Beijing sets out demands, again

China’s ambassador to Australia has made the case for Anthony Albanese to back the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, commit to continued funding of its Washington office and drop a recent report’s recommendations for governance change. As Ben Packham reports in The Weekend Australian, ambassador Xiao Qian also links the resumption of lobster exports to China, part of a “full turnaround” in relations, to correcting “misunderstandings” among Australians who do not get that Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic. Plus Australia should stay out of the South China Sea, which Beijing claims as its own but neighbouring nations correctly view as international waters. And lest anyone miss the point, the ambassador accused ASPI of encouraging “negative views”. As stated, this ensemble of assertions sets out a transactional give-and-take approach to diplomacy: Canberra gives what China wants on foreign policy priorities and Beijing will take Australian products.

As diplomatic own goals go, this is hard to beat. The Albanese government is consistent in stating the South China Sea is subject to international law and opposing any unilateral change to Taiwan’s existing autonomy. But even if our government considered kowtowing to Beijing’s demands it would be politically impossible – a mid-year Lowy Institute poll found 70 per cent of the survey sample thought the risk of China being a military threat to Australia in the next 20 years ranged from “somewhat” to “very likely”. There are reasons for that; China’s routine demands that the world accept its authority over Taiwan, regardless of what the Taiwanese want, are hard to miss. So is China’s refusal to accept freedom of the seas, by harassing ships and aircraft of other nations – including Australia – in international waters. And China’s generosity to the Solomon Islands government includes a permanent PRC police presence – which appears to be why the Australian government delivered a $190m Christmas gift for policing resources to the Solomons. Friends of Beijing argue its Oceania aid effort is all about excluding Taiwan, and China’s dollar diplomacy in our region is no threat to Australian security. But as ASPI pointed out in 2023, Pacific Islands nations are all but undefended and sit between us and the US. It is the sort of ASPI analysis that annoys Beijing. According to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, public funding for the institute was one of China’s 14 gripes with the Morrison government in 2020.

A report by Peter Varghese, a former director-general of the Office of National Assessments and a former secretary of DFAT, and now chancellor of the University of Queensland, has called for changes to ASPI’s governance structure so it “remains genuinely independent and nonpartisan”. That will mean different things in Beijing and Canberra. Mr Varghese also calls for the closure of ASPI’s Washington office. “Influencing US policy should be left to the Australian government … having ASPI freelance in this area only muddies the waters,” he states. This will seem strange in Washington but it will make deep sense in Beijing. Mr Varghese’s undoubted intent is not to stifle debate but it may well have already encouraged Mr Xiao to try.