Alexander Downer was never the sharpest cross-dresser in the shed, at the AFR he declares:
China’s aggression will, in the end, prove to be entirely counterproductive. There are two reasons why.
First, other countries have indeed been warned that China will treat them with the same aggression should they in some way transgress and incur the wrath of the Communist leaders in Beijing. The message from Beijing is clear. Tremble and obey…There is one obvious way to counter this. That is to become less economically dependent on China.
…Secondly, China’s aggression towards Australia has had the effect of corralling other regional countries and particularly liberal democracies to balance China’s power. The evolution of what was once the Trilateral Security Dialogue – which I set up with the Americans and the Japanese in 2006 – into the Quad is obviously designed to balance China’s power. The fact that India has joined in is not a strategic plus for China.
And look at what the new appointees in the incoming Biden administration have had to say. Antony Blinken has spoken of binding the democracies of North America, Europe and the Indo-Pacific together in a new movement of democracies. So has Jake Sullivan, the new national security adviser. How can all of this be in China’s interest?
It’s not but it’s the wrong question to ask. The right question is who’s interests is this in if not the Chinese people? The answer is the CCP and, in particular, Xi Jinping.
Once one accepts that the Chinese economy is in trouble as it goes ex-growth through the 2020s then bogs down permanently as disastrous demographics take their toll, then external aggression makes perfect sense. If the fulcrum of CCP power is its social contract with Chinese peoples – that they give up political freedom in exchange for prosperity – then obviously the CCP is also in jeopardy as the economy stagnates.
The answer is an age-old one for the dictator: arouse nationalism. That is achieved by creating a bunch of external enemies to blame for your domestic problems.
This is why CCP moves today are entirely logical, so long as you understand who they are designed to benefit. It’s not China nor the Chinese. To wit, at the FT:
The EU will call on the US to seize a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity to forge a new global alliance, in a detailed pitch to bury the tensions of the Trump era and meet the “strategic challenge” posed by China.
A draft EU plan for revitalising the transatlantic partnership, seen by the Financial Times, proposes new co-operation on everything from digital regulation and tackling the Covid-19 pandemic to fighting deforestation.
The paper, prepared by the European Commission, says the EU-US partnership needs “maintenance and renewal” if the democratic world is to assert its interests against “authoritarian powers” and “closed economies [that] exploit the openness our own societies depend on”.
The 11-page set of draft policy proposals, entitled “a new EU-US agenda for global change”, includes an appeal for the EU and US to bury the hatchet on persistent sources of transatlantic tension, such as Europe’s push for greater taxation of US tech giants.
As open democratic societies and market economies, the EU and the US agree on the strategic challenge presented by China’s growing international assertiveness, even if we do not always agree on the best way to address this.
…The paper says: “As open democratic societies and market economies, the EU and the US agree on the strategic challenge presented by China’s growing international assertiveness, even if we do not always agree on the best way to address this.”
Time to limit financial flows into China. Tobin Tax Ray Dalio into oblivion.
