I’m sure this is just a coincidence. As Paul Keating pushes his China forever barrow so, too, is Beijing:
Chinese ambassador Xiao Qian is the local face of a superpower on the rise, an increasingly assertive nation with a population and economy that dwarf Australia’s.
Despite well-publicised recent trade disputes, China remains Australia’s top export market, its largest source of international students and most valuable source of tourism dollars.
Yet rather than puffed up with a sense of his own importance, Beijing’s man in Canberra is clearly disappointed by how long it is taking, and how difficult it is proving, to achieve a substantial reset in the Australia-China relationship.
Well, a few facts are in order. China’s share of our trade has crashed back to where it was ten years ago so why would we take a bribe that comes with limits to our liberalism? Other likeminded democracies are gobbling up our exports with thanks and conraderie:
As China goes ex-growth with its structural property adjustment, and it spurns Aussie coal, its contribution to our trade has fallen away with iron ore and coking coal.
Meanwhile, energy and agriculture in other nations have boomed.
See ya, China, and wouldn’t want to be ya.
