China expresses regret that Australia is taking tariff feud to trade watchdog

Beijing: China has expressed regret that Australia is appealing to the World Trade Organisation over the superpower’s barley tariffs, insisting they will cooperate with the international watchdog’s dispute resolution rules.

While China’s ministerial spokespeople have come out swinging in previous briefings, attacking Australia directly, the response to the official complaint was cautious and neutral.

Barley is at the centre of an Australia-China trade war.Credit: Bloomberg

China has always carried out trade remedies consistent with WTO rules, commerce ministry spokesman Gao Feng said on Thursday night, adding that the CCP would handle Australia’s request for consultation in line with WTO dispute settlement procedures.

This comes as Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg warned at the mid-year economic and fiscal update that trade tensions that limit Australia’s access to international export markets could lead to higher household savings and lower consumption levels.

“The global outlook remains challenging as COVID-19 outbreaks and containment measures continue and trade tensions continue to affect Australia’s exports,” he noted in his MYEFO press statement.

China’s volley of bans and tariffs on Australian goods has drawn widespread condemnation from politicians and government officials around the world.

On Thursday morning (AEDT), Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton warned that the way China is treating Australia is a “sign of things to come” for the rest of the world.

Bolton was speaking to the Henry Jackson Society, a Westminster think tank that takes a hawkish line on China.

Describing China as "the existential international affairs question for all of us for the 21st century", Bolton was asked by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age how the West could respond to China's increasing economic and diplomatic aggression toward Australia.

Former US national security adviser John Bolton.Credit: AP

“The way China has treated Australia has been a clear effort to intimidate them and, by brute force, get them to back away,” Bolton said in reference to Australia’s calls for an inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

China was trying to separate Australia from its strategic ally the United States, just as it had attempted to do with Canada when it detained the two Michaels more than two years ago following the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver, Bolton said. Meng had been detained at the request of the United States.

“It was obviously intended to split Canada from the United States, to split Australia from the United States,” he said.

"This is the way China behaves now. How are they going to behave when they become more powerful? This is a sign of things to come."

He said the West should be emulating China and producing a long-term strategy exploiting Beijing's dependence on energy.

He apologised for the Trump administration’s failure to make enough progress on this work and agreed that President-elect Joe Biden was better suited to the task.

“I think Trump was congenitally unable to do that sort of coalition building. I think Biden is probably better at it,” Bolton said.

“We’ve got to act now, we can’t really waste any more time. It’s an opportunity for Biden, but it’s a big test for him too.”

China has hit Australia with huge tariffs on barley and wine, banned coal imports and stopped lobster imports from Australia since Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

Embassy officials in Canberra produced a list of 14 grievances they gave to Nine journalists that they said were the reason the bilateral relationship had broken down. At the same time, Chinese officials have refused to accept phone calls from the Australian government.

The 14-point list included Australia’s world-leading Huawei ban, which Bolton said the West was grateful to Australia and New Zealand for as they were the first to identify the threat the Chinese firm could pose to 5G networks.

The World Health Organisation has started investigations into the source of the virus, which emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan, but Bolton said he doubted the truth would ever be known because of Beijing’s cover-up.

Bolton backed the idea of demanding China pay for some of the trillions of dollars in costs incurred by governments in trying to fight the virus, possibly by funding some of the cost of vaccinating the world's population.

Bolton, a Republican who fell out with Trump after a year-and-a-half as his national security adviser, has a reputation not just for his hawkish foreign policy views but also for his willingness to speak frankly about the shortcomings of the President he served.

with Reuters

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