It’s all good:
Julie Bishop says she raised with her Chinese counterpart all the reported pressure tactics that Beijing has been using against Australia’s trade interests and she now expects them to stop.
Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister also confirmed that the Chinese regime had used the much-anticipated meeting to complain to her about Canberra’s proposed foreign interference laws.
Chinese Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi had “raised the concern that it was aimed at China,” Ms Bishop told Fairfax Media. “I assured him that it was not, that it was the sort of legislation a number of other countries have in place as well.”
Except it isn’t:
Australia needs to take off its biased, “coloured glasses” and stop recoiling from China for the relationship to “return to the right track”, China’s foreign ministry has said in a terse statement following a meeting with Julie Bishop.
The Chinese version of events stands in stark contrast to Ms Bishop’s account of the same meeting, which she described as “very warm and candid and constructive”.
According to a cool statement from China, released on Tuesday afternoon in Beijing, Foreign minister Wang Yi told Ms Bishop when they met in Argentina on Monday that it was “not an official bilateral meeting”, but rather he wanted to “exchange views with you on bilateral relations”.
The Chinese statement appears to confirm Beijing’s recent freeze on high level official meetings with Australia, despite attempts by the Turnbull government to play down the diplomatic stoush.
And why would it be all good?
A China-born Australian billionaire and political donor has been named in federal parliament as a co-conspirator identified by the FBI in the bribery of a UN official and as having close links to the Chinese Communist Party.
In allegations levelled last night, the chairman of the joint committee on intelligence and security, Andrew Hastie, told parliament he could reveal that a figure codenamed by the FBI in the bribery case as CC-3 was Australian property developer Chau Chak Wing.
Using the legal protection of parliamentary privilege, the Liberal MP and former SAS commander said the information had come to him during meetings last month with US intelligence and security agency officials.
Except in some ways it’s business as usual:
Malcolm Turnbull, Bill Shorten, and all state and territory leaders have endorsed a major Australian-Chinese community event organised by Huang Xiangmo, whose dealings with Sam Dastyari led to the Labor senator’s resignation from parliament.
The Commemorative Gala Dinner, backed by former political donor Mr Huang, once described by the Prime Minister as “a foreign national with close links to a foreign government”, was held at Sydney Town Hall on Sunday to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Chinese migration to Australia.
Historian Paul Macgregor, who studies the Australian-Chinese diaspora, said yesterday Mr Huang’s role was about corralling the Chinese communities of Australia under his banner.
…As a result of Mr Dastyari’s associations with Mr Huang, Mr Turnbull said: “Whose side is (Mr Dastyari) on? Is he on the side of the agencies that keep us safe or is he on the side of a foreign government?”
The Silent Invasion is a very long way from over.
