One of the messages emerging from the tidal wave of federal election post-mortems is: if you want to win, stop criticising China.
The claims are being made yet again that ethnically Chinese-Australians have played a key role in a range of seats, in punishing the Liberals for any who broke rank by raising such critiques.
True or not – and some evidence does point that way – the impact is the same. China discourse and policy, intertwined in Beijing’s mind, can be influenced in Australia by elections.
Former Liberal defence minister Christopher Pyne told ABC television viewers “we cast a suspicion over Chinese people because of comments about the mainland of China”. This, he said, affected “at least one million voters, if not more” of Chinese ethnicity. Pyne’s analysis, however, was quite awry.
John Fitzgerald, an expert on Chinese-Australian communities, points out that as of June 2022, only 36.5 per cent of permanent residents born in the People’s Republic of China who had arrived since 2000 had become Australian citizens, compared with 66 per cent of Indian-born and 69 per cent of Philippines-born residents here since 2000.
Thus, “at just over one-third of PRC-born permanent residents, the China-born who can vote are a relatively small group” – in total, perhaps not more than 300,000 across the country.
For the Chinese Communist Party, all people of Chinese ethnicity are “sons and daughters of the yellow emperor”, thus owing an uber-loyalty to the PRC even if they and their parents and grandparents were born in Australia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong or Singapore.
But people of Chinese cultures are especially individualistic, ill-inclined to follow direction and hold many divergent views – although if they perceive they are being taken advantage of, derided as a group or, especially, subject to apparent racism, they will respond as strongly as they can, and rightly.
Liberal senator Jane Hume made an ill-judged remark about “Chinese spies” volunteering to help in the return of Labor minister Clare O’Neil, which was seized on and rapidly amplified by Labor’s smart electoral machine, in this case spearheaded by Foreign Minister Penny Wong, as if it had been a generalised Liberal campaign message.
This episode emerged from information that the Hubei Association of Victoria involved itself in the federal election by offering volunteers, although as it turned out they ultimately were not enlisted. Such organisations almost invariably are related to the United Front Work Department, an important agency of the Central Committee of the CCP.
It may be appropriate to ask more about the role that this and similar associations play here. But the over-egged “Chinese spies” accusation helped deliver votes for Labor and maybe thus seats.
The beleaguered Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan soon also joined the fray, feeling she was on a winner in following her predecessor Dan Andrews, a great advocate for stronger PRC connections who signed an ill-fated memorandum of understanding to align Victoria with Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Announcing a big trip to Beijing in September, Allan said: “Over the last few years we’ve heard unnecessary and divisive rhetoric from conservative politicians that have been hurtful to Chinese-Australian families.”
She went on: “And in an era of divisive, Trump-style rhetoric here” – though without indicating quite where – “and abroad, I want to make the case that Victorians from overseas are a proud part of our story to the world … In an era of tariffs and global economic uncertainty, I want to seize an opportunity for Victoria to create good, stable jobs and drive strong economic growth.”
One may agree on immigrants – I’m one myself – being “a proud part of our story” and on seeking opportunities for growth, while hoping her mission is well thought through.
It is only a few years since Australia was on the receiving end of a politically driven economic and diplomatic deep-freeze from the PRC, despite our free trade agreement. We naturally hope it won’t be repeated but can’t guarantee that. A degree of risk remains. But some Australian company boards that earlier had defaulted to double-digit-growing China as a proxy market for all of Asia seem to be returning with relief to that same plan, even though key components of China’s economy have come unstuck and the population has begun to fall.
China’s massive economy cannot be avoided and offers sound opportunity to some. But Australia’s dependence on it has resumed its pre-freeze level surprisingly swiftly since Labor’s previous victory. About a third of all our exports are again sent to China, and given Australia’s flatlining productivity this means we’ve diverted some products back from other markets.
The lessons from being frozen out of markets and senior-level communications and meetings from 2020-22 might have taken Canberra in a variety of directions. But the main learnings have included that Australia – in the shape of the previous government – was chiefly to blame and that we must mute our discourse settings about Beijing to restore “stability”, and reconsider our policy frames.
Paramount leader Xi Jinping, congratulating Anthony Albanese on his re-election, said discussions with him “led to important consensuses that have provided strategic guidance” to deepen ties. Official CCP newspaper Global Times editorialised that experience showed how “blindly following Washington’s lead and treating China as a strategic adversary … dealt real blows to (Australia’s) economy. Learning from those lessons … is the right strategic path.”
The party-state doesn’t aim to invade Australia militarily but in more subtle ways, to persuade us to curtail our criticisms, to make Australia a safe space for its ambitions, to guide shifts in our institutions and our thinking, including via its increasingly clever outreach programs led by its online platforms and internet of things.
The relentless CCP is astute at claiming that all people of Chinese ethnicity are targeted when its plans or operations are exposed or even reviewed. It’s especially crucial, then, both to reject unwelcome PRC strategies, and to distinguish them clearly from Chinese-Australians.
Both our major parties on this basis need before the next election to reconsider how best to continue to engage with the PRC, how best to remain wary. Preferably, for the sake of Australia’s resilience, on a bipartisan basis. Last week’s declaration by Xi, standing alongside Russia’s Vladimir Putin, that they are “friends of steel”, reminds us what’s at stake.
Rowan Callick is an industry fellow at Griffith University’s Asia Institute and an expert associate at the Australian National University’s National Security College.
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