Andrew Bolt: Australia must prepare for war against China
China’s attack on Australian journalists is about more than a dictatorship’s hatred of free speech. It’s about blackmail, and every Australian is now a potential pawn, which is why we must prepare for war, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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It’s a warning to us all. Even under Mao Zedong, the world’s worst mass murderer, China was safe enough for Australian journalists to work in Beijing.
No longer. Not under President-for-life Xi Jinping. On Tuesday, Australia’s last two accredited foreign correspondents fled China for fear of being the latest foreigners to be “disappeared”.
ABC reporter Bill Birtles and Financial Review correspondent Michael Smith fled to Australia after Chinese state security officers grilled them in their homes and threatened to detain them.
They got out only after several days of hiding with our diplomats, and high-level negotiations to let them leave.
Both were investigated over their alleged ties to another Australian journalist, Cheng Lei, a host on Chinese television, who was arrested as an alleged threat to national security after criticising the dictatorship’s handling of the coronavirus.
They were lucky to get out. Cheng remains in China, a prisoner for the past month. Another Australian, Yang Hengjun, a writer and democracy activist, has been held for 20 months, also as an alleged security threat.
But this is about far more than a dictatorship’s hatred of free speech. This is about blackmail, and every Australian is now a potential pawn.
That’s why Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne on Tuesday again warned: do not travel to China. It now arbitrarily arrests foreigners as spies or threats.
What Payne means, but dares not say, is that China now arrests foreigners to use as hostages or to send a warning, to frighten Australians into silence or surrender.
It’s happening to other countries, too. China arrested two Canadian businessmen and accused them of spying to punish Canada for arresting an executive of Chinese-owned Huawei.
Meanwhile, it’s threatening Japan, India, Vietnam, the US, Taiwan, the Philippines and even nice New Zealand.
For a superpower to act so openly like a mafia with nuclear bombs is more frightening than the coronavirus.
Xi seems to neither fear war nor want to avoid one, either because he’s mad with nationalism or feels so threatened by internal enemies that he needs to rally the Chinese people to the flag — and him.
Ominously, he urged his military in May to “prepare for war”.
That’s good advice for Australia.
We must arm ourselves and seek alliances with all the countries China now threatens.
By preparing for war, we may hope to prevent one.