Australian approach to China ‘too extreme’, says Singapore’s Bilahari Kausikan

Australia’s approach to China has swung from ‘extreme complacency’ to ‘over-reaction’, ­says a respected policy thinker.

Chinese President Xi Jinping. Picture: AFP

Australia’s approach to China has swung from “extreme complacency” to “over-reaction”, ­according to one of the region’s most respected foreign policy thinkers.

Former secretary of Singapore’s foreign ministry Bilahari Kausikan said the Turnbull government had rightly fixed an ­“absurd” situation that had ­allowed foreign countries to make political donations to Australian political parties.

“You went from that extreme to the other extreme now, where almost everybody who looks vaguely Chinese may be suspect,” the man dubbed Singapore’s “undiplomatic diplomat” said during this week’s visit to Singapore by Foreign Minister Marise Payne.

“Have a bit more confidence in yourselves.”

A survey by Pew Research Group this week found in the past year negative sentiment towards China had increased in Australia more than in any of the other 14 countries polled, leaping 24 per cent to a record 81 per cent.

Mr Kausikan, who served as a diplomat for almost four decades and whose father was once Singapore’s high commissioner in Canberra, said the quadrilateral security dialogue, or Quad, was a “one manifestation” of the rising concern about Xi Jinping’s more assertive China.

Senator Payne’s trip to Singapore followed this week’s much higher profile meeting in Tokyo of the Quad, which is made up of India, the US, Japan and Australia.

That Senator Payne flew straight from talks with her Japanese counterpart to Singapore to see Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong underlines the close alignment of the three nations. “If I look at all of ASEAN’s dialogue partners, I think we can work most closely with Japan and Australia because their idea of the Indo-Pacific is most similar,” Mr Kausikan said. “Both of you are in the region — you’re not the offshore balancer.

“You can’t take that ­detached, hardline view towards China that the Trump administration has been taking. But at the same time, both of you have concerns about China. Serious concerns.”

That alignment was clearly outlined by Sumio Kusaka, Japan’s previous ambassador in Canberra, who on Friday said Australia and Japan were “natural partners”, who needed to work even more closely together during a time of “global upheaval”.

“One way or another, we must find a path for peaceful coexistence with China,” Mr Kusaka wrote in The Australian.

At this week’s Quad meeting, US Secretary of State Mike ­Pompeo personified Mr Kusaka’s concerns of the “freefalling US-China relationship”.

Mr Pompeo called the grouping a “fabric” that could “counter the challenge that the Chinese Communist Party presents to all of us.”

That sharp language alienates other countries in the Indo-­Pacific, according to Mr Kausikan.

“If you talk about hard containment like Pompeo does, no one will join — not even Japan and Australia,” he said.

Mr Kausikan is unconvinced by claims Australia is leading the world in dealing with Chinese Communist Party interference.

“It didn’t see it as you leading the way. I saw this as you belatedly waking up to a challenge that was there all the time — and maybe overreacting a bit,” he said.

Last month, US assistant Secretary of State David Stilwell pointed to left wing academic Clive Hamilton, author of Silent Invasion, as an example of Australia’s “leadership” on China policy in the region.

Singapore’s former ambassador-at-large is less of a fan of Professor Hamilton’s work on Chinese influence in Australia.

“That’s a really dreadful book. I mean, he has a point - but he makes too much of it,” said Mr Kausikan.

Not that dealing with President Xi’s rising power - the world’s second biggest economy, with an entrenched Leninist political system - is easy.

“Relations with China are going to be complicated because China is complicated,” said Mr Kausikan, who is now chairman of the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute.

But there is opportunity for those countries comfortable with the “ambiguity” of the post-Cold War order.

“It’s going to be a future of variable geometry in this region. Shifting coalitions all around, in different combinations. This is a naturally multi-polar region,” said Mr Kausikan.

“It’s not just the US and China,” he said.