Editorial
Xi’s pitch abounded with irony
Taken at face value, it would be hard to disagree with a lot of what Chinese President Xi Jinping told the World Economic Forum in Davos by video link on Monday: “The strong should not bully the weak.” Peace and stability depended on “international law and international rules”. Differences should be bridged “through dialogue”; disputes resolved “through negotiation”. “Selective multilateralism” should not be our option. “Equal rights, equal opportunities and equal rules should be strengthened” is something few would argue against. But, we would ask, does such equality extend to China’s oppressed Uighur minority? On trade, Mr Xi said supply chains must not be blocked; an open world economy depended on taking down trade barriers. Australians smarting from China’s relentless pounding in the past couple of years can only wonder if they heard Mr Xi right, Rowan Callick writes.
We have heard him loud and clear, which is why we recognise the brazen duplicity in a performance designed to bolster China’s standing in multilateral forums and pander to the sensibilities of WEF participants as they promote the “great reset” launched at last year’s forum by founder Klaus Schwab and Prince Charles. After the recent transition of power in the US, Mr Xi was intent on asserting China’s role as a world leader. As if on cue, Chinese state media described the speech as a “stern repudiation … clearly aimed at policies orchestrated by the US government”. At Davos four years ago, days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, Mr Xi won applause for defending globalisation. He presented himself as its leader and protector. On Monday he pursued similar themes, interspersed with buzz phrases synonymous with the forum — green development, global governance, consensus building.
But when he briefly steered off his charm offensive, Mr Xi did not hide his hostility towards those who would “build small circles or start a new cold war”. The “small circles” comprise democratic countries now aligning more closely as China advances, including the US-Australia-India-Japan Quad. In this, Callick writes, Mr Xi is striking at Joe Biden’s core shift in foreign policy to revive US alliances.
Mr Xi’s warning that without international law “the world may fall back to the law of the jungle and the consequences would be devastating for humanity” will resonate strongly in this region. It raises some juxtapositions. Since the historic 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration against Chinese claims to large swathes of the South China Sea, Beijing has seemed oblivious to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
After the jackbooted destruction of their freedoms and parliamentary democracy, the people of Hong Kong can only wonder at Mr Xi’s apparent conversion to the value of “international rules, instead of seeking one’s own supremacy” and his professed belief in “peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom”. These, he said with a straight face, must “ rise above ideological prejudice”. His government’s aggressive repressions of the people of Hong Kong, alas, make a mockery of the “one country, two systems” agreements that governed the 1997 handover of Hong Kong and that Beijing’s communist rulers solemnly signed. Nor will his words win over the people of democratic Taiwan. Only hours before the speech, their airspace was breached by flyovers of dozens of Chinese warplanes, as it was throughout last year.
Australian producers of coal, barley, wine, beef, wood and lobsters can feel only bemused by Mr Xi’s assertion that China is “working hard to bridge differences through dialogue and resolve disputes through negotiation and to pursue friendly and co-operative relations with other countries on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit”. While produce has rotted and coal ships have remained loaded, Chinese ministers have refused even to return the calls of their Australian counterparts. The terms of Australia’s free trade agreement with China and its World Trade Organisation commitments seem to count for little, regardless of Mr Xi’s claim that “principles should be preserved and rules, once made, should be followed by all”. Nor does his promise that “China will think and act with more openness with regard to international exchange and co-operation on science and technology” sit well with the surreptitious exploitation of Australian and other overseas scientific research under China’s Thousand Talents plan revealed by this newspaper. The speech “overflowed with irony”, as former Singaporean Foreign Affairs Ministry secretary Bilahari Kausikan told The Australian on Tuesday.