No one annoyed China’s leadership more than Julie Bishop

China looks at Australia as a rich trading partner with dumb leadership and no one annoyed it more than Julie Bishop.

In 2017 Julie Bishop said China was not fit for regional leadership. Picture: Kym Smith

It’s an eerie coincidence that former foreign minister Julie Bishop announced her resignation from parliament in the same week that a ban on Australian coal shipments to China sent the Australian dollar plummeting.

It’s really important that Australia understands how during the time Julie Bishop was foreign minister China became very angry with Australia and decided to “rap us over the knuckles”.

Once people at lower levels in China got the message that Australia had fallen out with China’s leaders, it was understandable that Australia would be hit hardest when the leadership began urging curbs on coal imports.

And that’s exactly what happened. If the Vale Brazilian tailings dam had not collapsed the same thing might have happened in iron ore. But China will redouble its iron ore drive in Africa.

As I pointed out earlier this month, before the current crisis erupted, all too often Australian ministers and government officials have really annoyed the Chinese by lecturing the leaders they meet, even making China critical public statements in China.

And no one annoyed the Chinese more than Julie Bishop. In Singapore in 2017, she went out on a limb on the South China Sea issue and said that China was not fit for regional leadership. She was never again invited to visit China but met with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi in an unofficial meeting on sidelines at last year’s Argentina G20. The Chinese were blunt after the meeting and said they had told Julie Bishop that: “due to the Australian side, China-Australia relations have encountered some difficulties recently, and the exchanges and co-operation between the two countries have also been affected. This is not what China hopes to see”.

Those harsh words were already backed with actions to show Australia just how dependent we have become on the country we were lecturing.

The “knuckle rapping” program covers a wide area. Our universities would see a softness in Chinese enrolments during 2019. The Chinese had planned to boost student numbers in Canada. The arrest of Huawei’s CFO is causing second thoughts.

Student demand for apartment rentals — vital to the income of those owning inner city apartments — has not been affected but the student softness would not want to escalate.

Large Chinese apartment developers have been told to sell their big land holdings. But, so far, they’ve not been willing to accept the big losses that would be crystallised by selling in this market.

Then to agriculture. Argentina’s beef exports to China went close to doubling in 2018.

China is now looking much more closely at Europe for high quality vegetable and other agricultural products and that will be boosted by the Belt and Road Initiative. Just where our bans on Huawei lead us is still to be determined

Last year a number of ships carrying Australian coal to parts of China found it difficult to get a berth. It was a small step for a temporary ban to be imposed.

Despite the trade war, relations between the US and China are far better than between Australia and China. Indeed, this week President Trump went us of his way to praise Chinese President Xi Jiping for his role in bringing about the Hanoi talks with North Korea.

As I understand it the China looks at Australia as a rich trading partner with dumb leadership. We make strong statements about the South China Sea, not understanding that the failure of the US to deliver the F35 Joint Strike Fighter’s objectives means that American air superiority relies on the F22, which is no longer in production and is ageing in service.

The current Chinese J20 is clearly superior to the JSF, but the new version will almost certainly be better than the F22 which means the US will no longer have air superiority in the region. And without the F22 Australian air power will later in the decade be inferior to Indonesia and the Indonesians will have a modern submarine fleet, whereas we will have ageing submarines. We might get a submarine worth having in 2040 after outlaying $90 billion. The Chinese are too polite to lecture Australia but a complete examination of Australia’s foreign relations with China is required.

It is made easier now that Julie Bishop is leaving the parliament but almost certainly there will be people in foreign affairs who do not understand what has happened and why it has happened.

China has the ability to trash our tertiary education system, our student apartment rental market, our agriculture and our mining. Any blows we could land on China in retaliation would be minor. We made ourselves dependent on China by destroying our industrial base. And we have no emergency oil reserves party because we decimated our refining capacity. Bill Shorten is right to raise the question of a fleet of Australian carriers but there is a lot more to do including repairing the Australian China relationship.