Revenge of the China grovellers

It hasn’t taken long for a change of government to embolden Australia’s stock of China grovellers. Last week especially they crawled from their hiding holes to begin a new campaign of useful idiocy for Beijing.

It was led off by heavily conflicted coal director Geoff Raby at the righty AFR:

In Madrid, the country of Cervantes, we had the spectacle of Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza tilting at windmills, trying to convince others that the world is not cast as it is.

At the same time, we had the prime ministers of Belgium and the Netherlands warning that China is not an enemy of Europe. And warning that equating China with Russia, as Albanese did, was not only a mistake, but potentially harmful.

Until Albanese changes the advisers who have taken Australia into these policy dead ends, he will continue to cut a quixotic figure on the world stage.

Worse, he will run the risk that as China and the US recalibrate their relations, Australia will be left like a shag on a rock, and our security seriously unattended.

The equally appalling AFR still refuses to put Raby’s true byline on his stories. From the Foreign Influence Register:

Raby’s arguments are so distorted that they are best referred to as propaganda:

• All of Europe is recalibrating away from Russia and China. Post-Ukraine, liberal powers are coming together like they have not done since the Cold War. Albo was not quixotic. He was deep consensus.
• The one great thing about Australia’s Chinese posture through the trials of three governments – Turnbull, Morrison and Albanese – is that the advisors have been the same throughout. This has allowed successive Australian Governments to adapt to each new challenge with impressive speed. Hence we have had the domestic influence pushback, survival of the trade war, the revitalisation of liberal alliances (Quad, NATO, AUKUS etc) after the “14 conditions to end democracy”, and the Pacific reset. This is a mighty pivot for a slow-moving sovereign and much gratitude should go to the very advisors that Raby unscrupulously attacks.
• The US is not recalibrating towards China, either. Even if the Biden Administration decides to cut tariffs, its overarching posture is continuity with Trump, not break from it. Moreover, ties with Taiwan and other Asian allies are clearly deepening. US/China rapprochement is Geoff Raby fantasy.

Over the weekend, Hugh White also dragged himself into the twilight at the lefty Saturday Paper:

Ask Hugh White what has changed in Australia’s fraught relationship with China since the election of the Albanese government and he invokes the law of holes.

“The first law of holes is, if you’re in one, stop digging,” says White, emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University. “The new government’s primary concern has been to at least stop digging quite as bloody energetically.”

In 40 years watching Australia’s approach to international affairs and national security, White can think of no parallel to the way the Morrison government “deliberately tried to exacerbate the tensions with Beijing for political purposes”.

They thought it would help them win an election. It didn’t. Most voters saw the bilateral relationship as a complex issue to be managed rather than a threat to be confronted. Chinese Australians, in particular, were offended, he says, by the “warmongering” talk.

“It’s not true to say the past government ignored the Pacific; it’s just that their policy had one big fat hole in it, which they were unable to address.”

White welcomes the fact that the new government does not issue dire warnings about China’s part of a threatening “arc of autocracy” bent on subverting the international rules-based order, as Morrison did, or utter repeated warnings that we should prepare for war, like former Defence minister Peter Dutton.

But what has really changed other than the rhetoric directed at China? Not much. There was, White says, “no material difference” in policy between the two sides of politics before the election and there still is not.

The new government may have stopped digging, but we’re still in a hole.

“It strikes me that they’re hoping that a change in tone will produce … a substantial improvement in the bilateral relationship,” he says. But he notes, even as the new government has softened its rhetoric towards China, it has continued to mouth “stock phrases”, about the United States, the “indispensable power”.

“It makes me think that they haven’t thought at all deeply about the fundamental problem, which is that we continue to hope and expect America to solve that China problem for us.”

White doesn’t see America solving it. Quite the opposite. Australia’s core problem, he writes in the latest Quarterly Essay, is its “decision to overtly, explicitly and energetically oppose China’s ambition to push America out of East Asia and take its place as the leading regional power”.

And, White reiterates to The Saturday Paper, that is to deny reality. China’s power and influence will inevitably grow, particularly in our part of the world. Already it accounts for 19 per cent of global GDP compared with the US at 16 per cent. By 2035, that gap is likely to widen to 24 versus 14.

“China’s power is something we’re going to have to learn to live with instead of trying to block,” he says.

Other leaders have realised this, he says, pointing to New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s speech last week to the Lowy Institute. “She very clearly articulated what Australian political leaders will not articulate”: that it is necessary to be more accommodating of China, notwithstanding our differences.

Riiiiight. US GDP is around $23tr. Chinese GDP is around $17tr.

I can only assume that White is using Purchasing Power Parity numbers to boost Chinese output above that of the US. This makes no sense. PPP is a cost of living, not an economic power, measure:

GDP comparisons using PPP are arguably more useful than those using nominal GDP when assessing the domestic market of a state because PPP takes into account the relative cost of local goods, services and inflation rates of the country, rather than using international market exchange rates, which may distort the real differences in per capita income. It is however limited when measuring financial flows between countries and when comparing the quality of same goods among countries. PPP is often used to gauge global poverty thresholds and is used by the United Nations in constructing the human development index. These surveys such as the International Comparison Program include both tradable and non-tradable goods in an attempt to estimate a representative basket of all goods.

In terms of economic power, we use GDP because it measures the ability of a state to project influence and acquire power via imports and export volumes.

In those terms, China still lags the US by a long way. Moreover, China is about to slump Japanese-style into an ex-growth bog. Not to mention that China exaggerates its GDP meaningfully by failing to write down bad investments.

As well, post-Ukraine war, it is clear that a revitalised NATO is going to play a major role in any US-China conflict. If not in terms of boots on the ground or ships in the sea, then definitely in terms of the economic and financial boycott that will smash the Chinese economy a’la Russia.

In fact, we can add all of the US alliance network to the same calculus which constitutes every developed market on planet earth. All will blockade China back into the dark ages.

Once we incorporate these facts, China never gets close to overtaking the US in GDP terms and lags even more in terms of GDP power.

Completing the triptych of China prostration was Crikey where Wanning Sun, professor of media and communication in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UTS, ventured into territory she should stay right out of:

After three years in deep freeze, Australia’s relationship with China may be starting to thaw, with the foreign affairs ministers finally talking to each other.

After the meeting between Penny Wong and Wang Yi, the Chinese ministry issued a carefully crafted statement in which China sounded positive and forward-looking, according to quite a few bilingual diplomats. On all accounts, one would have thought that this at last was a good news story.

But what has ensued is a classic example of how a “good story” can be turned into a bad one, courtesy of Australian media.

It seems most stories we have seen so far about this official statement pivot around how to interpret a few sentences in the statement. Translated by Professor Jocelyn Chey, they read as follows:

It was hoped that Australia would catch the current opportunity, take concrete actions, reconstruct a correct perception of China, and reduce negative equity and accumulate positive energy in order to improve China-Australia relations. First, China should continue to be regarded as a partner not a rival. Second, the way of ‘seeking common ground while reserving differences’ should be maintained. Third, [the practice of] not aiming at others or being controlled by others should be maintained. Fourth, the building of a foundation of positive practical community support should be maintained.

Translated thus, these seem to be just four vaguely worded points that may be taken as either advice or as principles that both sides should adhere to.

But despite these nuances, the most frequently used word in the Australian media to describe the four points has been “demands”. For example, an ABC story asserted: “Mr Wang has made four general demands of the new government” — without any justification for its use of “demands”.

With respect, who cares? We’ve spent the last six years fighting off various forms of Chinese insurgency, attack, bullying, insult, blackmail, and coercion. This was the true face of Xi’s CCP. There is no going back to putting aside differences, and we should never again trust a single word from Beijing.

What’s ahead must be exactly what is behind: diversification away from China; building resilience against China and formation of alliances to contain China.

If we do that then our liberal system can survive and prosper as the wannabe Chinese empire never is, and its local useful idiots disappear with it.