China insists: Dance to our tune

China’s determination to impose its world view on other nations, including Australia, was clear when Zhao Leji, the third-ranking member of Xi Jinping’s politburo, met Senate president Sue Lines in Beijing on Monday. While noting that bilateral relations had improved, Mr Zhao added a telling caveat: Australia needed to maintain the “right perception” and respect “China’s core interests and major concerns”, North Asia correspondent Will Glasgow reported. But Australia respecting those interests surely depends on this nation’s security interests, a point that does not appear to figure prominently on the radar of the Chinese politburo.

Mr Zhao was speaking as the People’s Liberation Army was encircling Taiwan to intimidate its democratically elected government by practising combat readiness patrols, blockading ports and assaulting maritime and ground targets. The juxtaposition showed the superpower’s disdain for the concerns and opinions of other nations.

That one-sided view of the region was also clear in Glasgow’s exclusive interview with Zhou Bo, a retired senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army Air Force. In relation to the PLA blasting a ballistic missile over the Pacific for the first time in 44 years recently, just hours before Jim Chalmers arrived in Beijing, Mr Zhou was dismissive: “China would not give a damn about how Australia thinks about this because we are definitely not launching this because of Australia.” While Canberra, as it should, continues to voice concern about Beijing’s behaviour towards Taiwan and in the South and East China seas, China, Glasgow reported, casts Australia as a trouble­maker acting on behalf of the US and not showing appropriate respect to its biggest export customer. Canberra’s posture was an increasing concern for China, Mr Zhou said.

China appears to resent Australia boosting security by working with its allies. “It’s very simple: the Quad is because of China, while AUKUS is against China,” Mr Zhou said. While emphasising there was no reason China would threaten Australia, he made it clear “in terms of China’s military capabilities, now we can easily reach Australia”. His outlook appears to confirm what Australian ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd writes in his new book, On Xi Jinping. Mr Xi’s objective, Dr Rudd writes, is to “change the international order itself, underpinned by an increasingly powerful China as the emerging geopolitical and geo-economic fulcrum of that order”. The book’s sobering argument, that Australia should not be lulled into a false sense of security given the current normalisation of ties, should be studied and absorbed by both the government and the opposition.