Scott Morrison clear on China threat: John Bolton

John Bolton has praised Australia’s understanding of the cyber threat posed by China.

Former US National Security Adviser John Bolton has written is his upcomming book that ‘Britain did not understand China’s threat but Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison was clear-eyed seeing Huawei pretty much the way I did’. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has praised Australia’s understanding of the cyber threat posed by China, saying Scott Morrison is “clear-eyed” about Beijing’s bad ­intentions.

News of Mr Bolton’s comments in his new book, The Room Where It Happened, coincided with a major cyber attack on Australia on Friday, suspected of being orchestrated by China.

In his book, Mr Bolton, who was national security adviser from April 2018 to September last year, says the US struggled to warn its allies about the threat China posed through its Belt and Road Initiative and its use of the telecommunications giant Huawei for cyber espionage. But he said Australia was one of the few US allies that agreed with Washington on the true nature of the China threat.

“We ran into obstacles internationally as we sought to alert our allies to Huawei’s threat and that of other state-controlled Chinese firms,” Mr Bolton writes in his yet-to-be-released book, a copy of which has been obtained by The Weekend Australian.

He said Britain did not understand the threat but “Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison was clear-eyed, seeing Huawei pretty much the way I did”.

The views of Mr Bolton, a known hawk on China, are consistent with those of others in the Trump White House, which sees Australia as having played a bold role in standing up to Beijing on ­issues from foreign interference to Huawei to a call for an inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently condemned China for threatening economic punishment of Australia in response to Mr Morrison’s call for a coron­a­virus inquiry.

Mr Bolton contrasted Australia’s hardline position on Huawei, which saw the Chinese telco banned from participation in 5G networks on national security grounds, with the weaker stance of countries in Europe.

“In Europe many countries had done so much business with Huawei, they found it hard to disentangle themselves,” Mr Bolton writes.

“With the UK, for example, discussions were very difficult … it was hard slogging because of the high level of dependence on Huawei that Britain had built up over an extended period.

“These legitimate worries should have led us to focus on rapidly getting new entrants into 5G markets, not how we would mitigate the consequences of continuing to patronise Huawei.

“We had to admit we were all late to realise the full extent of ­Huawei’s strategy, but that was not an excuse to compound our earlier mistakes.”