Beijing ‘siege mentality’ costs its global status

Outgoing DFAT secretary Frances Adamson says China’s insecurity and siege mentality has caused its global influence to slump.

Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Frances Adamson speaking at the National Press Club in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Outgoing Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Frances Adamson says China is “dogged by insecurity”, unable to accept scrutiny, and a victim of its own “siege mentality”, which has caused its global influence to slump.

In a blunt assessment just days before leaving the department to become Governor of South Australia, Ms Adamson said China behaved as if its interests were “more special than those of others”, using its “size and strength” to assert its will.

But the career diplomat told the National Press Club Australia still had the ability to “shape the world around us” through its values and diplomacy, and declared it was time to reconsider the size of Australia’s foreign aid program.

As Beijing pushes its vaccines and infrastructure deals onto the developing world, Ms Adamson warned the battle for influence in the region would be “shaped by who contributes to regional recovery and on what basis”.

“Beyond the government’s increased support for regional Covid-19 recovery, we need to consider carefully whether our development program and international lending match the needs in our region and the tough competition for influence now under way,” she said.

Ms Adamson said China spoke of a new and fairer type of international relations, “but underneath it is the same old power politics, the raw assertion of national interests”.

“The implication being that China’s size and strength make its interests more ‘special’ than those of others, and that these must prevail,” she said. “Few really grasp that this great power is still dogged by ­insecurity as much as driven by ambition.”

Ms Adamson said Australia, which has suffered more than a year of punitive Chinese sanctions against $20bn in exports, had no desire to contain China or promote regime change. But China had a “deeply defensive mindset”, perceiving threats “even as it pushes its interests over those of others”.

Ms Adamson, a former ambassador to China, said it was unclear whether the country would alter course from its current trajectory, but noted “authoritarian regimes are inherently brittle”.

She warned China’s treatment of Australia would only change if it believed it was in its interests.

Ms Adamson rejected suggestions Australia had been unwise in being the first nation to call for an inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus without first marshalling international support for the move she branded as “so totally obvious”.

“Whichever country had spoken first to get rolling an idea, which was absolutely of its time and needed to be undertaken, there would have been a reaction to it,” she said.

Her speech came on the same day the Lowy Institute released its annual survey, revealing Australians’ trust in China and its leader, Xi Jinping, had plunged to record lows, with just 16 per cent of respondents saying they had faith in Australia’s biggest trading partner to act responsibly in the world.

Ms Adamson, international adviser to prime minister Malcolm Turnbull before her appointment as DFAT secretary, said the expulsion of Western journalists was a symptom of Beijing’s insecurity, and had blighted its standing internationally.

“This siege mentality – this unwillingness to countenance scrutiny and genuine discussion of differences – serves nobody’s interests. It means, among other things, that China is undergoing a steep loss of influence in Australia and many other countries.”

Ms Adamson said diplomacy must be Australia’s first response to a rapidly changing world, allowing Defence to keep its “expensive tools in the shed”.

She said diplomacy and foreign aid could be better resourced if the government had the capacity to do so.

But she rejected comparisons between Defence’s vast budget and that of DFAT.