Jason Yat-sen Li should just condemn the CCP

Advertisement

Via perennial young leader Jason Yat-sen Li on the Labor senate ticket at Domain:

“As a principle I would love to see Parliament broadly reflective of the Australian population,” Mr Li told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age days after being selected as a candidate.

“I like targets because you know you are working towards something and we have a fair way to go.

…He said the debate about Chinese political interference in Australia had silenced sections of the community after allegations of bribery, political donations and diplomatic freezes culminated in new foreign interference laws last year.

…”In defending China or defending their Chinese heritage everybody is very concerned not to be fingered or accused of being a stooge for the Communist party.

Fair enough. As I frequently say, the local Chinese community is not at fault.

But, unfortunately, neither can we say that defending China is not defending the Chinese Communist Party. Jason Yat-sen Li has operated in business as a consultant between Australian and Chinese businesses. He will have seen the long arm of The Party (which is not to imply any impropiety on his part).

Advertisement

Does Bill Shorten know it? He appeared on WeChat just this week to declare:

…“America will always be importan­t to the security for Australia, but if I am prime minister I welcome the rise of China in the world,’’ he said. “I don’t see … China as a strategic threat. I see it as a strategic opportunity. What I want to see is greater mutual understanding ­between all of us.”

But under the China Communist Party, China is a strategic threat, a direct rival to liberal democracy that has Australia’s intelligence and military establishment very alarmed, in contrast (and conflict?) with Bill Shorten. The CCP is an openly fascistic state, vastly illiberal with ever greater centralised control under an explicit dictator deploying the full power of technological surveillance for control, and imprisoning millions of its enemies point blank. It is no exaggeration to say that the CCP is the gravest threat to the Western liberal democratic model of government (of which Australia is an example) since the Cold War. Moreover, the CCP has already displayed a willingness to project power, as great powers always do, and use it to undermine economically allied democracies, in particular Australia.

Advertisement

I’d suggest a different approach is needed from local Chinese leaders who are quite rightly aiming to free their community from suspicions aroused by CCP activity Downunder.

Rather than demand a centrally-planned ethnic parliament, Jason Yat-sen Li should publicly condemn the CCP for violating Australian sovereignty, as well as celebrate our democracy and freedom regardless of where we’re from.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.