Can Australia stop the Chinese government’s economic coercion against our government and businesses? Yes.
All it would take is for Australian political leaders and parliaments to align our national policies, laws and directions with those of the Chinese government. Shutting up when we have differences and making decisions aligned with Beijing’s acts, wishes and decisions would be the most business-friendly China policy for Australia and every other country to adopt.
That’s pretty much what a set of interests and voices in Australia is calling for when it talks of ‘resetting the relationship’.
But it’s also very difficult. Unavoidable differences in national interests are becoming more stark as China’s national power grows and as the Chinese Communist Party uses that power more coercively domestically and internationally.
China’s aggressive expansion of its boundaries through forcible seizure of South China Sea landforms and the coercive patrolling of the maritime area within its large ‘nine-dash line’ claim is one example.
In Australia, Chinese foreign interference has led to new laws and seen cyber hacking of our parliament and political parties. And now, the Chinese ambassador’s threats of economic coercion have been followed by actual coercion disguised as arcane technical difficulties around our barley and beef exports.
The pressure is intended to force policy change in Australia—to stop Australia building international support for an inquiry into the pandemic’s causes.
Economic pressure on industries like barley and beef doesn’t just make a direct point to our political leaders about the consequences of acting against the Chinese government’s interests; it creates pressure within Australia on those leaders. Hence the free advice that former politicians and business types are giving the government.
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/edito ... ith-china/And we are not alone. Many nations are dealing with a coercive, powerful Chinese government that uses its economic weight to pressure them, all because they’ve acted in their national interests. Norway suffered Chinese economic coercion over the Nobel prize that affected its smoked salmon exports. South Korea suffered boycotts of consumer goods when it installed a US missile defence system for its own security against North Korea. Japan faced down Chinese government threats on critical mineral exports. And we’ve seen testing of Australian thermal coal exports for radiation (!) as one of the ‘technical difficulties’ coinciding with Chinese government displeasure.
Even the US National Basketball Association and the world’s airlines have been subjected to coercion, in the NBA’s case because an official had the nerve to support pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. The airlines incurred disfavour over their naming of Taiwan on flight boards.
It’s not tone or management of the relationship that’s causing Chinese coercion. It’s a clash of interests and values. Until Australia and other countries stop being democracies, stop thinking that freedom of speech and human rights are important, and stop taking decisions in the interests of our own sovereignty and security, we will bump into Chinese government interests and actions.
As Chinese government aggression increases, the business risk for all companies trading with China is growing. The pandemic is an example, but it has really just highlighted a problem that was growing before it.
Good article and worth a full read.