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Australia must stay resolute against authoritarian China

By Chris Lewis - posted Thursday, 2 September 2021


The idea that the Chinese Communist Party would soften its ways as the country grew richer and richer was always the stuff of dreamland.

The West helped China become wealthy, notably the 95 million members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and now face the consequences of having to deal with an authoritarian entity which remain strongly mercantile and seeks to dominate the international economy much more than the US ever did.

So how will the situation confronting Australia play out given the rise of the CCP?

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Australians are determined.

While they know full well the importance of benefiting from trade and investment to create wealth, most Australians also believe that important democratic principles are worth defending.

This is despite China by 2018 becoming more important than the US to 128 of 190 countries in terms of trade.

Australia is not alone. Its passionate defence of democracy is supported by other more powerful liberal democracies, notably the US and United Kingdom.

Other liberal democracies are less willing to oppose China, including Germany whose close trade and investment ties with China has made it reluctant thus far to criticise the CCP with Beijing even seen as being a partner on issues such as addressing climate change.

Australia will not be like Singapore, the city state that is eager to please both West and the CCP due to its very high reliance upon open trade.

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While the Pew survey of 17 advanced economies published in June 2021 shows a strongly unfavourable view towards China and widespread support around the word for the US under Biden, about 64 per cent of Singaporeans had a favourable view of both China and the US. 

Hence, while Singapore recently extended an agreement to allow the US to use Singapore’s military facilities for another 15 years, it also held its first naval drill with China in nearly five years in early 2021.

Many Australians, while recognising that Western global leadership is not perfect, know full well that the CCP is a flawed authoritarian entity that merely promotes its economic interests and opposes important Western values such as individual rights and legal limitations placed on power elites.    

The CCP’s efforts to influence the world economy include China having the greatest number of diplomatic missions; its efforts to influence various multilateral institutions; a bid to acquire and dominate new technology; cyber warfare; its grand strategy of the Belt and Road Initiative; and its role with various institutional funding alternatives such as the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, and Silk Road Fund.

Not surprisingly, the ability of an unaccountable CCP to throw money around resulted in Chinese companies signing contracts worth up to $128 billion to start Chinese large-scale infrastructure projects during 2019.

But the evidence is clear. China, under the CCP, is a ruthless authoritarian state that will take advantage of any nation where it can. 

Take poor Montenegro. After accepting $1 billion from China to build a highway, an amount representing around a fifth the size of Montenegro’s economy, it sought European Union (EU) help during April 2021 to pay the interest payments after China’s state development bank would not offer a break on the repayment level.

With Montenegro’s economy shrinking by 15 per cent in 2020 as tourism was affected by covid, Montenegro was only able to pay the first instalment of the loan in July 2021 through help from EU and US banks to help keep the loan’s interest rate at 0.88 per cent.

Montenegro may not yet escape the Chinese “debt trap”, but hopefully more nations can wake up to the tactics of the CCP.   

In early 2021, Romania, which already has loyalty to the US because of the Russian threat, removed Chinese companies from core sectors like nuclear power and telecoms while expressing distaste for the CCP’s diplomatic bullying tactics.

It was also noted that Chinese companies underbid the competition on contracts in Romania and also blocked infrastructure development by attacking tender decisions in court, sometimes delaying projects by years.

The dodgy behaviour of the CCP must always be exposed, including its pathetic attempt to refute the official International Olympic Committee medal count that named the US in first place with China Central Television circulating an altered count to include gold medals won by Hong Kong and Taiwan.

During August 2021, the Sunday Times noted that the World Health Organisation's (WHO) ability to quickly declare an international emergency in response to the initial Covid-19 outbreak had been hindered by the CCP previously using financial leverage over poorer nations to install its preferred figures into key roles at the WHO and the UN-governed bodies.

This included the WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a long-time friend of China and former Ethiopian foreign minister, who is said to have used his role to make further appointments that were preferable to China.

While the CCP is angered by some in the West contemplating the possibility that the Covid-19 virus leaked from a high-level biochemical lab in Wuhan rather than coming from wild animals in a wet market in the city in December 2019, the CCP has lied at virtually every stage of its coronavirus response.

This included punishing Chinese medics who reported the virus, initially denying it could spread person-to-person, delaying a lockdown of affected regions which allowed the virus to spread domestically and overseas, spreading disinformation that US troops could have been the initial carriers of the virus, and inaccurately reporting the number of deaths from covid given that social media users in Wuhan have suggested the toll could be in excess of 42,000 rather than the official figure of 3,300 deaths.

We already know of the CCP’s desire to control its own ethnic minorities in a society where 95% of China’s population is Han.

We also know that the CCP is happy controlling every aspect of Chinese society with its use of around 400 million closed circuit cameras to monitor virtually everyone.    

The CCP’s crackdown on dissidents continues with a Hong Kong academic (Wu Qiang) recently fired from the prestigious Tsinghua university shortly after he conducted fieldwork at the Occupy Central protests in Hong Kong in his role as a political science lecturer, although he continues to bravely speak out in his correct belief that “You need to comment on politics and society; that's how you participate in it”.

With such evidence, only an idiot could claim that the CCP is capable of global leadership to encourage a better world, as openly indicated by the China’s ambassador to Sweden (Gui Congyou) in 2020 when he stated “We treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies we have shotguns”.

You name the issue and the CCP message is always misleading and intended to mask its own interests.

In 2021, while it was claimed that China would become carbon neutral by 2060 after reducing its  energy intensity by 48 per cent from 2005 by 2019 while its share of non-fossil fuels had reached 15 per cent of the total by 2020, it was still using coal for 58% of its energy needs in 2019 and had brought 38.4 gigawatts of new coal-fired power into operation during 2020, more than three times the level of the rest of the world.

In foreign affairs, within days of the Taliban takeover, and following on from earlier meetings between the CCP and the Taliban, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying amusingly stated its intention to work with the Taliban on the basis “we respect the wishes and choices of the Afghan people”.

Tell that to the many men, women and children trying to flee Afghanistan as the Taliban took over.

Australia, in its opposition to the CCP’s actions, is indeed on the right side of history, whether or not the West prevails on behalf of humanity in this world of competitive nations.

For Australia, there is support from many powerful and wealthy nations which does offer some optimism against an increasingly assertive China.  

As of 2021, with China currently having trade sanctions on Australian coal, barley, live seafood, wine, timber and beef, the Biden Administration strongly indicated to Beijing that China must ease its "economic coercion" against Australia before it can expect improved relations with Washington.

A UK global security review (Global Britain in a Competitive Age) also views China as a major challenge (along with Russia) with the UK Government now to play a greater role in the Asia-Pacific region alongside Australia and Japan while increasing the nuclear deterrent capacity of such warheads on its submarines from 180 to 260.

Japan’s ambassador also told Australia that is “not walking alone” in its trade war against China, urging Australia to pull away from China towards Japan reducing all tariffs on Australian bottled wine to zero after China placed tariffs on Australia wine up to 212 per cent.

Trade with allies (and others) may help offset our current trade reliance with China.

For example, China plans to reduce its steel production (currently 55 per cent of global production) which has the potential to drastically reduce the price of Australia’s iron ore exports which has already declined greatly from the May 2021 high of $US237 ($A317) a tonne.

With Australia currently accounting for 60 per cent of China’s iron ore imports, it is reported that the CCP has a plan to slash its reliance on Australian iron ore by 2025 through a number of strategies including alternative suppliers (Russia, Myanmar, Kazakhstan and Mongolia) and a greater use of scrap steel to account for 30 per cent of crude steel production.

China also has its own considerable issues which will complicate its leadership aspirations that go well beyond the CCP’s constant determination to quash any domestic social dissent.

With China having borders with 14 countries, its annoyance to India alone could lead to increased military spending over time if the recent border clashes with troop fatalities are repeated.

While China is now much more aggressive with regard to strategic choke points, especially the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea, its need for raw materials means that any Western-led alliance could potentially cut off vital trade with China which is now the world’s single biggest importer of crude oil and iron ore alone.

To conclude, the existence of a powerful CCP will ultimately mean new strategies for Western nations including trading less with China; cooperating more with nations with less respect for human rights, including the Philippines under President Rodrigo Duterte; and Australia even hosting nuclear weapons.

But, in the end, Australia will remain an important Western liberal democratic example that contrasts greatly with the type of society displayed by the relatively ruthless and authoritarian CCP.

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About the Author

Chris Lewis, who completed a First Class Honours degree and PhD (Commonwealth scholarship) at Monash University, has an interest in all economic, social and environmental issues, but believes that the struggle for the ‘right’ policy mix remains an elusive goal in such a complex and competitive world.

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