James Morrow: China’s lies and threats mean they are responsible for improving relations with us
After lies, evasions, and threats it’s up to China — not Canberra — to improve relations with us and the world, writes James Morrow.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Scientists linked to COVID probe studied live bats in Australia
- China threat ‘inappropriate’: trade minister
If the world stage were a schoolyard, China would be the oafish bully monstering smaller kids for their lunch money — and threatening payback if the teachers found out.
And if Australia’s relationship with Beijing were taking place within the four walls of a suburban house rather than in the international arena, all our friends would be offering us a place to stay.
While it might horrify diplomats and exporters to hear this, the fact is we are rapidly approaching the point where Australia needs to acknowledge that China, at least as represented by the secretive, belligerent, and thin-skinned Chinese Communist Party, is not our friend.
Because while our relationship with the Chinese communist regime has always been, to use a Facebook term, complicated, the past three months have shown us just how fundamentally broken it is.
Even before Beijing undertook a comprehensive program to cover up the coronavirus and its origins — while still allowing international flights to spread it around the globe — our dealings with China were one-sided.
When last year the media raised the alarm of possible Chinese attempts to hack into Australian computer systems and MPs criticised China’s aggression in the South China Sea, Beijing responded by putting the brakes on our coal clearing Chinese customs, using a variety of sort of plausible but really pretty spurious excuses to hold up the ships.
MORE RELATED OPINION
Tim Blair: Dispatches from inside the Aldi bag at the Chinese consulate
Jame’s Morrow: China’s information warfare extends far beyond coronavirus
James Morrow: China uses crisis to tighten grip on South China Sea
Although it was masked behind confused messages around needing to “test” coal more rigorously, no one watching was under the illusion that this was the behaviour of a bully: Let us do what we want, don’t complain, or you’ll get hurt.
This was just a prologue for Beijing’s current modus operandi which consists of allowing a deadly pandemic to be unleashed upon the world, covering up its origins, gaslighting those who raise questions, and threatening economic harm — or worse — against those who press the point.
And to date, all efforts to find out exactly what happened in Wuhan have been met by threats, bluster, and distractions.
In response to a bipartisan effort to push Beijing to allow an independent inquiry into the virus, China’s ambassador to Australia this week threatened us with a consumer boycott — the latest in a bizarre campaign to derail discussions of COVID-19’s origins.
In March, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, suggested that rather than a wet market or lab accident, the virus may have been spread by US Army athletes who were in Wuhan for an international military athletics competition.
And just last week another foreign ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, further tried to distract from China’s culpability, saying, “AIDS was first discovered in the US in the 1980s and spread to the world, causing great agony for the world, has anyone held the US accountable?”
Whatever you say, comrade.
Of course, had they been more transparent, thousands of lives could have been saved and the global economy might still be upright.
According to researchers at the University of Southampton in the UK, had Beijing been transparent about what was going on the spread of the coronavirus could have been reduced by 95 per cent now adds insult to injury.
Yet when doctors at two separate hospitals in Wuhan raised the alarm about a new virus jumping from human to human with the Chinese Centre for Disease Control in late December, their findings were squashed.
And, by the way, it’s worth noting that it’s not just with Australia that China is trying it on.
Recent months have seen Beijing raise the temperature in the disputed South China Sea, attempt to censor an EU report into the coronavirus, and seemingly co-opt the World Health Organisation.
All of which suggests that far from feeling strong and empowered, China — and particularly its leader, Xi Jinping — is feeling the pressure. Surely a truly confident nation with superpower aspirations would welcome the truth and the chance to make amends.
In the meantime, in Australia, all of us from policy makers to citizens and consumers will have to ditch the globalist ethic that saw our manufacturing jobs shipped overseas for shiny baubles and service industry jobs.
Growth will have to be powered by reform and productivity and finding new industries in which to excel, rather than simply migration and selling raw materials for cheap consumer goods.
Our companies and corporate executives will, too, have to reorient themselves and remember they have obligations not just to shareholders, but Australians.
Everyone will need to be more sceptical about China — which includes our national broadcaster, the ABC, and anyone else who broadcasts Beijing’s coronavirus numbers as fact.
Even local councils — I’m looking at you, Wagga Wagga — shouldn’t let themselves be cowed or bullied into propagandist “sister city” or other “friendship” arrangements.
Likewise politicians like Victoria’s Dan Andrews shouldn’t be allowed to freelance negotiations with China’s Belt and Road.
Importantly, none of this should reflect poorly on Australians of Chinese heritage, many of whom were among the very first to start self-isolating and practising social distancing in Australia.
Many of these Australians know too well, first-hand, the evil that occurs in the name of the Communist Party.
Australians may have to endure some ongoing economic pain while this shift occurs, but the alternative — selling our independence slowly on the promise of foreign cash — would be far worse.