Xi Jinping, visiting Moscow, has talked up his unconditional support for fellow dictator Vladimir Putin. For Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews to visit China at just such a time, to send, in his own words, “a clear message that we value the partnership” is, to say the least, breathtaking.
In the context of vigorous national debates over our growing concerns about the ambitions of Xi’s China, this provincial Australian political figure declares he will hold back-to-back meetings with senior Chinese Ministry of Education officials in Beijing and with provincial officials in Jiangsu and Sichuan in the hope of forging strong relationships.
AUKUS has been created and a nuclear-powered submarines deal inked, but the unabashed Premier intends to lock down amity with the Chinese authorities and to demonstrate, he declares, “that Melbourne is open, Victoria is open, and that the Chinese economy and the Chinese community is very important to us because they are important to our future”.
During his last visit to China, in October 2019, he signed up Victoria to Xi’s imperial Belt and Road Initiative. That already seemed so questionable from a national interest point of view that the Morrison government passed legislation allowing the federal government to override and cancel deals between state governments and foreign powers, starting with Dan’s deal.
Undeterred, he is at it again. It seems Beijing’s systematic anti-transparency about the origins of Covid-19, its militarisation of the South China Sea, its economic sanctions on Australia, its detention of Australian nationals, its repression of the Xinjiang Uighurs, its open declaration of its hegemonic designs in Asia and its intention to create a “new world order” and Xi’s embrace of Putin have done nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of Andrews for amity with Beijing.
He says his four-day trip is not one being made “to sign deals”, just to hold back-to-back meetings. But it’s not clear with whom those meetings will be held. We could do with more transparency. The fact there will be no other state ministers going with him, no business people and no media makes this all the more important. Who, exactly, is he meeting and what will be the content of those meetings?
One might hope he has found the time in his busy schedule to read Alex Joske’s Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World, or at least arranged for Jeremi Moule (his secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet) to read it closely and brief him on its sobering lessons. At a little more than 200 pages, it could be read on the flight to Beijing. He would learn more from it than from anything his interlocutors in China will say to him.
He has stated that the context for his visit is what he calls the importance of “Chinese influence in Victoria going back 150 years”. If by Chinese influence he means the Chinese cultural, linguistic and ethnic presence in Victoria, he is on firm ground. The influence of, and interference by, the Chinese Communist Party is another matter. He appears unable to draw a distinction.
Australia’s leading specialist on our Chinese community, John Fitzgerald, edited a highly valuable monograph last year, Taking the Low Road: China’s Influence in Australia’s States and Territories, exploring the nature and extent of People’s Republic of China influence and interference in our states and territories. It’s far from clear that Andrews has acquainted himself with its findings. What is the Premier’s agenda other than reassuring the cadres of the Communist Party state apparatus that we, in Victoria, “value the partnership”? They will be from its Ministry of Education and, to a certainty, from its Ministry of State Security. They will wine and dine him, flatter him for his “open-mindedness” and lament the obtuseness of those in Australia who see the Xi regime as a threat.
His avowed aim is “making sure we have as many students coming to Melbourne as possible”, though he is taking no vice-chancellors with him. What of the abundant evidence that Confucius Institutes on Australian campuses were set up as centres for the propagation of CCP ideology and that Chinese consulates around the country monitor and at times mobilise Chinese students for political purposes? As many as possible? On what terms, precisely?
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this pilgrimage to Xi’s China by the Victorian Premier is that it takes place not under a Coalition government that various people to the left of centre criticised for its robust stance on China but under a federal Labor government that has conducted itself with clarity and steadiness in dealing with Beijing on realistic terms.
Given all these considerations, the Premier’s exclusion of the Australian media from his meetings is one of the most disturbing aspects of this dubious venture. Will Chinese media also be excluded or is it only the free press that is to be denied coverage of these back-to-back meetings and their agendas?
How will the visit be covered in the media organs of the dictatorship? What statements will the man with an out-size media unit in Melbourne make to the media in China? That will most certainly warrant close scrutiny.
Paul Monk is author of Thunder From the Silent Zone: Rethinking China.
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