The analysis of the Albanese Government is corrupted by decades of China groveling:
Australian exporters are starting to see benefits from the “de-escalation” of tensions with China, the trade minister, Don Farrell, said on the eve of crucial talks in Beijing.
Farrell will arrive on Thursday to press for an end to restrictions on a range of Australian exports – including lobster, red meat and wine – in the latest step to “stabilise” the relationship with Australia’s biggest trading partner.
It will be the first visit to China by an Australian trade minister since Simon Birmingham travelled to Shanghai in November 2019. Farrell follows in the footsteps of the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, who visited in December 2022.
This is not “de-escalation”. It is “re-risking”.
The Albanese Government got elected by admitting that “China has changed”. This was the manner in which it divorced itself from the prior era in which it blamed Australia for every step down in the China relationship despite the obvious:
- bribing Australian parliaments;
- conducting cyberwarfare;
- militarising the South China Sea;
- militarising the Pacific;
- spreading plague while stealing PPE and refusing accountability;
- mounting trade wars, and
- demanding the end of Australian democracy via the 14 conditions.
So, has China “changed again”, Albo? Yes, it has gotten worse. Now it daily buzzes Asian democracies with military threats.
G7 nations that observed Australia’s travails have well and truly gotten the message and are busily de-risking their China exposures by shifting supply chains. To wit:
Chinese manufacturers were disappointed to see a decline in the number of buyers from Europe and the United States in this week’s Canton Fair, the largest trade show in China, as Western demand was hit by high inflation and interest rate hikes.
Some exporters complained that they paid higher booth fees but were approached by fewer European buyers and almost no new US customers.
So, why on earth is Australia, the key victim of Chinese bullying now and in the future, going the other way?
I suspect Albo’s cowards would reply that they are hedging the nation with AUKUS. But this is drivel. AUKUS only increases the risk of major economic fallout in the event of a China conflict. It is not a risk hedge. It is a risk enhancer. Given it dramatically narrows Australia’s capacity to stay out of any war, and will, ironically, be used to blockade our own trade routes to China.
So, why is Labor unable or unwilling to cut the Chinese cord to promote national interest resilience?
A personal anecdote helps answer the question.
In my time traveling China twenty years ago, I spent many months in Shanghai and many hours at the famous ‘M on the Bund’ bar. I was shocked by the number of Labor frontbenchers on junkets that paraded through that place in so short a period of time. I saw no Coalition.
Labor has been corrupted by China for decades.
