Everywhere in the press, it is the same refrain every day. Another Australian export to China is cut off followed by pearl-grabbing over our punishment and whinging about the need for diplomatic reversal. Wednesday it was students. Yesterday it was table grapes. Today it is BHP having a whine about coal.
Politics is no different. On the one hand, the Morrison Government regularly insults Beijing, usually via the PM himself, with blandishments and warmongering. Then he turns around and tells Australians that the relationship is fine.
On the other hand, Labor has no solution whatsoever. Shadow Foreign Minister Penny Wong has broken the long-held bipartisanship of strategic policy. She regularly describes the CCP threat then demands the government reverse into kowtowing as if that will yield different results to the past.
All of this blathering misses the fundamental truth of what is happening.
The change in the Australia/China relationship is neither cyclical, political, diplomatic nor personal. It is structural. As China shifts towards totalitarian empire building and the US liberal empire shifts to counter it.
For years, the US has watched on as the CCP militarised the South China Sea, moved to bribe any and every two-horse state with the BRI, openly tried to corrupt and capture Australia and sought to wedge NATO.
No longer. In Washington, there is absolute bipartisan support for the containment of China. Donald Trump woke the US from its slumber. Now, the Biden administration is using the alliance network worldwide to hem China in.
The Quad is being dusted off and revitalised. Biden has prompted the trashing of the seven-year in the making Europe/China investment deal. Now he is now pressuring South Korea to harden its China stance. Japan is already on board and today announced it will scrap its long-standing 1% of GDP cap on defence spending. Biden supports Australia at every turn in its trade war with China.
Consider this change from the perspective of Beijing. It has spent thirty years in a grand attempt to bribe the Australian political economy. This was part needs-based and part strategic sense. It needed the commodities and splitting Australia from the US alliance network was a bonus.
But that project has failed. Bejing’s final gambit was to throw down the challenge of the 14 conditions to end democracy. Which, instead, ended the relationship.
So, what would you do in such circumstances? Would you continue to enrich the arrogant little shit that took your money but did you no favours in return? Would you continue to rely upon its flow of goods when it has made it plain that it will declare war upon you the moment that the US says it must?
Of course not. The only sensible response is to take away the largesse. And to diversify your trade. This is not punishment. It is pure strategic self-interest.
That’s why yesterday’s declaration by the State Council – effectively the PRC cabinet – that China will end its reliance on Australian iron ore is also different this time. This was not the usual whinging that comes at every commodity cycle peak. It was a shift in strategic policy. This time, come hell or high water, China will see it done because it has no choice. Australia has too much power over it. It is hostile and must be excised.
China is not punishing Australia via selective trade. Rather, we are being systematically and structurally divorced.
Australia is entering its post-China era. At some point, Canberra might want to prepare for it.
