It’s been a long and good time since we heard from James Laurenceson of the UTS China-Grovelling Institute.
Sadly, he has been slowly reappearing of late, like some troglodyte emerging from a nuclear fallout bunker.
Today he is cock-a-whoop:
All of this has led many commentators to conclude that the best days of the Australia-China economic relationship are behind us. The campaign of trade disruption that Beijing launched in 2020 is held up as Exhibit A of what the new world looks like.
The fact that the share of Australia’s goods trade with China finished 2022 at 28 per cent, down from 35 per cent two year earlier, has been interpreted as evidence that desirable “diversification” is underway.
If we accept that trade goods like lithium and EVs are on the up, while fossil fuels and cars with internal combustion engines are on the way down, the already large gap between China and Japan as Australia’s largest and second-largest trading partners is about to become a chasm.
Albo has already done material damage to Australia’s great diversification. My hope is that the recent hook downward is the beginning of a shift in the bulk commodities which will hammer the risk lower as China goes ex-growth with its sinking property market,
Nothing will save the China grovellers if iron ore and coking coal revert to mean:
This makes you wonder why China grovellers are not discussing it. Lithium is never going to come close to the bulks for value.
If we dig deep enough we can surmise why. Laurenceson’s grovelling enterprise is hardly “independent” given its funding base:
UTS:ACRI relies on a mix of funding sources, including from the University of Technology Sydney central research and operational budget and industry partners.
UTS:ACRI is honoured to have the support of the following industry partners:
- Business Council of Australia
- China Construction
- Bank John Holland
- King & Wood Mallesons
- MA Financial Group
- PwC
- Star Entertainment
Industry partners do not provide strategic direction nor do they shape or influence UTS:ACRI’s academic activities. UTS:ACRI has a fully independent, academically rigorous and transparent research agenda.
A one-off $1.8 million donation in December 2013 dispersed over three years and finishing in 2016, from Founder and Chairman of the Yuhu Group, Mr Xiangmo Huang, enabled UTS to establish ACRI.
Mr Xiangmo Huang has now been exiled following his exposure as an agent provocateur in the Dastayri Affair, as well as associations with the United Front. The corporate partners and UTS are about as independent from China as Xi Jinping.
Let’s not forget, too, that ACRI was launched under “Beijing” Bob Carr. Clearly a partisan choice.
China grovellers can finesse their arguments all they like but they can’t airbrush this away:
The Australia/China relationship is structurally broken and pretending otherwise is not in the national interest.
