Australia must stay resolute against authoritarian China

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.