The ambassador described the claim that this resolution — which in substance is what the Morrison government called for several weeks ago — is a vindication of Canberra’s position as “a joke”.
No other ambassador in Canberra would use such aggressive language to describe an Australian government policy.
Beijing typically talks that way when it is both trying to bully someone and also feels it has lost control of a situation and cannot achieve its policy ends through the normal means of statecraft.
When Taiwan chose Lee Teng-hui, who Beijing hated, as its first democratically elected president way back in 1996, Beijing described him as the spawn of a turtle egg, or some such, turtles being notoriously promiscuous.
In subsequent years, Beijing used that rhetoric much more rarely. At least the Morrison government was not described as a clique of gangsters.
Trade Minister Simon Birmingham, who has had the running of this dispute for the government, described the ambassador’s remarks as “provocative” and said it would be better to avoid cheap politics over the issue. I cannot recall a Chinese ambassador being so publicly aggressive, so routinely breaching the normal protocols of diplomacy, and being so publicly rebuked by a senior cabinet minister. These are indeed vexing and difficult times in the Australia-China relationship.
Beijing has also applied tariffs which, if they stay in force, will destroy $600m in Australian barley exports. Canberra is energetically looking for new barley markets, not least in Indonesia and India.
Beijing provided Canberra a ridiculously short window of opportunity to respond to the draft decision on barley, which followed an absurd investigation into Australia for allegedly dumping barley into the Chinese market.
The suspension of beef exports from four Australian abattoirs was carried out with even less notice and is believed to affect somewhere between $600m and $700m of our beef exports.
These are serious measures to hurt Australia, which Beijing has deliberately undertaken. Similarly, the ambassador’s aggressive threats are not him freelancing. They’re directed from Beijing. The question now is whether Beijing’s punishment phase is concluded for the minute or whether there will be more to come, with wine and dairy also seen as vulnerable.
Several unpleasant conclusions are inescapable. First, all the elaborate agreements, treaties and mechanisms that Beijing signs up to mean nothing when it decides to exert its power.
Australia has a free-trade agreement with Beijing as well as a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. These solemn undertakings are meant, among other things, to manage disagreements, contain problems and ensure a mechanism of consultation if things ever get difficult. Yet Australia’s great, historic crime here is to have advocated an independent review into the origins and handling of the most lethal global pandemic in recent decades. And Beijing’s ministers will not even speak to their Australian counterparts.
A further footnote is that as Beijing decides to buy more US product, it may well decide to buy less Australian product. There is nothing we can do about this, although there is some consolation in Beijing’s past performance of never living up to its agreements to buy more American stuff.
There is no doubt that Beijing has suffered an acute diplomatic defeat. It did not want an independent, impartial and comprehensive inquiry. And it will undoubtedly do its best to make sure that such an inquiry doesn’t really take place, no matter what the resolution says.
It was only at the very last moment that Beijing finally indicated it would not formally oppose the EU resolution.
This was a sensible if belated recognition of reality. Only an utterly dependent client nation would have supported Beijing in opposing an inquiry which common sense and common decency both demand.
Nonetheless, the Morrison government shouldn’t crow about it. With luck, this latest episode may now pass. But don’t think there is not enormous scope for more trouble in the months ahead.
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When Beijing is under pressure, it frequently resorts to Cold War insults and propaganda. Thus its huge defeat in the overwhelming support for the motion at the World Health Assembly calling for an inquiry into COVID-19 that is “impartial, independent and comprehensive” drew some undiplomatic language from Beijing’s increasingly rattled man in Canberra.