefully and to exercise their freedom of speech, and we urge all sides to show restraint and avoid violence,” she said.

The AFL condemns rowdy barrackers with harsher language.

Her statement is on a par with Neville Chamberlain’s infamous dismissal of the Nazis invasion of Czechoslavakia “how horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing”.

Mourners stop by a makeshift memorial for the man. Picture: Kin Cheung

Mr Carr and former Labor prime minister Paul Keating have long been regarded as eager promoters of China no matter what evidence produced of Beijing’s hugely ambitious expansionist agenda.

Under the auspices of the global development program formerly known as One Belt, One Road — the “One” proved problematic as it too easily indicated the Chinese domination of the initiative and has been dropped — China has invested billions in more than 150 countries and international programs in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, the Americas and Oceania.

On the oceans, the newly rebranded Belt and Road program is known as the Maritime Silk Road and all is to come together in 2049, the centenary of the PRC.

Poverty-stricken nations are now stuck in a horrendous debt trap and Australia has fallen for the honey trap with the utterly stupefying 2015 decision to give the Chinese Shandong Landbridge Group a 99-year lease on the Port of Darwin for $506 million — all now spent by the Northern Territory government leaving it still bankrupt but hosting a major threat to national security.

In 2017, the Turnbull government rejected an overture from China to join the Belt and Road project but not that unsurprisingly, the aberrant government of the Victorian Socialist Peoples Republic signed a secret Memorandum of Understanding with the Chinese — launching its own foreign policy initiative in contravention of the Constitution.

Piers Akerman.

Bob Carr. Picture: John Feder

One person who has been keeping a close eye on the Chinese is Clive Hamilton, who started the Left-aligned Australia Institute, and who — aside from figures in the national security sector — has been the most vocal critic of the totalitarian state.

Mr Hamilton published a detailed account of China’s intrusion into the Australian economy, its deployment of agents through the corps of Chinese students enrolled at Australian universities, the control it maintains over Chinese-Australians through threats to their relatives in their homeland, and the Chinese government’s ties to Australian politicians.

Former Senator Sam Dastyari, who received financial assistance from Chinese sources, was not the only one to enjoy yum cha with Chinese backers.

Mr Hamilton’s book Silent Invasion, Chinese Influence In Australia, should be compulsory reading for all interested in national security.

Interestingly, at the memorial celebration for the brilliant long-serving director of the NSW Art Gallery, Edmund Capon, a noted scholar of all Asian art, but particularly Chinese works, Mr Carr remarked that Mr Capon’s appreciation of the book was somewhat misguided.

I disagree. It is the last book Mr Capon gave me but I treasure it also for the light it shines on China’s appalling behaviour.

The people of Hong Kong are closer to the beast but even from this distance we should recognise the monstrous abuses routinely carried out by this totalitarian thug.