The Scottish Independent Labour Party leader in the 1930s, Jimmy Maxton, summed up the challenge of political leadership as well as anybody ever has: “If you can’t ride two bloody horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the bloody circus”.
In getting out of the hole into which we have dug ourselves with China, the beginning of wisdom for Australia’s political leaders is to recognise that – as their Vietnamese counterparts are reportedly fond of saying – we have to both “get along with China, but stand up to it”. Easier said than done, but it can be.
Our huge economic dependency on China gives us no choice but to get along: how long will it take us to find alternative markets for nearly 40 percent of our exports? But there have also been multiple legitimate concerns about Beijing’s behaviour which require a firm and clear response, among them defiance of international law in the South China Sea; egregious domestic violations of human rights (and in the case of Hong Kong, of treaty obligations as well), discriminatory and overprotective trade and industry policies, and some attempts – most of them clumsy – to exercise undue influence over public institutions.
The question in these issues is not whether to stand up, but how to stand up. And the reality is that the way in which we have responded to for the most part legitimate concerns over the last few years has made us extremely vulnerable – much more so than other countries in the region, like Japan, who have been walking a similar tightrope. I would identify four key failures in this respect.
The first is what (as John McCarthy recently reminded us) Talleyrand would have described as “excessive zeal” – too much tone-deaf stridency in our language, starting with the way Malcolm Turnbull introduced the undue influence legislation in 2017; too much over the top behaviour, as in the ASIO/AFP raids on Chinese journalists; and too much unchecked offensiveness in parliamentary performances by Senator Abetz and his fellow Wolverines.
Accompanying this, there has been a failure to fully factor in the risks – for a country of our economic vulnerability and at best middleweight – of not only irritating but hurting China, as we have done in not just joining but leading the international charge on Huawei, tough foreign investment restrictions and foreign influence laws.
I love to see Australia playing a creative, energetic international leadership role, as I hope my own record as foreign minister makes clear, but caution is the better part of valour when other major national interests are at risk.
Again, too many of the stands we have taken – those just mentioned, and above all our operationally and diplomatically ill-prepared braying for an inquiry into China’s Covid response – have played all too readily into the United States “Deputy Sheriff” narrative, and as such left us open to even heavier counter-punching. We are an easier and more vulnerable target than the US itself ever will be.
Finally, there has been insufficient recognition that there is not a lot of downside for China in getting stuck into Australia. Our iron ore is needed, but not much else. China may like our coal, and agricultural products, and to have Australia as a student and tourist destination, but it does not need us for any of them.
So what is the right strategy to get out of our present hole? To me, it has five elements.
The first, as in all these cases, is to stop digging – don’t add any more grounds for complaint to the fourteen that have been conveniently listed for us recently by the Chinese Embassy’s resident wolf-warriors. While I would regard most of these complaints as overdrawn, only three of them (relating to Australia’s statements on the South China Sea; positions on Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan; and failure to curb unfriendly press comment) seem to me completely without justification: on all the rest some real navigational care is required.
The second is to moderate our official language, as Prime Minister Morrison and some of his senior ministers, notably the Treasurer, have belatedly started to do, including by emphasising the positives in the relationship, and remembering that when we make legitimate criticisms of Chinese behaviour, in diplomacy words are bullets.
Beyond that, the legion of over-excitable foreign influence enthusiasts in the government’s ranks need to be much more careful than they have been about using language tending to demonise our hugely valuable Chinese-Australian community, which is presently feeling very stressed and vulnerable. Some self-restraint from the media in all these respects would also be a consummation devoutly to be wished.
Third, our leaders should make absolutely clear, when we take a negative position on anything to do with China, that this is a matter of independent national judgment and not of looking over our shoulder for guidance from our own imperial masters. Foreign Minister Payne and more recently the Prime Minister have made some useful forays in this direction, but we cannot overdo the independence talk – or, of course, actions consistent with it.
Fourth, we need to acknowledge the legitimacy and inevitability of some of China’s international aspirations, and not get over-excited about it wanting to buy strategic space for itself, the military capacity to protect its economic lifelines, and an influence in global policy-making consonant with its new strength. Much of its recent behaviour is no more than could be expected of a dramatically economically rising, hugely trade-dependent regional superpower wanting to flap its wings and reassert its historical greatness after more than a century of wounded pride, and should not be assumed to be a precursor to military aggression.
We should also acknowledge that some of China’s commercial concerns may not be entirely without foundation: plenty of objective observers think we have been overdoing our anti-dumping complaints, which have hugely exceeded in number those coming back at us from Beijing.
Finally, we should work hard to find issues on which there is genuine common ground. Australia should play both on what’s left of our reputation as a good international citizen, committed to finding effective multilateral solutions to global and regional public goods issues, and China’s desire to project soft power. Beijing has not been helping itself in this respect in recent times, but in areas like on climate, nuclear weapons, peacekeeping, counter-terrorism, arms control and – for the most part – response to pandemics, it has played a more interested, constructive and potentially cooperative role than has generally been recognised.
It seems clear that the Biden administration, while maintaining – not least under Congressional pressure – a harder line on China than previous Democrat presidencies, will be keen to explore opportunities for cooperation in this space, on the same principle that when a relationship is under strain, the smart course is to focus hard on potential shared interests, that can unite rather than further divide.
Climate is clearly the issue which Biden will focus on, and hopefully the American shift here – and the accompanying pressure we in Australia will be under to finally get our act together on a credible 2050 target – will be the straw that finally breaks the back of Scott Morrison’s unedifying capitulation to his Party’s climate troglodytes.
I am not suggesting that getting the Australia-China relationship back on even keel will be quick or easy. But there does seem to be an emerging consensus among our more thoughtful and informed commentators, including those contributing to these columns, that there is – as Geoff Raby puts it – a middle way between sycophancy and hostility, and that it involves the kind of elements I have here sketched out.
If tensions between the US and China do ease, as is likely with adults – tough-minded though they may be – back in charge in Washington, and if our own leadership keeps its head down and itself acts a little more maturely than has been the norm during the life of this government, a resumption of something like normality over the course of the next year or so is certainly possible, and I am optimistic enough to think likely.
Gareth Evans was Australia’s foreign minister from 1988-96. He is a distinguished honorary professor at the ANU.
Comments
41 responses to “Australia and China: Getting out of the hole”
I must admit to being unclear on how China has broken a treaty with the UK. The security measures don’t seem unreasonable and were introduced by the HK government.
China has now imposed up to 212% import tax on our wines. What next? One can understand the US fighting China to protect its top dog status, but what do we hope to gain by our loud megaphone China bashing policy? Our foreign policy makes absolutely no sense!
There is an old Chinese saying:
“Never put sand into your rice bowl.”
Now that you did, you will either
1. Starve
2. Eat rice with sand, or
3. Unpick sand from the rice.
It’s unpleasant whichever way. But that’s the easy fix.
Fixing the tweedledumbs who have the generosity of wisdom to put sand into our rice bowls will require a little more effort than just unpicking sand.
The worry is, those tweedledumbs still think they are serving Australia’s national interest by king-hitting our biggest customer. They think they have done every Australian a great service by putting at risk our jobs, homes, cars, boats, caravans, schools, hospitals,universities…. our standard of living.
Really apt comment!
Some of the surplus barley crop that lost the China market has been flogged to Saudi Arabia. That wonderful human rights country, which respects the rights of women and gays, is a robust democracy and of course shares our Judeo-Christian values. At a greatly reduced price. Maybe the hapless bumbling Simon “Hello,hello, is there anybody there”Birmingham can get the freedom loving shieks guzzling Grange Hermitage. If this wasnt so serious it would be a Monty Python joke.
Penfolds share price plummeted more than 10% yesterday as soon as China imposed a mega tax on Australian wines. How much more damage do we have to suffer before our politicians and media stop targeting China?
Bill Clinton is not my favorite former US president, and he did some really stupid things. I can think of the destruction of Yugoslavia and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act as being two of the more prominent.
But he did make one uncommonly succinct statement: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Ah yes I see, Defiance of international Law of the sea – its in the name “South CHINA Sea”. Human rights abuses? East Timor comest to mind and a small matter of Australian stealing resources from the newest, poorest nation at its birth. Then there are refugees picked up by passing ships offshore of Australia. – Manus Island I recall that too and Australian abuses of human rights in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan. I don’t consider the Biden team as adults, rather a mob of mendacious opportunists led by a dandruff sniffer and hell bent on empire braggadocio.
Australia lacks the credibility to criticise particularly when it accuses China of the “Wuhan” virus and ignores the Fort Detrick virus. Australia has perpetuated its craven adherence to the voodoo economics of the USA and is still yapping at the the passing parade of China and much of Asia as they roll on down the silk road to a better world.
Taiwan makes exactly the same claims in the South China Sea as the PRC. But we have a frigate chugging up around Taiwan protecting against the PRC claims to the SCS. This is surely the most insane foreign policy stance ever taken by Australia? Gareth you surely know this. Why no comment on the bi-partisan SCS claims between the CCP and KMT?
In one sense the Australian Trump rump is right. PRC does pose an existential challenge to Australia. But not the one they proselatise. Can a white supremacist settler culture accept that an Asia power will rise to be the pre-eminant power globally? The answer is tragically no at the moment. Unless this issue is faced up to fair and square, the second order issues of trade and political alignments, can never be resolved. By the way, the Australian wine exports are finished in PRC. But the Rumpists will no doubt find alternative markets for our tipple and the communist dictatorship will be bought to its kness by the lack of a good Hunter red.
That was a disappointing read!
defiance of international law! The west and their hypocrisy around international law
Which brings us to the crucial point of why China is so sensitive about its borders; because they are directly linked to the “century of humiliation” – when internal Chinese corruption and weakness allowed Western “barbarians” to take possession of Chinese land.
The US notion of “freedom of navigation”?
In imperial terms, “freedom of navigation”, from the West Coast of the US to Asia – through the Pacific, the South China Sea, the Malacca Strait and the Indian Ocean – is strictly an issue of military strategy.
The US Navy simply cannot imagine dealing with maritime exclusion zones – or having to demand an “authorization” every time they need to cross them. In this case the Empire of Bases would lose “access” to its own bases.
This is compounded with trademark Pentagon paranoia, gaming a situation where a “hostile power” – namely China – decides to block global trade.
The premise in itself is ludicrous, because the South China Sea is the premier, vital maritime artery for China’s globalized economy.
So there’s no rational justification for a Freedom of Navigation (FON) program. For all practical purposes, these aircraft carriers like the Ronald Reagan and the Nimitz showboating on and off in the South China Sea amount to 21st century gunboat diplomacy. And Beijing is not impressed.
Another point Expansionism ! The West talking about expansionism! One thing the west is not short of again hypocrisy!
Any expansion on China’s part has been both economic and cultural; the two things that really matter to the Chinese one is economic and the other is culture.
That is very very different from the western tradition where military expansion and political influence being of their importance!
Australia needs to adopt an independent foreign policy but unfortunately neocons rule the show and have for 4 + decades!
Bravo, Gareth. A bit of temperance amid the ravings. Looking for unforseen benefits in this brouhaha, the falling out with China has inadvertently propelled the recalcitrant Mr Morrison into his strongest climate action on record – torpedoing Australia’s coal exports to China! There’s always a silver lining…
“Attacking” China is not a stupid lack of thinking. It is very deliberate.
Australians whining that they cannot make as much as they are “due” is nothing new.
The long game is empire destruction. Indonesia, India, Africa all must have their maps redrawn to allow genuine capitalist democracy. China is the largest of all. Stoking protest is just a way of keeping “spies” busy and making genuine connections for the next generation of leaders.
China has every reason to fear Japan and much reason to distrust Australia, as a loyal lapdog of the 5 eyes drug cabal. Fear is the key. Stealing islands of sand to gain sea control will not work in a war. But it does show that China is afraid.
China knows that the USA will go to war again. They are a very clever people. They are patient, but fearful. We may see more positive outcomes between Australia and China soon. No one knows how many millions of people died in the last century in China. That memory unites them. Balance is part of their common ethos in many of the constituent countries. Remember that in the Korean debacle they knew that only 5% of UN soldiers would try to escape. We can be gross or subtle. But our trade relationships are strong and very much in favour of Australia.
We can and should adopt a different posture, in private, if we have not already done so…
Drug cabal?
Surely the adage, ‘Actions speak louder than words’ is applicable here.
Whatever conciliatory words our Government mouths mean nothing whilst they continue to support ASPI with grants and lucrative contracts, accepts that it is not Foreign Interference for ASPI to accept funds from foreign, western governments and tolerates ASPI strong inputs into our media, particularly the ABC.
For those needing more background on ASPI, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, check Marcus Rubenstein’s article on P&I, ‘Agents of foreign influence. What about the Australian Strategic Policy Institute?’ of 25th last and his earlier astounding disclosures on ASPI
Sir,
I look back with nostalgia to the time when Labor was in government and you were our foreign minister. It was a time when Paul Keating took us off the sheep’s back, established excellent diplomatic and trade relationships with the region and kept the Australian economy on a steady course towards greater prosperity. The mood was generally a positive one and there was a vision and strategy for the future. The situation has deteriorated over the years under the LNP when parochialism mostly ruled the day.
The negativity today is paying us negative dividends. As you rightly point out, the damaged trade relationship with China will take time to repair, if at all it is still possible. While our prime minister is beginning to mouth placating words, the pillorying of China and people of Chinese origin by the mainstream media continues. Take the ABC, a government funded agency, for example. Last night at 10.30 pm on The World programme hosted by Beverley O’Connor, she asked her two Chinese guest speakers how they managed to deal with their “loyalty” to China and their Australian values. This was a leading question with clear accusation that Chinese Australians are “loyal” to China. If anyone doubt my words, please view the programme on ABC on IVIEW – unless they have edited it out. Unrelenting casting of aspersions on Chinese Australians by the media is extremely stressful even for the most stoic among us. I used to love the ABC and respect its integrity. I even remember attending rallies when its budget was cut. Today, even ABC America and PBS are fair by comparison.
It is little wonder that the Australian public’s opinion of the Chinese is so negative.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
Hear hear. Ask if our fellow white Australian citizens if their loyalty are to UK and US, how would they feel?
If I walk into your restaurant and you insult me, I will never eat there again. You can call me names but have I done anything wrong by voting with my feet? China is just voting with her wallet, and who can blame her!
Japan is refusing to repatriate the plutonium. They have enough for 5,000 warheads. There are more modern weapons, the Lebanese explosion being a graphic example. But it takes time to accumulate anti-matter. Plutonium makes a very dirty weapon. Fukushima was a stern and last diplomatic request to send the Pu to Europe. It has had no positive response. A “sub Rosa” act of war against an ally.
Much of the apprent animosity against China, is simply to set the stage for war, involving Japan.
WWII was not actually against Germany and Japan. It was against the “glorious ally” of the USSR. When it was apparent that Germany could not achieve success, Japan was pressed into a long overdue war. That “enabled” Germany to declare war on the USA. As in “The Mouse that Roared!, Germany needed to be rescued into submission. With the USA army committed and in Europe in enormous numbers, USSR could only take half of Europe. It then took 45 years to rescue that half.
Japan is a faithless ally. It is a minor empire that cannot be cracked into its peices. Its nationalism is too strong, despite internal rivalries, exacerbated as much as possible by yankee etc $$$. Japan knows or should know by now, what is coming.
Fake boycotts of raw materials and food do not fool Japan.
China has minor isues relating to governance and financial failures. These will not last. The world will continue to buy Chinese goods.
Will Japan be provoked into war against China?
Will USA act in the best interest of Japan?
Or will it watch, as they use up their nukes on one another?
Try to focus on the longer term?
“the way in which we have responded to for the most part legitimate concerns”??
I would be grateful for examples of ‘legitimate concerns’ from readers who can find them in direct, official quotes (with links, please).
I have yet to see one but my eyesight is not what it was, hence my cry for assistance.
Just one ref to human rights and none to the Uyghurs – are these issues we should ignore?
Perhaps not ignore, but at least be sure of the ground we are making the criticisms from. Since the story about Uighurs first broke in August 2018, the numbers of Uighurs involved has been wildly divergent between a somewhat modest 200,000 to ‘millions’. Yet where is the evidence for these stories. One piece of ‘evidence’ that is touted by the media is that it is backed by the World Uighur Congress. Yet when asked by a journalist where the World Uighur Congress got its facts and evidence, the journalist was told they got it from the media. This is far from being an uncommon strategy. Apparently politicians first leak information to the media, and then use what is published as back up evidence for what they later release to the public. There is a name for this practice, but right now I cant remember what it is.
The Uighur “genocide” is the “weapons of mass destruction” of the pivot from the ME to PRC. Same crowd. Same old, same old.
Are you suggesting we are going to go to war for the Uighurs? That seems a very strange assertion to me, and to the utmost degree unlikely.
I am always suspicious of the motives of people who pretend the Uighurs are not suffering. I don’t know whether you are in that category, Paul. But comparing our admittedly shocking Afghan war crimes (if true, which I have no reason to doubt) by 19 rogue special forces soldiers with systematic persecution of hundreds of thousands of Turkic Muslims is hardly proportionate. Not to forget either the suffering of Tibetans, Mongols, Falun Gong and Christians. Are you lining up with the ridiculous Godfree to suggest everything in China is utterly perfect and an exemplar for the world? I reckon there’s a few aspects of Chinese life you wouldn’t enjoy in Australia. The surveillance, the arbitrary arrest, years in prison without trial, and more than 99% per cent certainty of conviction if brought to court, and vindictive punishment of your family, for example.
I don’t want to sell my birthright for a bowl of pottage to an utterly untrustworthy CCP. Painful as it will be, we absolutely have to reduce our reliance on a trading partner that decides on a whim to cancel billions of dollars of trade because we have been insufficiently servile. We will always be insufficiently servile. As we should.
Barney today it seems we may be going to war over a Twitter tweet and the humanitarian interventionists are back in power in Washington so perhaps we shouldnt discount anything. But what was our strategic interest in Afghanistan? I dont think China is perfect. I abhor capital punishment everywhere, i support Duterte’s stand on the West Philippine Sea and think PRC should be more conciliatory with the Philippines on this issue and i believe in a fairer criminal law process than currently in PRC. But i have enormous respect for the achievements of the PRC and the Communist Party of China. Anyway lets keep talking to each other with respect here. i support a more independent Australia. From the US war machine.
Well, I certainly respond to your eirenic spirit here, Paul. Again, I know you don’t really think we’re going to war – by ourselves? We might as well commit suicide. But I have to say, I think Morrison has struck the right note: this fake picture is outrageous, but let’s talk. I further think China has lost considerable face before the watching world by doing this – they are noticing carefully how China behaves, and by and large they don’t like it.
I do acknowledge the enormous progress China has made economically since 1949. But so has Singapore, for example, without the sacrifice of tens of millions of lives (or even a per capita comparison).
But, as Teow Loon Ti said on another thread, China has probably lost interest in Australia. I don’t think there’s anything we can do to appease this repugnant regime. Nor do I want to. However, you and I are in complete harmony that, whether or not you agree with the sentiment above, the solution is not to lock ourselves into step with the US. We need to play smarter than that – not for China’s sake because the PRC has shown its true colours, but for relationships with other nations in the region.
Barney the warrior from the Shire couldnt even get Microsoft to take down the Twitter image. Is there any country in the world backing Morrison about a Twitter image? Indonesia? Malaysia, Philippines? Vietnam? Japan? Pakistan? Australia is an international joke and the clown in charge of the circus in Canberra has got them laughing. The slaughter of civilians by our military in a country that never threatened Australia is Australia’s My Lai moment. And Morrison has lathered up about a cartoon.
I agree about our My Lai moment. But we are taking it seriously, as we should, and as the Americans did then, for probably the last time.
China says we should apologise to Afghanistan – we have, and we are following it up with a proper investigation. What chance do you think there is of China ever apologising for anything from the cultural revolution (Han), Uighurs, Christians, Falun Gong, Christians, Mongolians, Hong Kong, or indeed the world for its early lies about the pandemic.
It’s one of the ugliest regimes in the world, and while you are right that the doctored photo is insignificant in itself, do you not think it was an almost unprecedented diplomatic move, a calculated insult? We might have to swallow it, but we don’t have to like it. I don’t know if anyone is/will back Morrison, but you can be quite certain China’s behaviour has been noted in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam and Japan. Less sure of Pakistan, which has hitched its wagon to China.
Barney, Morrison has achieved two quite extraordinary things in our relationship with PRC. First he has overseen the greatest threat to our exports and economic security since WWII. Second he has done something no one would have thought imaginable. He has put Australia on the back foot over human rights with PRC. Despite his only employment being in PR apparently he has never heard of the Barbara Striesand effect. His outrage over a cartoon has actually amplified the Chinese use of the atrocities in Afghanistan to pull Australia off its high moral horse. I wonder how many of those “shared values”, Five Eyes, Quad countries are going to back up the bumbler from PR. The Chinese sucked him right in. Come in spinner.
Not ignore. Study. Learn that the World Muslim Council sent a dozen inspectors to Xinjiang when they heard the rumors that you heard. Read their report. Read the hundreds of other official and tourist reports–the eyewitness accounts. Here’s one from one of the most prominent (in her own right) Islamic women in the world:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/pakistan/no-cultural-religious-repression-of-uighur-muslims-in-xinjiang-pakistan-diplomat/articleshow/67675590.cms
China’s Uyghurs are among the best-off Muslims in a minority-Muslim country.
Many of the world’s Muslims recognise that report for the disgraceful betrayal of fellow Muslims that it was. A very carefully orchestrated tour, with no freedom of movement or access. No neutral observers have ever been allowed that in Xinjiang. Best off? Provided you are happy to be chained, beaten, sent for “re-education” to force you to follow Han supremacist thinking. Uighurs in Australia have plenty of stories of harassment in Australia and threats against family in China.
You, of course, pretend none of this is real, for reasons known only to yourself. I find your constant and obsequious propagandising truly distasteful.
The Council’s inspectors roamed freely, as their report indicates, and no responsible Muslim has criticized their report.
To this day there is no evidence of mass incarcerations or mistreatment of Chinese uyghurs and every evidence that the USA continues to promote terrorism in xinjiang
Havent we got our morally unclean hands full with an appalling massacre of civilians in Afghanistan in a war of aggression?
With utmost repect for Gareth Evans, his thesis here dealth mainly with the symptoms of the “diseases” (bad Australia-China relations” but not the pathogenesis of the diseases. The cure for the symptoms here, would qualify as a good prescription to counter the symptoms of the disease. However the pathogenesis of the disease “……….. have also been multiple legitimate concerns about Beijing’s behaviour which require a firm and clear response, among them defiance of international law in the South China Sea; egregious domestic violations of human rights (and in the case of Hong Kong, of treaty obligations as well), discriminatory and overprotective trade and industry policies, and some attempts – most of them clumsy – to exercise undue influence over public institutions” is further than the truth and remain “controversial”. (Eg. see Understanding ‘Beijing expansionism’
By GREGORY CLARK | On 26 November 2020) P&I,
As an armchair observer, I doubt whether China would accept such criticism based on subjective views and would allow these “western” issues to put into the pre-requisition critieria for a mutually accetable diplomatic dialogue. If Australia is unable to jettison these allegations, then (1) there will no serious conflict resolution goodwill on both sides or (2) these allegations do not subside unless US changes the geopolitical game on China.
Gareth is over thinking it. If you want your biggest customer to keep on being your customer, you don’t insult it and then come crying accusing of that customer of coercion and threats when that customer doesn’t want to deal with you anymore. It’s called manners.
Australia has an identity crisis. It has all the arrogance of the Anglo psyche so it can’t stand a non-Western country possibly displacing the current Western led world order yet its bills are paid for by the very same entity it despises. Gareth is just trying to find a way to have cake and eat it too. Satisfy some inner insecurity without hurting the wallet.
Well that’s easy, stop insulting your best customer would be a good start?
My comments only applies to the Australian federal government as fortunately for now, the state leaders are much much more competent than the Trump lite we have at the helms although federal politicans are trying their best to ruin it.
Well put. But sociopathic, insulting behavior, followed by flat denial or censorship, is the Anglo-Saxon political tradition. Anything else is ‘weakness’.
Excellent comment!
Garillous Gareth has a foot on either horse, one of which is forging ahead, and the other is pulling up lame.
Gareth has never had any problem working both sides of the street.
I’m oversimplifying of course but the whole Anti-China Rhetoric is fake (it’s really for domestic consumption to deflect from domestic issues) but it seems only Scomo is believing the narrative. It’s all about $$ and China is not just cheap labour any more, it really is the only one major growth point and world’s biggest market. Piss her off, expect to lose the market. That’s not coercion, that’s called business.
A lot of Australian farm export were actually lost to the US and only Australia seemed to believe the Trump Rhetoric while trump propping up the rust states with their farm exports in the 1st phase trade deal with China. It’s laughable.
As for China creating its own system, that is inevitable, it’s too big not to. You need to deal with it maturely rather than shouting slogans while EU and US is laughing striking commercial deals with China behind the scene at the expense of naive Australia.
Excellent analysis and practical common sense policy prescription from Gareth Evans, as one would expect.