In 2000, the Reserve Bank of Australia held a conference reviewing the 1990s. The US was mentioned 93 times. China wasn’t mentioned once.
In some sense, the omission was unsurprising. In 1990, Australia’s economic output was almost as large as China’s. The country that mattered most economically was the US. Conveniently, the US was also our top security ally.
In the 21st century, economics and geopolitics diverged. Much is made of the differences—between Americophiles and Sinophiles, hawks and doves, businesspeople and national security experts. But perhaps everyone can agree on six points.
First, the Chinese and Australian economies are deeply enmeshed.
Australia’s exports to China are now over six times as large as our exports to the US. It’s not just rocks and crops: China is Australia’s largest source of tourists and overseas students. While COVID-19 has dented both sectors, it seems likely that Chinese travellers will outnumber visitors from any other nation once international borders reopen.
Second, China is an autocracy with a dismal human rights record.
As Human Rights Watch notes, ‘No other government is simultaneously detaining a million members of an ethnic minority for forced indoctrination and attacking anyone who dares to challenge its repression.’ In Hong Kong, the new national security law and the arrest of prominent democracy activists has led many to draw the conclusion that China is undermining the principle of ‘one country, two systems’. A recent Pew Research Center survey finds that across 14 advanced nations, more than seven out of ten people in every country say that they have no confidence in President Xi Jinping to do the right thing regarding world affairs.
Third, the Chinese Government, Chinese citizens and Chinese-Australians are different.
For example, the Chinese Government may be becoming more autocratic, but many Chinese citizens would prefer a move in the opposite direction, perhaps to a Singaporean hybrid democracy.
Many Chinese-Australians chose to live in Australia because they prefer our system to the Chinese one, and are rightly offended when they’re accused of being a fifth column for Xi Jinping’s increasingly authoritarian regime. Critics who conflate ethnicity and government policy make it easier for the Chinese Government to deflect reasonable criticisms as outright racism.
Fourth, Australia’s needs to seek security in Asia, not from Asia.
As the power balance in the Asia-Pacific changes, other regional powers are feeling the same challenges as Australia. Australia has a strong track record of working with countries such as Indonesia, Japan and Singapore. It’s never been more important to develop those ties and find creative ways of cooperating on climate change, international development and trade liberalisation. We might collaborate on a new regional pandemic prevention initiative, or establish an annual Pacific Donors’ Conference.
Fifth, in foreign affairs, fiery rhetoric rarely helps.
Furious tub-thumping tends to be the behaviour of weak powers, not strong ones. We expect hyperbole from North Korea, not France. The smart answer to assertive ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy on the part of China is surely not to create a group of anti-China ‘wolverines’ in the federal parliament. As Allan Behm recently observed, ‘The over-investment in emotion masks an under-investment in thinking.’ There’s a reason it’s called diplomacy.
Both Australia and China have had our periods of isolationism, but each nation is at its best when embracing cosmopolitanism and openness. China flourished in the Tang Dynasty, and Australian openness in the late-1800s helped ensure that our living standards were the highest in the world.
Sixth, the future isn’t written.
Sometimes history can be a helpful guide, but it can also trap and stultify our thinking. China isn’t ancient Athens, and it’s not Nazi Germany. It was perhaps inevitable that our relationship with China would worsen at this time, but it need not have sunk to an all-time low. After all, engaging diplomatically with undemocratic nations isn’t a new challenge—it’s what we’ve done for most of our history. When Australia initiated the APEC leaders’ meetings in 1993, most of its members weren’t full democracies. Effective foreign policy spans language, culture and geography to build on shared interests.
If you agree with me on the six points that I’ve noted, you’ll share my rejection of the extremes. Some exporters seem to think that we should ignore human rights abuses and breaches of the rule of law, if that helps us make a few more bucks. They’re wrong. All countries must be held accountable to their international commitments—including on human rights and the rule of law—and Australia should be raising our concerns consistently, while rejecting the politicisation of international trade.
But it’s also wrong, as some hawks have suggested, to suggest that Australia should drastically cut economic ties with China. Doing so would be enormously costly to the Australian economy, driving up unemployment and driving down productivity. It’s only through engagement with China and our regional partners that Australia can help shape the kind of region we want: one that’s stable, prosperous and respects sovereignty.
When Australia recognised China in 1972, we didn’t offer a stamp of approval for Mao’s brutal regime. Instead, recognition was an acknowledgement of the geopolitical realities and reflected a willingness to work to find common ground in the bilateral relationship. In the decades since, millions of Australians and Chinese have formed friendships, built trading ties, travelled in one another’s countries and worked alongside one another. Fear, division and anger are poor substitutes for courage, justice and wisdom.
Andrew Leigh MP is the federal member for Fenner and a former professor of economics. This is an edited extract from his chapter in After Covid-19, published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
This piece was first published by the Canberra Times on Monday, 21 December 2020.
Andrew Leigh Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury
Assistant Minister for Employment
Comments
48 responses to “Can we find common ground on China? (Canberra Times Dec 21, 2020)”
About what I would expect…
If this is the best the ALP can muster heaven help us. The period of balancing of US military domination of Australia and PRC economic co-dependence has passed. John Mearscheimer recently said very starkly that the US will make us choose. And they will make us choose in their way. How any discussion of new geopolitical Asian reality and Australia can proceed without the issue of US military domination of this country being even raised beggars belief. We dont have a PRC problem. We are basically irrelevant to PRC except for the moment iron ore. We have a US problem, which we have always had. Its just been brought to a point now of real conflict between our national interest and the priorities of the US empire.
Well said Stephen Allen. I expected better of Andrew Leigh. But then on reflection why should I. He illustrates the extent of the Labor Party, ‘Me Tooism’. No acknowledgement of Australia’s appalling record on Refugees and the Indigenous population. No acknowledgement of Australia’s criminal record on climate change and emissions.
Leigh comes across as weak and soft in the head.
Albanese hasn’t a clue. No idea how to respond to the Morrison created crisis.
Leigh along with Wong has accepted the framework of Western/ US perceptions and prejudices toward China. His lack of awareness is of concern.
Neither Leigh nor Wong should be involved in negotiating a a revitalised relationship with China. But then who have we got?
But of course the problem may be resolved by our new minister for Trade, Dan Tehan!
Good one!
My first take:A well written “wolf in sheep’s clothing’ essay which give the un-initated and eternal optimist that they may be great hopes for resolving the Australia-China problem. This is my first exposure to Prof Leigh’s writings and the the statement “Some exporters seem to think that we should ignore human rights abuses and breaches of the rule of law, if that helps us make a few more bucks. They’re wrong”, revealed the thinnly hidden wolf’s tail, despite the fact that Prof Leigh admitted some of Australia’s human right records. Are we that naive to proceed down that “human rights” righteousness pathway and that would get China’s attention?
On reflection:If there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the government is changing tact on the Aus-China relations and using Prof Leigh as the “scout” despite his ASPI credentials, then Prof Leigh would be an important bridge between the factions “Sinophile” and “Sinophobe” to strike out a compromised position before talking to the Chinese government.
As an optimist and peacnik, I wish for Prof Leigh to play the peace maker. I would have the same support for Alan Jones or Pauline Hanson, if they wish to play peacemaker for Australia.
” ‘No other government is simultaneously detaining a million members of an ethnic minority for forced indoctrination and attacking anyone who dares to challenge its repression.’ ”
While I agree the indoctrination should not be condoned, China will just laugh at the US and allies like us for being hypocrites. It has to be acknowledged that there have been terrorist events caused by Uyghur people.
China will just point to Iraq where it is likely millions died before the war through US pushed sanctions. Many children died because they could not get medicine. Madeleine Albright said years ago that the price was worth it for the result. What result? It later became a war.
Second, we have no idea what the tally is/was for deaths in Iraq (and Afghanistan) due to the Three Amigos mainly US driven illegal war which was never backed by the UN. (Yet they accuse China of violating international agreements). Some say more than one million. It was a convenience for the US not to thoroughly count the deaths while they counted everyone of their own. I repeat a possible 1 million. It is on the same scale as is quoted for Xianjing, yet they are dead, slaughtered.
Basically there are two ways to deal with terrorism, either attempt to change minds from committing such acts, put them in jail once caught with lengthy sentences for plotting terrorist events, or just callously kill the perpetrators. Essentially it is a matter of memes that humans carry in their minds. China chooses the first option, the US goes for the other two options to get rid of certain memes they don’t like too.
In another show of massive hypocrisy, the US commended China for what it was doing in Xianjing during the presidency of George W. Bush when they were against Muslim extremism and terrorism. They changed tactics later when it suited their more recent geopolitical interests. Lets note that many Uyghurs were incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay for many years, one’s who’d been caught in Afghanistan. It is even said the US colluded with China over these people. Despite the efforts of Obama to shut down the human rights degrading camp, the Republicans blocked his every move.
Another complaint is that China is moving Han Chinese into the Xianjing region to outnumber Uyghurs, yet when Indian prime minister Modi does the same in Kashmir with Hindus to outnumber the Muslims, nothing is said because the US wants India as an ally. And of course India’s human rights standards are perfect. Of course this has nothing to do with trying to contain China in the Indian Ocean, the road part of the BRI, and China’s access to oil in north western Africa.
There is no evidence what so ever that China is detaining Xighurs, with the exception of ASPIs pathetic school kid using his IT skills to search Google satellite imagery and that of his Atlantic Council conspirators, oh and not to forget the lies of the World Xighur Congress and other US financed proxy voices for the Xighur diaspora.
That’s just ideological rubbish. There is plenty of evidence, including from Uighurs in Australia. I am deeply suspicious of people like you trying to deny the suffering of minorities in China – or anywhere. It seems to me thoroughly immoral. Are you on the Beijing payroll?
barny:
The thing I find that lets you down with many people who make comments on here is that if they don’t agree with your view (usually the Australian MS media’s view) and/or are in any way understanding of the Chinese view at all, that you immediately accuse them of being apologists for China or in this case on the “Beijing payroll”. I don’t think it works, and it is the same problem that people like Clive Hamilton face: it demeans him as an academic to use ad hominem. Its of the George W. Bush style “you are either with us or against us”, black and white, and an easy way to trivialise anyone else’s comment.
You may have heard stories from Uighurs here, but it does not necessarily reflect the view being pushed by the US, and Morrison and his Wolverines that is conveyed as a way to condemn China in Australian media that clearly often uses fake imagery.
While China may attempt to re-educate, the US and Australia just slaughter opposing views in illegal wars, and that adds up to millions of human beings forgoing their lives and futures, and millions of human beings being displaced from their countries seeking asylum. In Australia we treat such people -refugees- as criminals when we have no right to treat them as such, and lock them away in offshore detention. We know very little about how such people are treated and Morrison himself is responsible for shutting down any knowledge of what is happening to these people.
Hi George. Thanks for your reply, and I appreciate its open spirit. I don’t think it is quite fair, because it is not everyone who takes a sympathetic view of China that I criticise. It is a particular sort of sympathetic view.
What you say about refugees in Australia is absolutely right, and I have marched for refugees and written to MPs and donated money, none of which is necessarily impressive but is better than nothing. But, and I keep coming back to this, our failure doesn’t let China off the hook. Another 100 churches closed last week. We know this because Chinese Christians have the courage to tell us. You certainly don’t see this in the mainstream media.
Yes, it was probably over the top to ask Stephen Allen if he is on Beijing’s payroll. But if he – and you – is/are concerned about refugees in Australia, why do you deny the suffering of the Uighurs? People like Stephen – so far as I can judge from his posts, which is of course limited – are like the communists I knew in my youth in the 1970s who simply denied Stalin’s brutality and claimed it didn’t exist – much as people here seem to think the mainstream media invent their China coverage. (As I’ve noted before, they are the mirror image of the Trump cultists, who insist that the mainstream media invented his election loss and ignore the obvious fraud.) And if the Stalinists admitted it, they would justify it by saying you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. It disturbs me greatly to see both lines – not true, or necessary – so frequently suggested on this website. And that’s why I comment.
On the Uyghur situation I am not an expert at all, and generally refrain from commenting on anything that is happening there.
Why?
Because like you probably, I do not trust the mainstream media or the US to be telling us any truth on the situation. Especially after the nonsense photographs shown to the UN Security Council over Iraq, the ones that all turned out to be bull dust. It would be the same with Xianjing, rubbish propaganda.
What the Americans repeatedly do is to find a remote spot that basically few people ever go to from the West to check, so they can make up a load of codswallop. They won’t even say where the location really is, just say its in Xianjing, a huge region.
Also when trying to find anything about it on the internet, it is full of emotional nonsense and virtually no fact.
I also find the Tibet issue a bit weird given that it has only been in the last few years that it has suddenly become important. Meanwhile during all of that time when the Dalai Lama has visited the US or Australia, most of the leaders in either country have avoided meeting him, they didn’t give a toss before.
Like with all geopolitics from the US, leaders of countries fall in and out of favour according to the US agenda at the time. With Saddam Hussein he was their buddy when he had a war with Iran, and they gave him chemical weapons (biological weapons, nuclear technology?) when it suited them, but then turned on him later when the US agenda changed.
In Vacy Vlazna’s recent take down of the BBC and ABC craven stenographers and shills (24/12), she made mention of a report by the late, great Andre Vltchek, from mid-last year.
This – https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/07/march-of-the-uyghurs/
Until such time as people like Leigh quote a reference from a source with the credibility within a bull’s roar of Vltchek’s, they are just a waste of time and effort to even consider noting.
Andre Vltchek spent a lifetime doing what Robert Fisk said the vast majority of modern day ‘foreign correspondents’ refuse to do – go to where the ‘action’ is, rather than wait in comfy accommodations for the press releases.
As Vltchek noted in the above piece;
“For several years, I investigated this ‘issue’; in China and Syria, in Turkey, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Indonesia.
It is because I consider it to be one of the most important and one of the most dangerous issue our planet is now facing.
I was able to trace patterns, and to find roots. What I discovered is disturbing and threatening. For China and for the world.
The “March of Uyghurs” is backed by “useful idiots”, all over the Western world, but also in Turkey, and elsewhere. They want to “defend victims”, but in this case, the ‘victims’ are actually ‘victimizers’ and usurpers.
Here I am putting my findings (and the findings of other colleagues and comrades) on the record. I do it so no one who is searching for truth would be able to say now or in ten years: “I did not know”, or “The information has not been available.”
Immediately below that comes plain old stone cold facts, stone cold facts that are never mentioned by the likes of Leigh;
“Before we begin, let me point out how enormous the hypocrisy of the West is: The TIP (Turkistan Islamic Party, which is the militant wing of the Uyghur’s separatist Turkistan Islamic Movement (TIM)), has been designated as a terrorist organization by China. But not by China alone; also, by the European Union. Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Pakistan! The terrorists supported by the West and at least by part of its public, is designated as a terrorist organization by London, Brussels and Washington.”
There is also a continuing UN Security Council resolution, from 2002, that names the ‘East Turkestan Islamic Movement’ in amongst the resolutions covering Al Qaeda’s activities, and the resolution justifies its sanctions on acts of terror committed by ETIM in Xinjiang Province, and other parts of China.
P.S. I pulled up at Leigh’s second point, of the 6 he proposed ‘everyone’ could agree on about China. I didn’t need to read anymore.
George,
Indoctrination has been occurring since time immemorial. All three Abrahamic religions indoctrinate their children from birth. I agree with you that indoctrination should not be condone, yet I think that if it is used to reduce terrorism and violence, perhaps one could find a way of accommodating it. A number of Uyghurs have been perpetrating terrorism around the world. Re-education in camps seems to be China’s way of dealing with the problem; as opposed to incarcerating them like other countries, Australia included. The critics from the US or Europe have not been able to find a “humane” way of dealing with them. Why should they be criticising others who are doing it differently from them. We do not know what happens behind the wall in reeducation camps but we can speculate that a huge amount of propaganda and indoctrination occurs to re-orientate the minds of inmates. The claims of rape and murder by Uyghurs who fled to the West should be taken with a grain of salt just as that of the Falun Gong. If China were that repressive, they would not have been able to travel out of the country that easily to seek political asylum in the West – unlike the dissidents in North Korea who have to risk their lives and that of their families to get out of North Korea. What I object to is not the veracity of the claims but the attitude of not giving others the benefit of doubt when dealing with sensitive problems and problems which we ourselves find difficult.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
I don’t disagree with you Teow Loon Ti. In short, I mostly wanted to point out that when it comes to the US, Australia, and Britain, they start a war and simply slaughter everyone that is supposed to hold a different viewpoint as we saw in Iraq, while China takes a different path. (If it is in fact even guilty of what the US claims it is doing in Xianjing). Those killed are often innocent and of larger populations than what is claimed in Xianjing that are said to be kept in camps. Vietnam for example recently calculated that 3 million Vietnamese died in the US driven war.
I would agree with China in that when it is accused by the West of doing human rights abuse such as in Xianjing, then why is the Western method of causing a war and slaughtering people to get rid of ideas that don’t comply with the US agenda somehow better? To be murdered or educated? Which is better? I would say the latter.
I also point out why China will no longer accept this kind of patronizing from the West, and I would agree with the Chinese stance. China has been patronized and vilified by the West for more than 250 years
George,
This morning, for the first time, I thought I had a glimpse of the truth. I saw on Al Jazeera (or some other foreign TV news, I can’ remember) a Uyghur woman saying that in the reeducation camp, they were made to sing patriotic songs out loud. In failing to do so, they were punished by being denied food. Of course that is not an acceptable way to treat an adult but it is a lot less severe than the wild claims of murder and rape that were reported by the Western media from time to time.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
Dear Fellow Readers,
This is another of those grandstanding speeches that comes out of the mouths of both the LNP and Labor. Isn’t it a bit too late to make statements like:
“But it’s also wrong, as some hawks have suggested, to suggest that Australia should drastically cut economic ties with China. Doing so would be enormously costly to the Australian economy, driving up unemployment and driving down productivity. ”
It is as if in the Australia/China relationship, Australia is the one that call the shots – we are the one who says whether we will condescend to trade with them or not. Has Andrew Leigh woken up to the fact the Chinese have already taken the initiative to reduce trade with Australia? Both the LNP and Labor have stated categorically from time to time that we will not trade our values for business. If this is a backflip at this late stage it even looks like a very tentative one.
The article would have been more useful if it had any solutions to repairing the damage that had already been done to trade relationship by both political parties. Marie Antionette may have said “Let them eat cake” but that sounds a lot less ridiculous than “Let them eat values” that our political leaders seem to be wanting to say.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
Teow Loon Ti has hit the nail on the head. Leigh looks like a goose urging us to hold our noses and trade with China, when it is China, fed up with holding its own nose, which is winding down its trade with us.
With respect to the previous commentators I think Andrew Leigh has made a gallant attempt to find a middle position on China. All members of the Labor Party still have vivid memories of Whitlam’s fate when he and his government made utterings that were interpreted as putting American “assets” at risk. I would encourage the Labor Party to continue to work at an improved policy position on China. Andrew Leigh has certainly progressed the discussion from the “spook” driven mess of the Morrison Government.
If you read carefully what Leigh has said it is in no way a “middle position”. Rather it continues the Anglo American policy of containing and destroying socialist China. Leigh uses clever deception to purportedly present the middle ground.
I took your advice Dr Allen and reread Andrew Leigh’s article. I maintain my position that the article is balanced and progresses a more rational policy position on China…..that is within the allowable constraints demanded by the US. Heavens above we don’t want credible members of the Labor Party destroyed at this stage of the electoral cycle. We know what happens to those who displease the Canberra and Washington spooks!
So to whom do we refer specifically with our reference to “Canberra” and “the Washington spooks. ” Leigh dogmatically asserts that China is guilty of human rights abuses, of irrational bellicose grandstanding, of undemocratic autocracy…this is exactly the words of the establishment policy of containing and destroying the CCP. Leigh and his agenda only perpetuates the establishment that destroyed Whitlam and Cairns. Only by exposing and subsequently eradicating that establishment shall Australia be positioned to determine its own future. Sadly Leigh does neither.
‘China is an autocracy with a dismal human rights record.’
A resounding yes to this proposition, but only so if one relies on the western propaganda machine mostly operating out of the US and the UK. If instead one relies on research and fact checking processes, then it is impossible to find reliable figures or facts to support these narratives.
Yet in the above piece, this accusation is stated baldly as an undisputed fact. It is repeated as an undisputed fact throughout western media, or to use Leigh’s own stats, by ’14 advanced nations’, all of whom have allegiances to the west. But not, strangely, by the leaders of Muslim countries that have gone to China to look at how China has dealt with the Uighur terrorist problem. But, say spokespeople from these ’14 advanced nations’, one cannot trust assurances from these Muslim countries because they have been ‘bought’ by China, and anyway, they are Arab countries and as we all know, Arabs lie a lot.
But is there any limit to our own lies and exaggerations in these matters? I suspect not.
ASPI, which by its intent and financial status is a foreign agent, via The Australian criticised those who criticised Australia’s established position on China. Now this foreign agent cunningly uses the purported centre Left via Leigh to infiltrate one of those very forums which criticised the established position.
Did they do this just for some comedy relief for P&I readers? Seems like if the article is published elsewhere on MSM, everyone sings the same tune repeating the same lies over and over again, manufacturing consent as Noam Chomsky would say.
ASPI cannot be considered comedic for it has a very influential place in perpetuating violent Anglo American foreign policy and propagating the fear that is necessary to the public financing of the war corporation that is integral to that violent foreign policy, oh and I nearly forgot, and for providing jobs for the boys. Australia’s submarine programme is a classic case in point
Perhaps this signifies also the shift from Trump to Biden by APSI? Leigh will be a convenient “left” voice for APSI in the desperate scramble to shift from the Trump unilateralism and medals to the Biden/Obama/Clinton Democratic Party multilateralism. Leigh is an open admirer of the US democratic Party. No doubt he will be a handy courtier into the US embassy in Canberra for APSI. It must be tricky being think tankers in the service of the US empire these days.
I would contend that foreign policy of The Democrats is far more violent than that of the Republicans, yet both parties are born of the same establishment. That is the possibility for a President’s executive appointees having been appointed by a previous President of the opposing party.
I agree with that. The difference may be in the tactics employed by the Biden administration. The building of alliances against the PRC could be their priority. For ASPI a tame “left” from the ALP with Democratic Party cachet could be good business. ASPI is after all primarily a business.
It’s sad that the Anglo American arrogant and hostile foreign policy towards socialist countries and countries that criticise Israel’s oppression of Palestine has infected Australia. The infection is reflected in part in the diatribe of the US govt and US armament corporation funded ASPI, which has a long history of conniving dogmatic invective moralising of the Communist Party of China. And now through ASPI that hatred has infected the Australian Labor Party. Well it has done so for many years. Leigh’s points are by and large a repetition of that conniving moralising invective dogma. Point one is an irrelevant fact. Point two is the dogma, point three targets the dogma to the Communist Party of China, point four isolates the CCP, point five stupidifies the CCP, while point six legitimises the continuation of the campaign to destroy the CCP. Notwithstanding the fact that Australia’s appalling human rights record toward refugees, which started with the ALPs detention centres, toward First Nations Peoples, toward the peoples of Palestine via its complicit silence on Israel, and, via its wars of aggression, toward the peoples of Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Korea,… gives no moralising authority to Leigh or his fellow “hawks”, Leighs Anglo American anti CCP dogma can only but exacerbate that of which he accuses the CCP, and shall therefore continue to weaken Australia’s political, economic, and cultural relations with China. Even the heading of the article “…on China” is hostile arrogant moralising and Leigh has nil respectful diplomatic authority.
A lot of this is really just domestic propaganda for domestic consumption so that the plebs don’t think too much and demand change to the current system which may upset vested interests. I mean no Chinese will be convinced by rubbish like this but the plebs in the West needs to made to think that doesn’t matter how bad inequality gets here, its always better than anywhere else on earth.
Agree !
Chinese history and culture is fundamentally different from that of the West: it always has been and always will be. So best to dispense with our Western-tinted spectacles and open our minds!
China threatens American economic supremacy and may have already passed in many ways… Whether that’s a threat or not depends on your perceptions.
There’s no ideology that China is pushing on anyone unlike the West!
You can’t contain China it’s fully integrated into the global capitalist world and
and in fact the main problem with it from the West’s perspective has been that it’s too successful in the capitalist game internationally
No one seems to ask the question, why is the Chinese economy so much more dynamic and successful than countries dominated by the Anglo/ American banking system. Its not just China but most East Asian economies;- South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, now Vietnam and of course Japan, -the first post second world war success story. That was of course until Japan threatened the pre-eminence of the US as number one. For that the Central Bank of Japan “engineered a dose of the salts” for the Japanese economy creating a massive asset bubble in the late 1980s from which Japan has never recovered. The US would like to administer a similar “dose of the salts” to China so it too, like Japan before it, was put back in its box!.
Agree !
Chinese history and culture is fundamentally different from that of the West: it always has been and always will be. So best to dispense with our Western-tinted spectacles and open our minds!
China threatens American economic supremacy and may have already passed in many ways… Whether that’s a threat or not depends on your perceptions.
There’s no ideology that China is pushing on anyone unlike the West!
You can’t contain China it’s fully integrated into the global capitalist world and
and in fact the main problem with it from the West’s perspective has been that it’s too successful in the capitalist game internationally
Our leaders know less than nothing about China, so it is hardly surprising that we have difficulty dealing with the Chinese.
That an MP and economist would say, “China is an autocracy with a dismal human rights record”. Is deeply depressing.
Along with Switzerland and Singapore, China is one of the world’s leading democracies. No matter how you slice it–constitutionally, electively, popularly, procedurally, operationally, substantively financially, even theocratically–China comes out ahead. Its elections, for example, have been overseen by the Carter Center for decades. In survey after survey, it’s the most trusted government in the world and its policies enjoy the highest support.
And its human rights record is far better than ours or America’s. Anyone who reads the 30 rights enumerated in the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights will recognize, immediately, that China’s human rights record is far, far better than the USA’s. Of the 30 Articles, China leads 26-2, with two draws. Yet, though China leads the US, it does not criticize other countries’ behavior nor judge their domestic policies (and China has ratified the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights while the US refuses to do so). http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
Underlining China’s respect for basic rights, there are now more hungry children, drug addicts, suicides and executions, more homeless, poor, and imprisoned people in America than in China.
Around 2.5 million citizens/residents of the US are in gaol! A quarter of a million dead from the Trump-assisted Corona-virus! Well said Godfree. I am surprised, though, by the tack taken by Andrew Leigh – I have higher expectations – but maybe that Canberra ALP/LNP bubble is too tight for a fairer broader perspective to enter.
And in US privately run gaols the prisoners work for US corporations for a pittance, like $5 an hour. Nice labour rates for corporations who make mega-profits.
Yet these are not labour camps it appears.
I suspect your pay-rate of $5US is well above actuality. When much of the firefighting in California is done by prisoners – I don’t think it is more than $1US per hour.
Thanks for the correction. It’s even worse than I thought.
I am not surprised of Leigh’s position given the history of ALP members of Parliament running off to the US embassy blabbering the latest Cabinet dealings.
I am not surprised of Leigh’s position given the history of ALP members of Parliament running off to the US embassy blabbering the latest Cabinet dealings.
Could you provide sources for China’s world beating democracy.
Could you provide sources for China’s world beating democracy? I certainly could: it’s https://www.unz.com/article/selling-democracy-to-china/.
and, as a bonus, democracy eye-candy, too:
https://i.imgur.com/PowGw9K.png