‘Settle in for the long haul’: Treasurer agrees with White House’s China warning
Josh Frydenberg agrees with a pessimistic assessment by the White House for Australia to settle in ‘for the long haul’ of retribution from Beijing.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has agreed with a pessimistic assessment by the White House that Australia should settle in “for the long haul” of retribution from Xi Jinping’s China.
The deputy Liberal leader said Beijing’s assertive approach had influenced his decision making on investment proposals by Chinese companies.
“We are living with a different China,” Mr Frydenberg said when asked about a frank appraisal of Australia’s strategic dilemma by the US’s Indo-Pacific co-ordinator Kurt Campbell.
Mr Frydenberg said since he became Treasurer in August 2018 — days after Australia became the first country in the world to block Huawei from its 5G rollout — he had “increasingly seen foreign investment applications that are being pursued not necessarily for commercial objectives but strategic objectives”.
“As you know I have said no to applications that in the past may have been approved,” he said.
President Joe Biden’s top Asia adviser — and key driver of the administration’s China policy — earlier warned that Beijing was in no mood to adjust its policy towards Canberra.
“I’m not sure that they have the strategic thinking to go back to a different kind of diplomacy towards Australia right now,” Campbell said at an Asia Society online forum chaired by former prime minister Kevin Rudd.
“I see a harshness in their approach that appears to be unyielding,” Campbell said.
“I would have thought that we were basically settling in for the long haul, in terms of tensions between China and Australia,” he added.
President Xi’s administration has shown no signs of ending its 15-month-long trade coercion campaign on more than $20 billion of Australian exports despite advocacy by the Biden administration.
The bleak assessment from the White House was given hours after Beijing’s foreign ministry continued its almost daily trolling of Canberra.
On Tuesday evening, Beijing’s foreign ministry Australia a “cat’s paw” of the United States, a day after claiming China had been a victim of Australia’s “bullying coercion” in Papua New Guinea.
In the latest verbal threat, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said China would not allow Australia to “reap benefits from doing business with China while groundlessly accusing and smearing China”.
“When a certain country acts as a cat’s paw for others, it is the people that pay for misguided government policies,” he said.
In a fiery speech last week, Xi said his party state would not be pushed around by America or its allies.
“Anyone who would attempt to do so will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people,” Mr Xi said to huge applause in a speech marking the Chinese Communist Party’s 100th anniversary.
Xi also said his China would not tolerate “sanctimonious preaching from those who feel they have the right to lecture us”.
Campbell said Beijing’s current approach was a departure from previous Chinese administrations, which were more responsive to international sentiment.
“I would have thought previously that given what we had seen and the success of President Biden’s visits to Europe and a sense of other countries finding common cause with United States that China would be in the midst right now of a recalibration, a sense of pulling back some of its actions, particularly against Australia,” he said.
“But I think that is completely gone now.”
Campbell said Xi’s China had also demonstrated an unprecedented willingness to engage in multiple disputes at the same time.
Beijing has launching almost daily verbal attacks on Japan, while tens of thousands of People’s Liberation Army troops remain in a tense stand-off with India on their shared border.
“I see little yield, and if anything a rising sense of nationalism and a sense of aggrievement and a determination to continue to prosecute a very assertive case internationally across the board,” he said.
Campbell said the Biden administration believed China’s trade coercion campaign on Canberra was an attempt to “cut Australia out of the herd” of US allies “and see if they can affect Australia to completely change how it sees itself and sees the world”.
He said that attempt had completely backfired, a point reinforced in a spate of recent opinion polls showing overwhelmingly negative sentiment towards China in Australia.
President Biden is likely to host Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in Washington in September for the first in-person leaders’ meeting of the Quad grouping.
Campbell said he expected the meeting would deliver “exciting” and “decisive” commitments on infrastructure funding in the Asia-Pacific, as well as the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines.
The co-ordination with Australia, Japan and India is part of the Biden administration’s increased commitment to the region.
“I think we recognise that the United States has a lot of work to do (in Asia),” said Campbell.
“We historically have a strong position in Asia. That position has slipped,” he said.
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