Democracies must unite against Chinese bullying

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s warning that “if the free world doesn’t change China, Communist China will surely change us” has provided a stark backdrop to Tuesday’s AUSMIN consultation in Washington. It will be the 30th such meeting since AUSMIN’s establishment in 1985. The strength of the Australia-US alliance was clear on Saturday when Australia backed Washington in formally declaring Chinese claims in the South China Sea inconsistent with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and therefore illegal. The move provoked a predictably hysterical response from the communist regime’s maverick Global Times newspaper. It warned about “reckless provocations” and claimed sanctions on Australian beef and wine exports could follow.

As Mr Pompeo and US Defence Secretary Mark Esper meet Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Defence Minister Linda Reynolds, there can be no disguising the challenges confronting both nations, and other democracies, especially in our region. Speaking at the Richard Nixon Library in California last week, Mr Pompeo declared “if we bend the knee now, our children’s children may be at the mercy of the Chinese Communist Party”.

Recalling Mr Nixon’s historic 1972 trip, which opened China to the world and enabled it to become a global economic force, Mr Pompeo lamented: “The kind of engagement we have been pursuing (with China) has not brought the kind of change in China President Nixon hoped to induce. The truth is that our policies — and those of other free nations — resurrected China’s failing economy, only to see Beijing bite the international hands that fed it.”

China, Mr Pompeo said, took advantage of the opening to “lie, cheat and steal their way to power and prosperity”. He called for a coalition of democratic nations to force Beijing to change direction or face isolation, saying: “Western engagement with China cannot continue as it has.” With Donald Trump struggling in the polls, critics regard Mr Pompeo’s forthright arguments as an attempt to whip up the President’s populist base. Regardless of whether that was his intention, Mr Pompeo was on the right track given the belligerence of Beijing’s rulers.

At no time since recognising China has a US president concluded there was a need to shut down a Chinese diplomatic establishment. Mr Trump did so last week when he closed the Chinese consulate in Houston amid charges of Chinese officials stealing medical research and spying. A senior US intelligence official disclosed that the FBI is investigating 2000 active counterintelligence cases involving Chinese espionage.

There is plenty of evidence of Chinese aggression: threats of dire recriminations against the UK for the decision to get Huawei out of Britain’s 5G network and providing a refuge for Hong Kong residents fleeing Chinese oppression; in the Himalayas, Chinese forces have been attacking Indian troops; and as five Australian warships led by HMAS Canberra sailed through the South China Sea last week to join naval exercises with the US and Japan, satellite imagery showed Beijing deploying warplanes on disputed islands it claims.

A key issue for Australia, as Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings said on Monday, is whether Australian warships should engage in freedom of navigation operations within the 20km limit of the disputed land China claims.

Last week, Mr Pompeo blamed the global consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the way the WHO head, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had been “hook, line and sinker bought by the Chinese government”. Yet the CCP’s preoccupation is not with the global scourge caused by the virus but with Australia’s reasonable and globally supported call for an inquiry.

In The Weekend Australian, contributing national security editor Alan Dupont pointed out it is not just democracies that have become targets for Chinese bellicosity. Even “fraternal Vietnam and the accommodating Philippines” have not been spared Beijing’s bullying and intimidation.

The risks in confronting Chinese aggression are significant. Efforts must be stepped up to convince Beijing that the policies being pursued by Xi Jinping will ultimately do immense damage to China. No one wants a military showdown. But Beijing cannot be allowed to dictate the terms of its engagement with a global system it seeks to destroy.