Don’t force us to choose a superpower: Scott Morrison urges US and China

The Prime Minister has described the clash between the world’s largest economic and military powers as the ‘most significant’ challenge confronting the region.

Scott Morrison expressed Australia’s desire to nurture ties with both Beijing and Washington while maintaining ‘our values and the protection of our own sovereignty’. Picture: Sarah Matray

Scott Morrison has called on China to begin discussing with Australia ‘’in a direct way’’ the various geopolitical and trade tensions, saying Australia’s position was being clouded and distorted.

The Prime Minister told the Policy Exchange in London on Monday that Australia wanted economic success for China, and said Australia had helped lift China out of economic poverty.

He said any suggestion that Australia wanted to contain or restrict China ‘’was false’’.

But Mr Morrison said: “It’s very difficult to understand the mind of China and their outlook, but we seek to do so.”

‘’There are tensions, won’t deny that, but do feel many of the tensions based on misunderstandings; one key misunderstandings is a level of confidence about what we see as the end result,” Mr Morrison said.

‘’From Australia’s view, it’s not containment, we want a happy coexistence, respecting each other’s sovereignty and systems in a mutually beneficial relationship.

‘’Both parties have a lot more work to do to get to that goal.

Mr Morrison said Australia had to convince China of this end position and believed ‘’if start there and work backwards we may end up with a better relationship than we do now’’.

Mr Morrison, who was awarded the think tank’s inaugural Grotius Prize, said in his speech on Monday that Australia’s desire to maintain ties with both Beijing and Washington while maintaining “our values and the protection of our own sovereignty”.

“Like other sovereign nations in the Indo-Pacific, our preference is not to be forced into binary choices,” Mr Morrison said.

“If we are to avoid a new era of polarisation, then in the decades ahead there must be a more ­nuanced appreciation of individual states’ interests in how they deal with the major powers. Stark choices are in no one’s interests.

Mr Morrison’s comments follow a week of rising tensions with China, with Beijing complaining of Australia’s crackdown on foreign interference, calls for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 and a ban on Huawei from the local 5G network.

China’s Foreign Ministry late last week warned Australia to “be careful not to get poked in the eye”, and on Monday added the alleged murder of Afghans by the SAS and culturally insensitive ABC children’s programming to its long list of grievances.

More than $200m of Australian coal remains stranded in 20 freighters off the Chinese port of Jingtang — 15 of which have been anchored at the northern city since June as authorities oversee a go-slow on Australian exports.

Mr Morrison, who is in quarantine at The Lodge after travelling to Tokyo last week to meet Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, said on Monday night that pursuing Australia’s interests in the midst of strategic competition between the US and China was “not straightforward”.

“It is made more complex by the assumptions cast on Australia’s actions. Our actions are wrongly seen and interpreted by some only through the lens of the strategic competition between China and the United States.

“It’s as if Australia does not have its own unique interests or views as an independent sovereign state. This is false and needlessly deteriorates relationships.”

Mr Morrison, whose address followed a speech by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said unlike the Cold War the world was not “divided into two blocs, each with their own economic realm”.

“Our world is one shaped by decades of growing economic interdependence,” he said.

The Indo-Pacific region would “shape the destiny of the world” in the 21st century, he said. To achieve a strategic balance of power that favours freedom, Mr Morrison said “American leadership will, as ­always, be indispensable in pursuit of that goal”.

“US weight and convening power is vital to preserving the rules, norms and standards of our international community, including in the Indo-Pacific. European engagement will also be critical.”

Mr Morrison, who took part in G20 and APEC virtual summits over the weekend, said the global recession was not “caused by structural weaknesses in our global economy”.

“The world has been hit by an economic meteor in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic and the failings of our global public health system to provide an effective warning and an integrated ­response,” he said.