PM’s China tactic: find strength in numbers

In an intense week of diplomatic activity, Scott Morrison has advanced his strategy – to internationalise the crisis in Australia-China relations – with his progress hinged overwhelmingly on the future concord between Morrison and US President Joe Biden over China.

The startling aspect of Morrison’s invitation at the G7 Leaders’ Meeting was his turning of the Chinese embassy’s 14 points against Australia into a political weapon he fired in front of world leaders to prove China’s assault on a democratic sovereign nation – an assault no leader of any democracy could tolerate.

The irony of Morrison’s position is that Australia has paid a big price because of its leading response against China’s hi-tech and strategic aggression – yet the world is now moving closer to Australia’s stances, with much help from Biden.

Morrison’s message is that Australia-China tribulation is no exclusive bilateral issue. It is about China and the world – about China’s refusal to honour multilateral norms, its resort to economic coercion, its assault on national sovereignty; the point being Beijing’s campaign against Australia illuminates its core character. And that behaviour can become a threat to any country and any leader.

The game plan Morrison has followed for the past year has been to muster strength in numbers – engage with the region, encourage America to strike a balance of power against China, promote the Quad with America, Japan and India, support the repair of multilateral institutions from World Trade Organisation to the World Health Organisation and support Biden’s effort to rally liberal democracies against the China challenge.

The change in global diplomacy represented by the G7 and NATO meetings is driven by Biden. It should be neither underestimated nor exaggerated. His target is China and his priority region is the Indo-Pacific. While there are differences between Biden and Morrison on climate change and trade, Morrison seeks to channel Biden, whose mission was defined in a speech at the February Munich Security Conference.

“Historians are going to examine and write about this moment as an inflection point,” Biden said at the time. “We must demonstrate that democracies can still deliver for our people in this changed world … We must prepare together for a long-term strategic competition with China. We have to push back against the Chinese government’s economic abuses and coercion that undercut the foundations of the international economic system. Everyone – everyone – must play by the same rules.”

Morrison’s quest in response to China’s assault is wide-ranging Australian engagement – with the US, Asia and Europe, in whatever forum is available. The G7 is the apex. But engagement, while essential, does not equate with identical national interests, a cardinal point.

As part of his constant campaign to internationalise Australia’s dilemma with China, Morrison said the task facing democratic nations was to find that path where “we can trade, we can interact”, where we can “find that way of living together” without being told “how to live”. In short, the job is to minimise Beijing’s bullying.

The obvious retort is that other countries have managed this better than Australia. That’s true. The equally obvious retort is that most leaders now recognise China’s aggressive and coercive behaviour is a global problem. This was an underlying theme of the G7 meeting with its post-Trump emphasis on multilateral renewal including vaccines, economic recovery, democratic values and a rival to China’s Belt and Road agenda called the “Build Back Better for the World” that seems highly dubious in its lack of detail.

Morrison did not seek any special treatment for Australia from the G7 since that would be absurd. But he used the opportunity – with Australia being one of the four guest nations invited to attend – to register the global dangers raised by China’s behaviour against Australia.

“What I detected was an increasing and significant awareness of the impact of tensions in the Indo-Pacific for the broader global system,” he said. He reported there was a “high level of awareness” within the G7 and a “very strong level of support” for Australia’s stand. That’s good.

The reality, however, is that the Western alliance is weak. Morrison himself said Europe had a “different perspective” from America. Whether Biden can mobilise a liberal democratic alliance to hold China to account is a daunting task. The Europeans wonder how long Biden will last and whether the Trump nightmare will return in some form. US and European views differ on the pivotal goal Biden seeks – long-run strategic competition against China.

Since Beijing’s unveiling of its 14 points, the assumption on which Morrison works is that no bilateral action by Australia will prompt Beijing to reassess. Morrison has lots of critics about how Australia got into its current predicament with China but none of the critics suggests how Australian bilateral initiatives can solve the problem.

The situation was accurately described by Malcolm Turnbull a few weeks ago, launching Peter Hartcher’s new book, Red Zone, when Turnbull said: “I think we are in the freezer for quite a long time. I think that’s what we should assume. I don’t think there’s anything Australia unilaterally can do to change that … We should play a straight bat, stay at the wicket, not back down – that’s the worst possible thing we could do – be measured and careful in our language.”

But Turnbull made the point, often overlooked: China’s retaliation against Australia is a singular and conspicuous failure. “Has it resulted in Australia being more compliant?” Turnbull asked. “On the contrary, it has gone the other way, it’s been counterproductive.”

China’s campaign has hurt Australia. More hurt may lie ahead. But it has steeled Australia’s democratic willpower. Bullies expect subservience and Beijing may be surprised that Australia has not broken. Its retribution may yet become the most abject failure of any campaign launched by China against any democratic nation.

The 14 points China’s embassy lodged against Australia last November made clear that its trade retaliation was designed to correct a series of foreign and domestic policy grievances relating to foreign investment, Huawei, foreign interference laws, the Covid inquiry call and rejection of Victoria’s Belt and Road agreement, among others.

Morrison saw these demands as a public effort to intimidate Australia and undermine its sovereignty. This is a Liberal-Labor bipartisan stance. As a serious effort to extract concessions from Australia, the 14 points were ludicrous. But that, in itself, sent a message. The collapse of bilateral trust has become a problem superimposed upon the actual grievances.

By transposing China’s bilateral assault on Australia into a global forum, Morrison gave expression to his core strategic response – to demonstrate an activist Australian diplomacy with agency in the region and the world while being realistic enough to admit, as he says, that the core differences “may never be able to be resolved”.