A former Australian ambassador to China has called on the Federal Government to rethink its relationship with Beijing amid what he calls “the greatest power shift that has occurred in modern history”.
Key points:
- Geoff Raby says Australia needs to find a way of working with China
- China this week placed additional restrictions on Australian exports
- Dr Raby says China is “not Australia’s strategic enemy”
Former ambassador Geoff Raby, who currently runs a Beijing-based business advisory firm, has this week released a book on Australia-China relations titled China’s Grand Strategy and Australia’s Future in the New Global Order.
Dr Raby, who served as Australia’s top diplomat in China from 2007 to 2011, told the ABC relations between Australia and China were at their lowest point since ties were established in 1972.
He attributed that decline in the diplomatic relationship to Australia’s decision to join with the United States in resisting China’s economic and political rise.
“It’s quite normal and natural for the dominant power to do that — push back against the ascendant power, that’s the nature of power shifts historically and always has been,” Dr Raby said.
The release of the former ambassador’s book comes as Australian exporters brace for further trade strikes, with China this week holding up a large shipment of Australian seafood and banning Queensland timber imports.
Some Chinese wine importers have also this week been told to stop shipments of Australian wine, according to industry sources.
China has already disrupted a number of key Australian export industries this year including beef, wine, barley and coal — moves that have been interpreted widely as a response to souring ties between Canberra and Beijing.
Australia facing a ‘dystopian future’
Dr Raby was plain about what he thought Australia’s future would look like in an increasingly less democratic world.
“We face a dystopian future — the future for Australia is very unpleasant as we sit today and contemplate it,” he said.
He said this was compounded by Washington’s decision to step away from global leadership, a trend he said was likely to continue regardless of the results of today’s presidential election.
Australia would need to learn to operate in that sort of world, and develop an independent foreign policy that reflected its new reality, he said.
“We have to find a way of working with China in this world to influence its behaviour and also to continue to protect our economic interests,” Dr Raby said.
At the moment though, Australia appears to be failing to find a way to get along with China — besides the trade strikes, high-level official contacts have also been frozen for years.
This came after a series of actions by the Australian Government, including the decision to ban Huawei from Australia’s 5G network over security concerns, and more recently Canberra’s call for an investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr Raby said the issue was not necessarily the substance of the decisions Australia made, which may have been fully justified, but how they were made.
“If you’re going to do those things … then massage the message, it’s the same with the Prime Minister’s call for an independent inquiry into the origin of COVID-19.
“Nothing wrong with that, perfectly reasonable: but the way we did it was just calculated to make China lose face, and to basically align us with Trump’s blistering attacks on China at the time over COVID-19.”
China a ‘constrained superpower’
Dr Raby also said that for all the security concerns around China’s rise, he does not believe the country actually poses an existential threat to Australia.
He describes China as being a “constrained superpower” — the country’s history, geography and dependence on international markets for resources and energy all place limits on its ability to project power.
The nation neighbours 14 other countries, forcing it to defend a more than 22,000-kilometre-long border; it’s also “an empire with unresolved territorial issues”, Dr Raby said, referring to tensions over Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
It’s also hugely reliant on both importing and exporting goods through the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea, which the US could easily take control of in the event of a conflict.
Dr Raby said these factors made it unlikely that China would enter into conflict with Australia, and that failing to understand the limits on China’s power would lead to “strategic miscalculation”.
He said the decision to “[align] so closely with the US in treating China as a strategic competitor” was an example of such a miscalculation.
The Federal Government has previously said its policies in this area were its own, and that it makes foreign policy decisions “in Australia’s national interest”.
“We need to get this out of our heads, that China is somehow a military or existential threat to Australia.”
Engagement with China ‘unfashionable’
Dr Raby argues for a return to strategic cooperation, instead of strategic competition, with the soon-to-be dominant power in Asia.
However, he writes in the conclusion of his book that calling for more engagement with China is “unfashionable” at the moment.
He told the ABC the debate around China policy in Australia had “gone completely off the rails” and “become binary”.
“It is an extraordinary state that we’ve found ourselves in.”
Professor Jane Golley, an economist and director of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University (ANU), said this issue was “one of the biggest areas of misconception” when it came to discussions on Australia-China relations.
“The distinction shouldn’t be about being pro or anti-China — it should be about being pro-engagement or pro-containment,” she said.
“I see the latter as both futile and unwise, given China’s current and likely future position in the world power order, and the costs that containment would impose on our people and theirs, if it somehow succeeded.”
Yun Jiang, editor of the ANU’s China Story blog, said this was an issue she was also concerned about.
Without commenting directly on Dr Raby’s book, Ms Jiang said she felt debates on the bilateral relationship had “become almost like a moral crusade”.
“When we talk about what Australia’s relationship with China should be, pretty much everyone is starting from the point of advancing your sort of national interest, we just disagree on whether … more economic engagement is better or worse for Australia’s national interest.”
By Michael Walsh and Alan Weedon
Comments
5 responses to “Australia-China ties are at their lowest point in history, former ambassador says (ABC Nov 4, 2020)”
What, no mention of Geoff Raby’s lobbying for a Chinese miner or a mention of being on the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme?
Commodities are meant to be fungible; wouldn’t they find a home somewhere else? I’m certain Michael Pettis pointed this when the Chinese put limits on US soy beans which were replaced by Argentine beans, that causes a shortage elsewhere, but maybe not the same value.
Maybe it’s time to put a 30% export tariff on IO to China.
China can be expected to act prudently and avoid trading with countries that take an aggressive stance towards it on the world stage. That’s more than half our trade gone. Now, after blowing it with a market recovering well, we have to chase up markets in countries economically devastated by Covid-19. Australia definitely gets a Darwin award for bringing about its own extinction, when it could easily have joined the few survivors.
For the ideas expressed by Geoff Raby in this article and in his forthcoming book to gain weight in Canberra, two developments must happen.
First, Scott Morrison has to lead the Coalition away from what I think of as the Peter Dutton faction. For example, the recent hatchet job by two Coalition Senators on three Australians of Chinese ethnicity did not come out of a vacuum.
Second, the ALP has to pick itself up from the canvas to rediscover its roots and find a voice. Cooperation, not confrontation, with China and cooperation, not subservience, to the USA might be a good place to start.
Otherwise, our economy will tank, our lifestyle will wither and Australia really will become the poor white trash of Southeast Asia.
Sir,
I value your contributions and I am really looking forward to reading your book. The difference in values between Australians and the Chinese is not as immutable as it would seem. I speak as a person who straddles two different culture (perhaps with significant leaning to the Western one). The Chinese, like everyone else value freedom of speech, freedom of dissent, rights of assembly etc. However, they are also very good at prioritising. There seems to be a cultural tendency for the educated ones to think in an orderly and single-minded manner. And this I believe is one of the major reasons why they were able to bridge the technological and economic chasm between themselves and the advanced countries so quickly. They prioritise their needs and are known to be able to delay gratification. I have noticed their curious inclination to enumerate their thinking in speeches and have a penchant for systems. This “ability” with systems was suggested, in a rather amused manner, by economics professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University in a recent forum. Give them time to catch up with the others. The timing can only be determined by themselves based on their understanding of themselves and their situation.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
I am glad P&I has copied for posterity this surprisingly good ABC review commentary on Geoff Raby’s book. His is almost a lone voice at this moment . Others in our National security establishment need to take some risks and join Raby. Morrison’s crude diplomacy, self- righteousness and feigned complacency on the crisis are driving our economy into the ground. It can only get worse unless Australia’s opposition parties and mainstream media firmly condemn his conduct. At the moment most seem scared of the new McCarthyism in Australia to which the ABC article indirectly alludes.