Scott Morrison prayed with former US vice-president Mike Pence over China’s military build-up

Scott Morrison has blasted China’s Xi Jinping for deceiving Australia about his militaristic ambitions and says he once prayed with US vice-president Mike Pence about combating Beijing.

Scott Morrison with former US vice-president Mike Pence at the APEC summit in Port Moresby in 2018. Picture: AFP

Scott Morrison has blasted Chinese leader Xi Jinping for deceiving Australia about his militaristic ambitions and says he once prayed with US vice-president Mike Pence about combating China in the region.

In his strongest comments yet about China’s attempts to coerce and bully Australia during his prime ministership, Mr Morrison said the country would have “lived in fear” if his government had not stood up to Beijing.

He accused China of being on a “neo-Marxist mission” to become a hegemonic power, saying it was willing to go to war if necessary to bend the rules of the global order in its favour.

Mr Morrison, a committed Christian, reveals that at the 2018 APEC leaders’ summit in the Papua New Guinea capital Port Moresby, the then prime minister asked to be alone in a room with Mr Pence, a fellow Christian and Donald Trump’s vice-president so that the two men could pray for solutions to “the increasing assertiveness of China in our region”.

“I was aware of Mike’s faith and asked for us to pray together over the things we had discussed, which included the increasing ­assertiveness of China in our ­region,” Mr Morrison writes in his new book, Plans for Your Good: A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness.

Mr Morrison reveals that China’s aggressive behaviour in the region and its unprecedented military build-up were the ­dominant reasons why Australia sought to create the AUKUS pact to acquire nuclear-powered ­submarines.

“We could not continue to ­indulge in passive appeasement of China’s assertiveness; we could not give in to fear,” he writes.

“I decided it was not in ­Australia’s long-term interests to duck and cover. We had to stand up for ourselves, face our fears and not capitulate to China’s bullying.”

Nuclear submarines, he says, were “key to our plan to resist Chinese coercion”.

Mr Morrison uses the book to accuse Mr Xi of being two-faced about China’s true ambitions in the Indo-Pacific. He says that during a visit to Australia in 2014 Mr Xi “hit all the right notes”, “speaking admirably about our koalas” and “our friendliness and ingenuity”.

“Xi’s message was clear: there was nothing to fear from a rising and stronger China in our ­region,” he writes.

Mr Morrison says the belief that a more affluent China would lead to a more liberal China proved to be the most misplaced assumption since Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler in 1938.

He says “Xi’s real ambition is a neo-Marxist mission” to “realise China’s destiny of hegemonic power in the Indo-Pacific, ­reunifying Taiwan with China (by force if necessary), centralising and asserting Beijing’s ­authority at home (resulting in human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong) and rewriting the rules of the global order in China’s favour”.

Mr Morrison says China’s rise and the deteriorating ­strategic outlook meant that ­nuclear-power submarines had gone from “a nice-to-have to a need-to-have”.

He said he would never regret the decision to call for an independent inquiry into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, a decision that angered China and led it to slap $20bn worth of sanctions on Australian exports.

“It was my call for an independent inquiry into the origins of Covid that angered the Chinese government the most,” he writes. “How dare we? Covid-19 had killed millions of people and shut down the global economy, and Australia had the audacity to want to know how it started, to prevent this kind of catastrophe from happening again. I will never regret that call.”

Mr Morrison says China ­appeared to be puzzled as to why Australia refused to be cowed by the sanctions and threats.

“There were no more speeches about our lovely koalas … the ­Chinese government was trying to coerce us into submission (but) they did not expect our response,” he writes.

“I was happy to trade with China, but our values and sovereignty were not up for sale. I ­refused to allow China to intimidate us and have our nation live in fear.”

He says Mr Xi has backed up his hegemonic plans by pursuing a military force that is able to win wars.

“There are no prizes for guessing who those wars would be against,” he says. “As prime minister I would receive regular ­briefings on the status and projection of China’s military power and build-up … China is working hard to make sure it can back up its threats.”