Chinese entry to trade pact unlikely, says Scott Morrison

Scott Morrison has warned China it has little hope of gaining entry into one of the world’s biggest free-trade agreements following its campaign of economic coercion against Australia.

Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong will attack the government’s hawkish rhetoric on China in a major speech on Tuesday. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Scott Morrison has warned China it has little hope of gaining entry into one of the world’s biggest free-trade agreements following its campaign of economic coercion against Australia.

Amid fallout for exporters from $20bm in targeted Chinese trade bans, the Prime Minister ­declared Australia’s biggest trading partner would struggle to meet the high bar for entry into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agree­ment for Trans-­Pacific Partnership.

“The CPTPP sets a very high benchmark that you have to be able to achieve and it is important that those who are seeking to ­become part of an arrangement like that wouldn’t want to have a track record of coercing other trade partners,” Mr Morrison said.

Australia is increasingly taking a stand against the authoritarian regime, with Defence Minister Peter Dutton declaring less than a fortnight ago that Australia would fight with the US if it went to war with China over Taiwan.

Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong will attack the government’s hawkish rhetoric on China in a major speech on Tuesday, accusing it of stoking tensions with China in a bid for votes at the next election.

Senator Wong will argue that Australia must expand its power and influence in the region through better diplomacy, not talking up the threat of conflict.

“Amping up the prospect of war against a superpower is the most dangerous election tactic in Australian history,” Senator Wong will tell the ANU’s National Security College. “(It’s) a tactic employed by irresponsible politicians who are desperate to hang on to power at any cost.”

She will argue the consequences of war between the US and China would be so catastrophic that a more “sober approach” is required.

Veteran strategist Paul Dibb, writing in The Australian on Tuesday, warns the US faces the prospect of military defeat, amid the growing likelihood that it could face a simultaneous conflict between China and Russia.

The emeritus professor of strategic studies at ANU says the ­authoritarian nations are now in a “de facto alliance”, and there are growing signs they could draw the US into a war it could not win.

“The current tense situation in US relations with Russia over the massing of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border and with China over an increasingly militarily threatened Taiwan, confronts a domestically distracted America with the prospect of military conflicts on two separate fronts,” he writes.

China lodged a formal application in September to join the 11-nation CPTPP. Australia and Japan have expressed scepticism over the Chinese bid, which can be vetoed by a single CPTPP member.

Trade Minister Dan Tehan, whose Chinese counterpart refuses to speak to him, had already warned China it needed to change its treatment of Australia if it wanted to join the “gold standard” trade agreement. “We would need some sort of ministerial dialogue to be able to work through that market ­accession. Obviously economic coercion, trade disputes, those types of things, would all have to be dealt with,” he said.

But Mr Morrison went further, warning China would be judged on its record, and would struggle to meet the CPTPP’s standards after banning Australian beef, barley, coal, cotton, copper, seafood, sugar, timber and wine.

He said he was working closely on the issue with Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida, who has warned the CPTPP would not tolerate unfair trade practices or economic coercion.

Perth USAsia Centre research director Jeffrey Wilson said ­allowing China to join the CPTPP – whose members account for 13.4 per cent of global GDP – would be like “letting the fox into the henhouse”.

“Chinese trade sanctions against Australia affect over a dozen sectors, and are in clear breach of longstanding Chinese commitments under the WTO and the bilateral FTA of 2015,” Dr Wilson said. “If China refuses to comply with lowest common denominator trade agreements, how could it conceivably be admitted to the high-standard CPTPP?”