Chinese bullying ‘won’t be tolerated’, says DFAT head Frances Adamson

The country’s top diplomat has warned that Australia must stand up firmly to bullying from China, or any other country, or else risk ‘a very slippery slope’ for our democracy.

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Frances Adamson. Picture: Sean Davey

The country’s top diplomat has warned that Australia must stand up firmly to bullying from China, or any other country, or else risk “a very slippery slope” for our democracy.

In a powerful critique of the growing diplomatic rift with ­Beijing, Frances Adamson, the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, challenged China’s aggressive “wolf-warrior” diplomacy and vowed the government would never ­tolerate Beijing’s interference in Australia’s internal affairs.

“Wherever the challenges come from, Australia should — and Australia must — stand up for its interests, because if we don’t we are on a very slippery slope,” she said.

“The institutions we take for granted — our parliament, our democracy, our legal system, our freedom of speech and association — they really are at stake.

“This is not a theoretical threat or concept, and we need to make sure that our institutions are strong and that we can defend ourselves.”

The strong comments by Ms Adamson, a former ambassador to China, came after Australia-China relations were rocked this week when two Australian journalists were forced to make a harrowing escape from the country after being harassed by Chinese authorities.

The forced departure of the two journalists — from the ABC and The Australian Financial Review — leaves Australia with no correspondents left in China, as Beijing cracks down on press freedom to reduce international scrutiny of its behaviour.

Ms Adamson said the treatment of the journalists was yet another “difficult” and “disappointing” issue to arise between the two countries, as relations have plunged to new lows over threats made by China on issues such as foreign interference laws, the banning of Huawei from 5G networks and the Morrison government’s call for an inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus.

Beijing has also opposed an inquiry by the Morrison government into foreign interference in Australian universities, including how the Chinese government has recruited academics to a secretive program that allowed research to be patented in China.

Ms Adamson’s comments came as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blasted the Chinese Communist Party for its ­censorship of journalists, calling on Beijing to “allow foreign journalists back into China and stop the intimidation and harassment of investigative journalists, foreign and Chinese, who strive to uphold the integrity of the fourth estate to serve the public good”.

“Their refusal to do so shows just how much China’s unelected party elites fear their own people’s free thinking and the free world’s judgment about their governance practices inside China,’ Mr Pompeo said.

Ms Adamson, a former international adviser to former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, said the aggressive “wolf warrior” ­diplomacy recently adopted by China’s envoys were counter-­productive to good relations.

“What it does is undermine the trust that is necessary if we are to manage differences,” she said.

“Trust is quite important and I think shrill language, language that tests the bounds of truth — disinformation more broadly — is something we need to call out (because) if you accept it, it becomes the norm.”

Ms Adamson, who has been DFAT secretary since 2016, said China’s growing assertiveness reflected a growing and more pointed rivalry with the US.

“(We are seeing) not just great power competition between China and the US but a sharpening great power rivalry as the balance of power shifts,” she said.

Relations between the US and China deteriorated sharply after Donald Trump blamed China for failing to warn the world about the coronavirus, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Both Mr Trump and his Democratic opponent Joe Biden have vowed that if elected in ­November they will take a hard line against China on trade, cyber espionage and on Beijing’s creeping hegemony in the South China Sea and the South Pacific.

Ms Adamson said that in recent years China’s behaviour on the global stage had increasingly been at odds with its claimed principle of non-interference in the ­affairs of other countries.

“What we have seen, particularly in the past five years, is actions that don’t really match those words,” she said. “We have seen China seeking to assert itself in ways that suit its interests but don’t suit the interests of countries like Australia.

“We want a peaceful, stable, prosperous region … but when influence builds into interference, that is something we don’t want to see, our government won’t tolerate and I think most Australians are broadly supportive of that.”