Once again, it is Beijing that acts in the Australian national interest while Canberra sells it out:
Australia has pushed back firmly on China’s calls for greater foreign investment access, with Trade Minister Don Farrell defending blocking purchases on national security grounds, while moving quickly to resolve biosecurity bottlenecks delaying electric vehicle imports by Chinese firms.
Returning from a major visit to Beijing without a breakthrough in the damaging tariff dispute, Senator Farrell said he’d achieved his intention of progressing a rapprochement and stabilisation of relations, as China pushed for full market access for its products into Australia and “fair” treatment by the federal government.
I am hopeful that Albo’s China grovellers can’t go that far. Hopeful only, mind you, because they will sell everything not bolted down if they can.
Labor’s cavalcade of groveling is not over, with more state premiers yet to go, Penny Wong in the queue, and then the big one, Albo himself to celebrate 50 years of groveling post-Whitlam.
But Bejing appears to have larger fish to fry:
…the Global Times was less soothing: “China has no interest in changing Australia‘s foreign policy, which views the US as its closest ally. But its following of the US to see China as a security threat and crack down on China is not what we can turn a blind eye to. This is the root cause why China-Australia relations encountered difficulties.”
The party-state mouthpiece pointed to Australia’s AUKUS deal to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, which it described as a military plan to “contain and provoke confrontations with China”.
“How could Australia play the dual role as China‘s close economic friend and strategic security enemy at the same time?”
How indeed? Australians might pause to ponder how it is that bald-faced CCP propaganda is more honest about the Australia/China relationship than are its own Labor governments.
Not to mention everybody else. The rest of the free world is running away from China:
Two years after foreign funds started calling China “uninvestable,” it looked like President Xi Jinping had found a formula to lure them back.
His very public pivot away from Covid Zero at the end of last year was accompanied by a string of market-friendly reversals for hard-hit sectors like property and Big Tech.
Bold steps to shore up the economy paired with a decisive shift in tone from regulators and state media in favor of private enterprise.
et market confidence remains shaky — a situation that wasn’t helped when authorities, using a new counter-espionage law, started raiding offices of consultants and researchers who help global investors understand the country.
The decision by long-term investors like SoftBank Group Corp. and Prosus NV to cash out reveals just how much damage has been done to China’s credibility abroad.
Except at the ALP head office which would grab shopping bags full of cash at the first available opportunity.
Thankfully, we can rely on Bejing will keep up the good work of defending the Australian national interest by making itself permanently “uninvestable”.
