Belt and Road is inimical to China’s competitors

John Lee provides a useful account of China’s petulance towards Australia, particularly in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative urged by Jean Dong on Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and state Treasurer Tim Pallas (“China: petulant bully that can’t quite work us out”, 27/5). That account is complemented by the report concerning the urging of Dong (“China promoter trumpets Xi as ‘global saviour’ ”, 27/5).

Lee makes plain Australia was never for turning on the South China Sea, Huawei, foreign interference and the initiative calling for international investigation of the virus origins.

China is incapable of understanding — because its leaders ignore history, substituting their managed version with coercively arranged outcomes. Accordingly, those communist doyens continue to drive the projected BRI by coercive means and with the assistance of subservient lackeys. Indeed in some respects that process may well amount to subversion for its intent is unmistakeable.

As Lee writes, BRI attempts to renegotiate standards, protocols and rules to suit China and produce economic outcomes inimical to the economic survival of its competitors. Lee is correct to assert Australia must stand its ground because it can and, in turn, that provides encouragement for other liberal democracies to do the same. When they do, China may reflect on the wisdom of moderation and the advantage of co-operation.

Ian Dunlop, Hawks Nest, NSW

Like all other migrant communities, Chinese people will continue to be involved in events celebrating their culture and in pageants such as the Miss China Cosmos.

Your coverage of the event presumably was to explore the people involved in the young woman’s rise to a position of political influence (“The meteoric rise of China’s queen of the cosmos”, 28/5). Questions are rightly asked about the role she played in convincing the Victorian Labor Party to sign up to China’s BRI.

Her Linkedin site has her working life starting in 2001 as an anchor and journalist at the state-controlled CCTV news in China. Now, at a relatively young age, she has emerged as a significant political player in Victoria.

The article reveals some of her extensive and varied business interests in the years after she graduated from Adelaide University. Can her remarkable career trajectory be explained by her entrepreneurial spirit alone? Future reporting might shed more light on this unanswered question.

Jennie George, Mollymook, NSW

Tim Pallas and Daniel Andrews are acting faithfully to script concerning the BRI which has demonstrated, by its modus operandi, that it is a loan shark shakedown operation. The kindest take on their actions is that they are babes in the woods, out of their depth, but the vehemence with which they have defended China against the interests of their own country suggests something darker.

John Patterson, Byron Bay, NSW

Canberra has had over a decade to understand the predictable rise of China and articulate a strategy providing a point of reference for engagement with a nation that is a big source of our economic prosperity.

Our political leaders’ lack of direct engagement with China have left the relationship in tatters and the premiers and business leaders with no option but to pursue their own plans. To paraphrase a wise man from the past: a foreign policy on China? Now that would be a good idea.

Niral Fernando, Chelsea, Vic

To see the warning signs, one only has to look at the 99-year lease of the port of Darwin to a Chinese company by the Northern Territory government and it strategic benefit to China when combined with its South China Sea expansion.

Don’t let Australia have a repeat of this calculated move by the Chinese Communist Party through the BRI into Victoria by selling our country for 30 pieces of silver.

Ian Kent, Renmark, SA

Congratulations to Greg Sheridan (“Andrews has put China above his party and his nation”, 28/5). Daniel Andrews’s attempt to bypass the federal government and the opposition by enunciating his own foreign policy may indicate he is suffering delusions of grandeur, but it is also an example of a politician who sides with a foreign power against his federal government and national interest because he does not like the Coalition.

Babette Francis, Toorak, Vic