The AUKUS spectre

By August I will be 85. I came here 64 years ago on a Colombo Plan Scholarship to what was God’s own country, my childhood imagination inspired by the ever-joyful matronly Methodist missionaries from Southern America.

In 1984 Professor Geoffrey Blainey would blast me out of that reverie.

Since then, I have become less of an unthinking citizen and at times discordantly critical of my adopted country, the homeland of my grandchildren.

I would feel much more at ease if I knew how AUKUS was conceived, midwived and childcared.

The continuing sufferings of the “Vietnam vets”, an entirely avoidable national disgrace inflicted through the Red Peril paranoia and the USA sycophancy of Sir Robert Menzies, are etched in my mind. The most brilliant student in my cohort at Melbourne University got drafted into that American war and lost his mind whilst undergoing military training.

Could AUKUS turn out to be another national disgrace we got into haphazardly? I dread the spectre of my grandchildren being drafted into another American war, this time in the South China Sea. It takes three generations for a migrant (Asian, ethnic) to establish their cultural roots in the new land.

Was AUKUS integral to or a happenstance evolution from Obama’s Pivot to Asia? Julia Gillard blissfully signed up to it in 2011, beginning with American troops rotating through Darwin. It has since been upgraded now to having American nuclear subs stationed in purpose-built bases on our shores.

Did Boris Johnson play a catalytic part, sinking the French subs contract to exact revenge on Macron?

Was Morrison’s hitch to AUKUS his prayer for a second miracle? Or was he encouraged by American operatives who by then might have progressed to getting Australia tied to the Pivot to Asia “for 40 years”, as Kurt Campbell, Joe Biden’s Asia policy chief is said to have told European officials privately in 2022?

Did Morrison lie to Biden regarding AUKUS being a bi-Partisan undertaking? It was said that Albo only had 12 hours’ notice before Morrison announced his AUKUS pact. Was that an ambush that got Albo into embracing AUKUS with alacrity?  It reminds me of our journey into the Vietnam disaster: Robert Menzies, to the surprise of almost the entire Parliament, announced the sending of fighting soldiers to Vietnam on a Thursday night in 1965 when Opposition leaders Arthur Caldwell and Gough Whitlam had already left Canberra for their homes in Melbourne and Sydney. Some said that Menzies was worried about communism spreading to Malaysia and Indonesia, and that he had done the right thing to encourage the Americans to remain all-powerful in Asia. As we now know the domino theory attached to the Red Peril has not come to pass.

When the truth is out, there should be no need to tell ourselves stories, of ever-changing hue as time goes on. The terra nullius saga that went on for so long is a salutary tale in point.

As a Chinese Australian I believe that it is hallucinatory not to think that AUKUS is a nightmare that could invade our dreamscape of a wonderful homeland for our heirs.

Indeed, the Chinese have been social and political scapegoats since they first came as indentured labourers in 1848: The attack upon the indentured Chinese upon landing at Ipswich in 1851 -two dead and several hospitalised; the 1857 Buckland Valley attack (euphemised as ‘Riots’) with at least three dead; the well-planned and well-organised 1861 Lambing Flat attack (‘Riots’) -1 200 Chinese driven to camp in open paddock on a rainy winter’s night with just the clothes they wore, not a few with open wounds where their pigtails had been shaved off by white attackers; Brisbane’s Night of Broken Glass, 1888, during which a white mob, reaching 2,000 at its height, stoned and shattered the glass fronts of most if not all Chinese premises.

And I have lived through the more recent Sinophobic moments:

1996. Pauline Hanson’s maiden speech: … (they) form ghettos and won’t assimilate. PM John Howard defended her. Chinese students in schools suffered the backlash.

2018. Clive Hamilton’s Silent Invasion reincarnated the Yellow Peril, bringing alive the memory of the well-popularised Fu Manchu books and movies. The populace duly responded.

April 2020. PM Morrison bugled for an inquiry into the origin of Covid, perhaps to please Trump.  The Chinese were spat on in public and singled out at work.

October 2020. Eric Abetz impugned three Chinese Aussies at a Senate hearing. Despite media outrage, Abetz did not apologise, nor did PM Morrison say a word.

With these continual reminders, and the Covid experience still fresh, Chinese Aussies have every reason to be alert.

Now comes AUKUS, the climax of our national security fearmongering, parading China as the looming devil, yet again. It remains to be seen if the Sinophobia this time is home-grown as it was in the 19^th century or borne out of opportunism, and the ingratiating kowtowing to the remaining white imperial power: in other words, a replay of the Menzies blinkered imperial vision. 

The Aboriginal peoples have been subdued and made mendicants in their own country for a good two centuries. The Chinese, once to be got rid of by hook or by crook, are now widely spread towards the higher strata of Australian society, an outcome of our non-discriminatory immigration policy that focused on skills and money. Meanwhile, once China the sick man of Asia, has pulled itself up by its bootstraps. Its economic, cultural and technological achievement is a marvel to the West. Short of a huge one-sided war, like the one which Japan inflicted upon China in 1930s, China’s economic and social advancements seem unstoppable. But the memory of its 100 years of subjugation and exploitation by the West is deep. It is not unnatural that China should build defence systems while it is still being surrounded by American military bases near and far, as far away as our wide brown land. And might China not see the American Hand in Japanese remilitarization as its Pivot to the South China Sea? 

When Covid came Eric Abetz, Joe McCarthy like, led from his Senatorial sinecure to conduct a “Loyalty Test” for three Chinese Australians appearing before a Parliamentary Inquiry hearing.

How could AUKUS be managed so that Chinese Australians would not have to endure the consequences of the next electioneering campaign shootout, or suffer from fallouts owing to our Virginia subs, built to hunt and kill China’s subs, should they venture into China’s defended coast? This is a possibly a natural progression from our current “freedom of navigation” posturing in the Taiwan Strait.

China and Chinese Australians get hitched together whenever our politicians toll the national security bell.

The continual demonisation of China as the reason for AUKUS will have an effect on Social Cohesion. We should remember that blaming China for Covid had the effect of giving permission to the populace to treat Chinese Australians as suspects requiring social retribution.

Likewise, the demonisation of Muslims since 9/11 is likely to have contributed to the Bondi attack on Jewish Australians. And the unconscionable Israeli killing of women and children and the bombing to rubble hospitals, housing and infrastructure in Gaza, are likely to have played a big part in the rise of Antisemitism in Oz and elsewhere in the West. In times like this, Israeli crimes seem to have visited upon Jewish Australians.

How can we manage AUKUS without giving permission to the populace to vent its frustrations, built up by decades of social and economic abandonment, upon the enviable Chinese Aussies living on the fat of the land?

By August I will be 85. I came here 64 years ago on a Colombo Plan Scholarship to what was God’s own country, my childhood imagination inspired by the ever-joyful matronly Methodist missionaries from Southern America.

In 1984 Professor Geoffrey Blainey would blast me out of that reverie.

Since then, I have become less of an unthinking citizen and at times discordantly critical of my adopted country, the homeland of my grandchildren.

I would feel much more at ease if I knew how AUKUS was conceived, midwived and childcared.

The continuing sufferings of the “Vietnam vets”, an entirely avoidable national disgrace inflicted through the Red Peril paranoia and the USA sycophancy of Sir Robert Menzies, are etched in my mind. The most brilliant student in my cohort at Melbourne University got drafted into that American war and lost his mind whilst undergoing military training.

Could AUKUS turn out to be another national disgrace we got into haphazardly? I dread the spectre of my grandchildren being drafted into another American war, this time in the South China Sea. It takes three generations for a migrant (Asian, ethnic) to establish their cultural roots in the new land.

Was AUKUS integral to or a happenstance evolution from Obama’s Pivot to Asia? Julia Gillard blissfully signed up to it in 2011, beginning with American troops rotating through Darwin. It has since been upgraded now to having American nuclear subs stationed in purpose-built bases on our shores.

Did Boris Johnson play a catalytic part, sinking the French subs contract to exact revenge on Macron?

Was Morrison’s hitch to AUKUS his prayer for a second miracle? Or was he encouraged by American operatives who by then might have progressed to getting Australia tied to the Pivot to Asia “for 40 years”, as Kurt Campbell, Joe Biden’s Asia policy chief is said to have told European officials privately in 2022?

Did Morrison lie to Biden regarding AUKUS being a bi-Partisan undertaking? It was said that Albo only had 12 hours’ notice before Morrison announced his AUKUS pact. Was that an ambush that got Albo into embracing AUKUS with alacrity?  It reminds me of our journey into the Vietnam disaster: Robert Menzies, to the surprise of almost the entire Parliament, announced the sending of fighting soldiers to Vietnam on a Thursday night in 1965 when Opposition leaders Arthur Caldwell and Gough Whitlam had already left Canberra for their homes in Melbourne and Sydney. Some said that Menzies was worried about communism spreading to Malaysia and Indonesia, and that he had done the right thing to encourage the Americans to remain all-powerful in Asia. As we now know the domino theory attached to the Red Peril has not come to pass.

When the truth is out, there should be no need to tell ourselves stories, of ever-changing hue as time goes on. The terra nullius saga that went on for so long is a salutary tale in point.

As a Chinese Australian I believe that it is hallucinatory not to think that AUKUS is a nightmare that could invade our dreamscape of a wonderful homeland for our heirs.

Indeed, the Chinese have been social and political scapegoats since they first came as indentured labourers in 1848: The attack upon the indentured Chinese upon landing at Ipswich in 1851 -two dead and several hospitalised; the 1857 Buckland Valley attack (euphemised as ‘Riots’) with at least three dead; the well-planned and well-organised 1861 Lambing Flat attack (‘Riots’) -1 200 Chinese driven to camp in open paddock on a rainy winter’s night with just the clothes they wore, not a few with open wounds where their pigtails had been shaved off by white attackers; Brisbane’s Night of Broken Glass, 1888, during which a white mob, reaching 2,000 at its height, stoned and shattered the glass fronts of most if not all Chinese premises.

And I have lived through the more recent Sinophobic moments:

1996. Pauline Hanson’s maiden speech: … (they) form ghettos and won’t assimilate. PM John Howard defended her. Chinese students in schools suffered the backlash.

2018. Clive Hamilton’s Silent Invasion reincarnated the Yellow Peril, bringing alive the memory of the well-popularised Fu Manchu books and movies. The populace duly responded.

April 2020. PM Morrison bugled for an inquiry into the origin of Covid, perhaps to please Trump.  The Chinese were spat on in public and singled out at work.

October 2020. Eric Abetz impugned three Chinese Aussies at a Senate hearing. Despite media outrage, Abetz did not apologise, nor did PM Morrison say a word.

With these continual reminders, and the Covid experience still fresh, Chinese Aussies have every reason to be alert.

Now comes AUKUS, the climax of our national security fearmongering, parading China as the looming devil, yet again. It remains to be seen if the Sinophobia this time is home-grown as it was in the 19^th century or borne out of opportunism, and the ingratiating kowtowing to the remaining white imperial power: in other words, a replay of the Menzies blinkered imperial vision. 

The Aboriginal peoples have been subdued and made mendicants in their own country for a good two centuries. The Chinese, once to be got rid of by hook or by crook, are now widely spread towards the higher strata of Australian society, an outcome of our non-discriminatory immigration policy that focused on skills and money. Meanwhile, once China the sick man of Asia, has pulled itself up by its bootstraps. Its economic, cultural and technological achievement is a marvel to the West. Short of a huge one-sided war, like the one which Japan inflicted upon China in 1930s, China’s economic and social advancements seem unstoppable. But the memory of its 100 years of subjugation and exploitation by the West is deep. It is not unnatural that China should build defence systems while it is still being surrounded by American military bases near and far, as far away as our wide brown land. And might China not see the American Hand in Japanese remilitarization as its Pivot to the South China Sea? 

When Covid came Eric Abetz, Joe McCarthy like, led from his Senatorial sinecure to conduct a “Loyalty Test” for three Chinese Australians appearing before a Parliamentary Inquiry hearing.

How could AUKUS be managed so that Chinese Australians would not have to endure the consequences of the next electioneering campaign shootout, or suffer from fallouts owing to our Virginia subs, built to hunt and kill China’s subs, should they venture into China’s defended coast? This is a possibly a natural progression from our current “freedom of navigation” posturing in the Taiwan Strait.

China and Chinese Australians get hitched together whenever our politicians toll the national security bell.

The continual demonisation of China as the reason for AUKUS will have an effect on Social Cohesion. We should remember that blaming China for Covid had the effect of giving permission to the populace to treat Chinese Australians as suspects requiring social retribution.

Likewise, the demonisation of Muslims since 9/11 is likely to have contributed to the Bondi attack on Jewish Australians. And the unconscionable Israeli killing of women and children and the bombing to rubble hospitals, housing and infrastructure in Gaza, are likely to have played a big part in the rise of Antisemitism in Oz and elsewhere in the West. In times like this, Israeli crimes seem to have visited upon Jewish Australians.

How can we manage AUKUS without giving permission to the populace to vent its frustrations, built up by decades of social and economic abandonment, upon the enviable Chinese Aussies living on the fat of the land?