Just when you thought nothing could be more complex and demanding than our China challenge over the past decade, we have a whole new set of Beijing conundrums.
First the good news. Beijing clearly wants some kind of rapprochement with the Albanese government. This should be seen in the light of Beijing’s more general move towards public sweetness and light.
At the Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum. China’s Vice-Premier, Liu He, made a speech embracing economic liberalisation, the primacy of markets, globalisation, a diminished role for government, free trade and everything else the Davos crowd likes. That this came at Davos ought itself alert us, for Davos is proverbially a field of fantasy.
Almost every big thing that emerges from Davos turns out to wrong or dishonest in some way. It’s an iron rule of Southeast Asian politics that anyone who tells you straight off what a big hit they were at Davos is of no consequence back home.
But I digress. Liu’s speech was a complete reversal of everything Beijing has done over the past decade. How to explain this contradiction? Either the Chinese Communist Party has decided Xi Jinping’s entire policy course was a mistake, which would certainly be a turn-up for the books, or Liu was having a bit of a lend of us, telling Davos what it wants to hear, while engaging in a strategic communication with geopolitical motives.
Plainly, Beijing has decided to change the way it markets itself and mostly eliminate the “wolf warrior” style. No doubt there is some real policy adjustment involved. But it’s extremely unlikely we can take Liu’s words at face value and assume a complete reversal of the characteristic Xi approach.
The proof will be in the pudding, of course; what Beijing actually does. But there are three quite specific ways the new configuration could hurt Australia.
The first arises if Beijing charms us, but we, rightly, refuse to accommodate Beijing by giving in on the issues of substance it has against us. If Beijing’s new attitude is real, that is, if Liu’s speech is to be believed rather than Xi’s decade of hyper-assertiveness, then Beijing would soon release the Australian citizens it’s holding on trumped-up charges and abandon the trade restrictions imposed on us. More widely, it would stop its military harassment of Taiwan and Japan and even sometimes US forces, plus its similar harassment of Southeast Asian navies in territories it has illegally claimed and occupied in the South China Sea, stop its cyber attacks on government and commercial institutions, stop its interference in the domestic politics of other nations, and ease up on the suppression of Uighurs, human rights lawyers, democracy activists in Hong Kong, Christians and other persecuted groups.
If it doesn’t do all these things and more, then Beijing’s policy reversal is not real. Suspecting that such deception might be its intent isn’t paranoid or unreasonable. Beijing has a lot of form saying one thing and doing another. In 2017 Xi, presenting himself as an alternative global leader to Donald Trump, regaled Davos with his support for free trade even as Beijing was greatly tightening state control over its economy. Xi also famously promised Barack Obama that China would never militarise the South China Sea, but has done exactly that. Xi even once declared to Tony Abbott that he was committed to making China fully a democracy.
Here is the specific danger for Australia. Beijing has been surprised that both conservative and Labor governments have defied it on issues of substance and importance – banning Huawei from 5G, stopping political interference, preventing Chinese investment in Australian critical infrastructure, refusing an extradition treaty, continuing to speak up for Hong Kong democrats, Uighurs and so on. The shrewdest heads in Canberra consider that if, after a Beijing charm offensive, Canberra continues, as it should, with these policies, then there will be new rounds of punishment dished out to us.
Danger number two for Australia is the reverse of danger one, and that is that we might succumb to Beijing’s turn to seduction. Xi’s decade in office has certainly seen Beijing’s posture become much more assertive. But in truth Xi is giving expression to the genuine personality of the CCP. It always planned to take Taiwan by force. It always had unreasonable territorial ambitions in the South China Sea. It always engaged in political interference. It always required that Western companies that invested in China ultimately surrender their intellectual property. It was always North Korea’s best friend, and so on.
But over the past four or five years, Beijing has done the world, and specifically Australia, one specific service. It has settled the debate about whether it was a strategic competitor, and indeed a strategic challenge, to the US and its allies.
This has led to a belated increase in defence spending in Australia, a belated effort to provide better cyber security and a raft of other measures. Will we sustain these necessary, and so far barely minimal, efforts, if Beijing itself is not constantly reminding the public of the underlying power realities?
The Albanese government is absolutely right to try to stabilise the China relationship and get it back on a more professional basis. Nor has the Albanese government compromised a single Australian national interest. But remember this, after a decade of Coalition government we still had not got up even to the measly 2 per cent of GDP on defence spending. We still took almost no serious effort on fuel security. When Beijing was talking sweetly before, even the Americans often ignored reality. Obama went soft on the South China Sea in pursuit of chimerical Chinese co-operation on climate change.
Beijing is very good at those games. For Australia to maintain tough-minded and necessary policy, in an environment when businesses, universities and so on will be wanting a return to the good old days, and when honestly explaining strategic reality to the Australian people will seem needlessly provocative, will be quite a challenge.
And finally, danger three, what authors Hal Brands and Michael Beckley describe as the “peaking power trap”.
China’s population is now declining and India is the most populous nation. This year China scored 3 per cent economic growth. The old idea that China would grow forever more powerful is almost certainly wrong.
The temptation for Beijing to try to invade Taiwan soon, because it fears its moment of peak power may pass in the next decade or so, will be very strong. An eminent strategic greybeard recently told me the most likely time for China to invade Taiwan is next year, and that would be the case every year for the next 15 years, but after that, never.
We have an interesting decade ahead.
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