Post-COVID, we must radically rethink our relationship with China
Once coronavirus is under control, countries around the world will be forced to analyse their once chummy relationships with China, no matter how uncomfortable the truth, writes Peta Credlin.
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A few years back, in the Prime Minister’s office, I picked up a call from a leading Australian businessman who spoke to me in terms that would make a shearer blush, as my Dad would say.
Then came another, and a third; a co-ordinated attack from gutless individuals who didn’t want to tarnish their credentials with the man in the big chair, so they vented their spleen at his Chief of Staff.
And the reason was instructive because it came off the back of comments the PM had made, while recognising the extraordinary achievements of the Chinese government in lifting hundreds of millions of their people out of poverty, he spoke of the security challenge that an ever stronger China would pose for nations like Australia, and it’s threat to the world order.
It wasn’t that the Prime Minister was wrong; at the time, the best experts backed in his view and since then, events have shown he was right. Instead, what was illuminating was the reaction of these businessman to any fair criticism of China, and it taught me a valuable lesson that’s stayed with me today.
It taught me that big business is a fickle friend to the centre right of politics, and moneyed men are often weakly obsequiousness to anything that’s made them rich, regardless of the cost to their character, or their country.
During the week, I interviewed the former leader of the UK’s Conservative Party, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, off the back of some recent comments he made arguing that Britain, and countries like Australia too, must radically rethink their relationship with China coming out of this coronavirus crisis.
‘Project Kow Tow’ is how he describes the way too many leaders of western countries treat China as their master. Of course, the UK has its own serious challenge to redress the agreement by Boris Johnson to allow Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei to build parts of their new 5G network. You’ve got to think if the decision was being made now, it would never be agreed; and any of us who value freedom should hope they unwind it as quickly as they can.
But of course, it’s not just the leaders of countries who must rethink the way they engage in China, where taking the money, like my businessmen a little earlier, silences any fair criticism. It’s also the myriad of global bodies that we sign up to, spend billions funding, and which then fail to do precisely what they were set up to do. Like the World Health Organisation that’s spent months apologising for China, and indeed deliberately working against proper containment of this virus, for fear of upsetting the cash cow that funds it, and coincidentally, pours many millions into the homeland of the current WHO head.
(And Victoria too, via the secret ‘Belt and Road’ deal signed by Premier Daniel Andrews and the Chinese government, of which very few details have ever been made public).
Out of the coronavirus mess, there will be no end of lessons to learn. How we deal with China in a more self-respecting way should be number one and it will require a lot of soul-searching for our political parties on the left and the right. Look at Labor’s record, particularly in NSW, where even today, comments by NSW Upper House MP, Shaoquett Moselmane in praise of President Xi’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis (while demanding his own leader, Scott Morrison do better), show once again how far Labor have fallen into the clutches of China. We saw all of this with disgraced former senator Sam Dastyari, and yet Moselmane remains in parliament having had nine or so privately funded trips to China, a communist-trained staffer on his books. Opposition Leader Jodie McKay might mouth criticism, but her lack of action against Moselmane merely amplifies her weakness.
Now don’t get me wrong. I have a lot of admiration for what Chinese people have achieved in places where they can be free: in Taiwan, in Hong Kong (although that’s under threat), in Singapore – and here in Australia, where many Chinese Australians have succeeded magnificently.
But as this crisis has made clear, the last thing we can afford is ongoing and increasing dependence on China.
Our universities, for instance, for whom Chinese students have become a virtual-drug-of-addiction, can never be the same again, taking the dollars for their pro-China institutes and pushing students through, just for income. Our resource industries must be encouraged to diversify, so too our tourism sector and we’ve got to call an end to visas, for investment cash, which is nothing short of selling our freedom.
Hopefully, out of this crisis, we will all demand an end to globalism trumping Australia’s national interest. And a serious realisation as to China’s security, and economic, end game. Credit here to the Treasurer Josh Frydenberg for suspending the current rules around Foreign Investment Approvals so that foreign buyers can’t move in like vultures to acquire distressed Australian assets but that can’t be a stopgap measure.
Right across the board, we must radically reshape how we engage and do business, in a post-coronavirus Australia.