Via the AFR:
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has moved early in the new year to mend relations with China, twice praising Beijing for its role in combating North Korea and saying he is now more positive over the resolution of territorial disputes in the region.
“I note those sanctions [against North Korea] are being supported by the global community and China,” he said on Thursday.
Mr Turnbull’s olive branch to China was all the more significant given it was extended at a Japanese military base, amid a backdrop of increasingly close security ties between Canberra and Tokyo designed to buttress against a more assertive Beijing.
“I’m more optimistic about those issues being resolved than I have been in a couple of years,” he said.
Mr Turnbull said “some real progress” was made at last year’s East Asia Summit and there was “some more positive movement” on a code of conduct being finalised around the South China Sea.
The Prime Minister”s comments came after a diplomat row sparked by criticism from International Aid Minister Concetta Fierravanti-Wells that China was funding “useless” buildings and leaving countries saddled with debt.
Yesterday the Chinese Ambassador to Australia, Cheng Jingye, defended China’s foreign aid program in the Pacific.
Mr Cheng said the minister and media should abandon their “bias, bigotry and narrow mindset”, insisting China provided aid with no strings attached and to show it could be a “responsible major power”.
That’s a laugh. Influence in certain multi-lateral forums is the only reason that they give “aid” at all. Still, the comments by Ms Concetta Fierravanti-Wells were stupid. Why risk China’s wrath for exposing something so trivial and widely known?
Do-nothing Malcolm is awfully ham-fisted too. He sounds like the Tin-pot dictator from Downunder patronising China on security issues within its own sphere of influence.
A better olive branch would simply be to shut up.
