The AUKUS spectre

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?