For the past nine months China has blocked some Australian exports, including coal, cotton, lobsters and timber, while also levying anti-dumping duties on Australian wine and barley. Post Covid, it will be hard for Australia to grow quickly without China’s market, capital, people exchange and know-how. Finding a détente is essential.
However, Australia targeted China before it targeted us. After signing a free trade and investment agreement with China in 2015, we:
- Blocked more than 100 Chinese imports by using anti-dumping provisions that the Productivity Commission found were inappropriate under WTO rules
- Led the charge globally to ban Huawei from the 5G network
- Officially condemned human rights violations in China without shaming neighbouring countries (e.g. India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Pakistan, Myanmar and so on) for their transgressions or taking moral responsibility for our own Pacific Solution for refugees.
- Condemned China for breaching international law by seizing a disputed coral atoll in the South China Sea while ignoring Trump tearing up international agreements such as the Paris Climate Change Accord, NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the Iran Nuclear Treaty and the Medium Range Missile Treaty
- Banned China, but not other nations, from promoting its interests and influence in Australia
- Publicly requested the World Health Organisation to investigate the origins of Covid-19 after talking to the Trump administration, but did not give prior notice to, let alone have any dialogue with, China
- Have now banned virtually any investment from China or any bilateral cooperation between state governments and universities and their counterparts in China.
China is as a result accusing Australia of singling it out for special discrimination and has designated us a “hostile supplier”. I think it has a point.
We could find ourselves isolated as other countries continue to not only co-exist with but forge closer ties with China. America made China buy more agricultural exports from it. The EU and China have now concluded a “Comprehensive” Agreement on Investment.
And last November, 15 Asia-Pacific nations (including Australia and China) signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement to eliminate about 90% of tariffs on inter-regional trade and establish common rules for e-commerce, trade and intellectual property. Following the agreement, Japan and China agreed to work together to uphold and strengthen rules-based multilateral trade and to hold talks with South Korea on a three-way trade deal.
As former trade minister Andrew Robb has highlighted, China accounted for two-thirds of the world’s GDP growth in the past 15 years. Diversifying exports to other markets that cannot match that performance won’t be a substitute.
Unlike most OECD countries, Australia’s resource-rich economy complements, rather than competes with, China’s manufacturing intensive one.
But with media hysteria and megaphone diplomacy, it will be hard to repair the damage to our bilateral relations. It will also be hard for Australia to grow quickly after Covid-19 without China’s market, capital, people exchange and know-how. Finding a détente is essential.
Comments
73 responses to “China-Australia trade conflict is not all China’s doing”
The great pity is that there was a time when China genuinely respected Australia and would have listened carefully to Australia for guidance on how to manage relations with the United States. All this “soft power” now thrown away … for what?? And it will be very hard now to regain the credibility that Australia once enjoyed.
Again, this may just be a play for the benefit of the USA etc. Asking and suggesting do not break bones. Hopefully the adults are in charge in Canberra and they can now suggest a softeneing?
The coal is still off China.
The vast majority of trade is actully increasing in value to Australia’s benefit, isn’t it?
But any chance to bash Scotty from marketing is fun …
This is the sort of article that should be on all mainstream media. Thank you Percy Allan.
I can also say from following Chinese news services is that we are now seen as the country leading the charge against China in the world and they know full well we have even tried to out do Trump with the megaphone diplomacy and trade wars. This will not be forgotten for along time and I read yesterday that China no longer wants Australian copper either. There is no chance for a change of government in China so we can’t expect an alternative party to amend the decisions made now. Good for the environment to slow down mining, but the Liberals have nothing in place to replace it.
Morrison and his sycophant media, who seem to have been more driven by Trump’s US views, rather than Australian interests, are causing an economic disaster for Australia, and now they will not even be supported by the US under the Biden administration. While Trump was in office US export trade with China increased in all of the things Australia has been shut out of trading, apart from iron ore. What fools we are.
And as far as human rights go, there could be many more ‘allies’ we could criticise, including the US and Saudi Arabia and don’t mention that other country in the Mediterranean levant region. None of them are better than China, I would say far worse – but they are allies apparently. If Pompeo uses the genocide term, he should have realised that the US genocide of 11 million American Indians is a good place to start, not to mention the deaths of innocent people caused by much more than 120 years of wars. And because we have been so vocal on the world stage, Australia itself has been criticised recently several times over our human rights record from many countries with far better records than our own.
Morrison has diminished our standing in the world as did Trump did with the US and he should be paying for it like Trump most certainly will. Two chronic liars in a pod who couldn’t give a toss about their own people, only the rich 1% and themselves.
Now that Trump has gone, it paves the way for Morrison and his crony and corrupt Liberal party to suffer the same fate.
Wake up! Biden has called Xi Jinping a “thug” and the new Secretary of State agrees with the genocide designation. It has nothing to do with Trumpism. The genocide of indigenous Americans and Australians was evil, so is China’s genocide of Uyghurs. One does not excuse the other.
The abusive and racist rhetoric will slow down under Biden. Of course the US still thinks it should dominate, as it did under Obama’s euphemistic ‘Pivot to Asia’, but without Pompeo who nearly just caused a serious conflict in the region it will be a lot better too. Unless you understand something about Chinese culture, you will never know how much Trump’s mindless hate talk from a world leader was a shock to them. It’ s not how Chinese people function.
I suggest you look up any dictionary definition of ‘genocide’. Here’s one:
“the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.” It usually involves a large cohort of people within a particular nation.
a. Killing members of the group;
b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
These kinds of definitions follow from Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, and they were mostly murdered or treated in ways that comply with the above list.
It normally involves mass killing, which is what the US does par excellence, and so did Australia with indigenous Australians, to the point that their existence as a civilisation came close to being destroyed – but it didn’t fully get there. You may believe Pompeo on China, but I do not, he’s well known to be a pathological liar.
I do not like to comment on the Uyghur region, but don’t take that to mean I support any action that involves brutality or any of the other things claimed to be human rights abuse in the Xinjiang region. The fact is that none of us can go there to see what is happening and the entire case against China was totally exaggerated by the US under Trump and Pompeo. There is good information, but also a lot of false information being peddled. Some of false information is no better than the claims the US made about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction which turned out to be mass distraction. And these sorts of claims are always about remote locations where no one can check the veracity of the claims. All of this surfaced under Trump’s reign of ugly egotism as well while the actual problem goes way back to the 1920s. The US also locked up many Uyghurs in Guantanamo Bay for years that were captured in Afghanistan, and when Muslim terrorism was the US theme for two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, they actually supported the Chinese back then as they were seen to be acting against terrorism.
If you have been to Xinjiang then you can inform me as to what is really going on. Drone pictures from newspapers etc. are rubbish propaganda as far as I am concerned. Secondarily, if you really study what the US does is that it just culls out people that don’t agree with its geopolitical aims in most of their phony wars. It just kills them. China is not mass killing Uyghurs to the point of genocide,and to be truly a genocide it requires that the great bulk of a certain ethnic group of people are killed within a nation.
Happy to talk Tibet though, the other US claim. I know far more about that. But no one says too much about it now because it is much better known and some facts would reveal a lot more to the story that can implicate the British and the US. Having once been a follower of Tibetan Buddhism, I can tell you that the US and Australia paid little attention to the Dalai Lama’s fight for many many years. But suddenly under Trump it became another issue that had to be dealt with. He was poison for any possibly better relationship with China.
So maybe you should wake up.
Yeah I know first hand the things of which I speak and I am pretty sure I know China and Chinese culture and how the CCP works a whole lot better than you do. Pompeo has only finally said what some of us have been seeing for a couple of years – didn’t need him to tell us but, as I said, Blinken agrees that it is genocide so you can’t play the Trump card on that. And yes I am aware of the UN definition of genocide – China is at least doing b through e. Agree much more should have been done on Tibet long ago.
So I repeat, wake up – and quit being a genocide denier. Maybe try to get to know a few Uyghurs too and try listening.
You are on the Trump side.
Isn’t this Trump claim getting old with you, especially when I keep on telling you I hate the man.
You’re like George Bush; You’re either with us or against us>
Rob, if you can keep your mind open, perhaps listen to somehow who has been to Xinjiang:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh9-jAV44lw
Pompeo has obviously succeeded in getting many in the world to shout ‘CCP’, ‘CCP’, ‘CCP’!
lolololol is this the same Anya Parampil from RT America?
Yeah, young kid goes on CCP guided tour and finds nothing.
Listen to someone who spent two weeks in Xinjiang! Are you kidding? Yeah I have actually been there a lot longer myself.
Rob, anytime you say something negative about the CCP George will respond with a Trump claim; it’s his standard fall back position. If you’re not enamoured with the CCP you must be a Trumpist.
Or in your case a troll
As a former senior trades union office holder you should be ashamed. I wonder how your equivalent in China would be treated in organising a strike, yet here you are lauding a regime that would have locked you up with only a sham trial.
You’re a pathetic authoritarian apologist!
The entire revolution under Mao and the disposal of the Qing dynasty could be seen to be the biggest ‘strike’ in Chinese history. The Chinese people have made nothing but progress and prosperity since then, despite the errors made in the the Great Leap Forward. That can be seen by population increases, more food, better housing, huge infrastructure development, and availability of better paid work and conditions alone.
And you are not credible in using that argument since you are strongly on the right side yourself. The right has always pandered to the wealthiest in the community, not the workers. They couldn’t give a toss about them at all, as it is with the Liberals in this country.
Oddly enough, it was your American Republican party whose first president Abraham Lincoln took the country to civil war to abolish slavery. Yet the Confederate flag waving and white supremacists that support the Republicans today, stand for the complete opposite. How do you explain that? Some of them would bring back black slavery if they could.
The Republicans have been eaten out by those that would hate Lincoln.
“The Chinese people have made nothing but progress and prosperity since then, despite the errors made in the the Great Leap Forward. That can be seen by population increases, more food, better housing, huge infrastruc…..”
Oh George, what an unashamed apologist you are, actually you’re rather despicable! You call 45 million unnecessary deaths “an error” do you?
https://www.scmp.com/article/723956/revisiting-calamitous-time
Well done, you can gloss over anything, can’t you.
Yes it was, and even the CCP acknowledge it.
” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officially stated in June 1981 that the famine was mainly due to the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward as well as the Anti-Rightist Campaign, in addition to some natural disasters and the Sino-Soviet split”
In 1962 they also stated that the human error was 70% and the natural causes 30%
Once again you blow up something into your own exaggerated and judgmental interpretation of what I say. It was a shocking error, but it also was accompanied by floods, droughts and famines that had characteristically caused many deaths in China before.
Famine
The Chinese famine of 1907 caused 25 million deaths
The Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879 killed up to 13 million people.
Flood
The Chinese floods of 1931 killed as many as 4 million
The 1887 flood in China killed up to 2 million
Drought
The 1928-30 drought in China killed as many as 10 million.
Should we blame Chiang Kai-shek for that? What were his policies at the time?
But let’s also look at the overall increase in population in China due to overall better policies that increased China’s ability to deal with the three above.
In 1928 under the ROC or Republic of China, the population was 474,780,000
In 1975 as the PRC it was 916,395,000, almost double.
And by 2000 it was 1,262,645,000, despite the one child policy.
You embarrass yourself! It was you who was flippant with the “an error”. I suggest you go and read up on the Great Leap Forward.
Bureaucratic failure at every level by the leaders is hardly “an error”. Continued inability to admit fault and do something that results in tens of millions of people starving isn’t “an error”.
You’ll forgive anything you believe in, no matter what the cost has been in human life.
The Chinese Trade Union movement has 302 million members in 1,713,000 trade union organizations. They have had a 300% increase in membership in the last ten years. The Huawei workers superannuation fund owns 90% of Huawei. Chinese workers have regular strikes. The disputes are mediated under the Labour Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law LDACs settled a record 1,068,413 disputes (many of them strikes) with the unions winning outright about 30% of the disputes, about 60% resulting in a mediated compromise and the management winning about 10%. That is a much better win ratio than the current drongro’s leading the ACTU and unions like the AWU. i dont think the AWU has won a dispute since the shearer’s strike of the 1890’s. There have been big strikes in PRC where striking is NOT illegal. In 2010 Nanhai Honda workers went on strike and won a 35 percent (500
yuan per month) pay increase, the Yue Yuen shoe factory strike in Dongguan in which around 40,000workers walked off the job for two weeks, the 2015 Lide shoe factory
strike in which workers secured millions of yuan in unpaid social insurance contributions and the nationwide strikes organized by tower crane operators and truck drivers in May and June 2018 to name but a few big strikes. Chinese workers have enjoyed an approximate 400% increase in their wages over the last 20 years. Sham trials? Bring them on. As someone who has had experience with the former Justice Glynn of the Industrial Commission of New South Wales and Diamond Jim McLellan i could cope with one or two in PRC. Mate would i go well? i would be as happy as a pig in shit.
I think he picked the wrong guy to attack.
Brilliant response.
George if he didnt exist we would have to invent him. He is like a sinophobic sponge. Every anti-PRC myth, lie and exaggeration is trotted out. He is a propaganda trampoline. Wonderful to bounce off. Come in spinner.
What a load of codswallop. Worked in Bahrain and they had unions as well, controlled by the companies, this was achieved to meet a US requirement for a free trade agreement. China has unions, so what, you cross the line and you’ll be dealt with line anyone else. I’m sure they strike, but you’ll ultimately bend to the Gov will.
EDIT: btw, I lived in the same compound as a former union offical working for the Bahraini gov on how to run their unions, so I have a pretty good idea what a shell union setup is like.
Funny how you have these factories in China where they need to set up nets to stop their employees from jumping out of windows, what about the workers for Huawei working the 996 (9 to 9, 6 days a week).
Just like China has courts, but doesn’t have a justice system, because basically 99% confess. I’d say Chinese unions are somewhat like the unions of the USSR.
Skilts, you like in a world that replicates a true Trumpian experience, and just like theirs, it’s all in your mind.
George, you’re nothing but a shill.
So in reference to trade unionism in PRC you rattle on about Bahrain? Mate the desperation is fierce. If you want an example of a trade union run by the bosses try the Federated Ironworkers Association circa 1980’s. Harry Hurrell got his submissions to the Industrial Relations Commission written for him by the BHP IR department. If you want a court run by a government try Justice Bill Fisher and Nifty Wran. Huawei employees own the company through the Union of Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd., by an Employee Shareholding Scheme involving 104,572 employees. Only Huawei employees are eligible to participate. Completely voluntary by the way. So they own the company. The worker ownership of Huawei has been generally seen as providing its innovative edge. You claim that Huawei workers work extraordinary hours. Which country are you talking about champ? Huawi has 194, 000 workers worldwide, 49%, about 96,000 are in R&D. Huawei employs workers in 157 countries. They employ 43 different ethnic groups in PRC.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345995342_Employee_Ownership_and_Industrial_Innovation_Huawei_in_the_US-China_Technology_Rivalry
As for the nets this myth was peddled in 2010. It was alleged that Foxconn a US company that employed about one million employees in PRC had 18 suicides at work that year. That is a tragedy but the figure is actually below the population suicide rate in PRC. The average rate would have been 222 deaths. So actually less people suicided at Foxconn by a large factor than the general suicide rate. You are making this stuff up arent you mate?
In China itself. The fact that you’d think Huawei would get away with that in west indicates how much you’ll twist your thinking to justify your beliefs.
Bahrain was an example of how having “unions” is not proof of anything.
I wouldn’t trust you in regard to stats on anything.
No need to go to Bahrain. The AWU in Australia is evidence of having unions is not proof of anything. Bob Hawke was selected to be President of the ACTU in 1968 by the CIA station chief in Australia Emil Lindhal. Barry Unsworth, the Killer in the Cardigan, and John “The Duck” Ducker were both run by Lindahl. Mate i have had a lifetime of boxing it out with traitorous grubs. But all you have is wet lettuce ad hominem. Yawn.
Rob. You claim first hand knowledge of a genocide. A big claim such as genocide requires a large amount of evidence. Now as i have declared on here several times under challenge my name is Paul Matters aged pensioner living in Wollongong. Could you please to give some credibility to your expansive claim and identify yourself by name and your experience in Xinjiang with the years living there etc? If not you are just a troll.
You are welcome to believe Pompeo, a man who said himself publicly:
“I was the CIA director, we lied, we cheated, we stole. That’s, it was like, we had entire training courses.”
I choose not to believe this man, and I would say that if you believe him then you will believe anyone that was part of Trump’s shocking period of presidency. Neither of them achieved a thing with China. Pompeo is also another man fuelled by Pentecostal rubbish about the ‘rapture’, like Pence, Morrison, and his mate Stuart Robert.
Pompeo is not a credible source on anything reliable, he was totally politically aligned with Trump. He spent the last months of Trump’s presidency trying to convince SE Asia that regime change was needed in China, meddling with Taiwan, and also trying to trigger a confrontation in the Strait of Taiwan. I would say it came to a hair’s distance from actually happening. But his efforts turned SE Asia further away from the US.
Do you then support regime change in China as well? We’ve seen all that before and the US is still not out of Iraq or Afghanistan. And what a great human rights travesty of justice that would be given the high density of population in any of the countries in the Sino-Japanese region. How many Chinese should be killed out of 1.4 billion? How many Taiwanese out of 24 million? Yet that method is always the method par excellence of the US, and somehow when you slaughter millions of innocent people it is not a human rights violation. The fact is that if Chinese people are repressed by their government as many claim, and have their human rights violated, then they are innocent, so why would they have to pay for America’s newest wrath? And once again a war played out thousands of kilometres away from US soil.
So what is your answer? I find that so many people with views like yours simply stand on the sidelines shouting and pointing the finger at China, accusing anyone that holds a different view to yours of being asleep, yet ultimately you offer no solution in the least. If you go with Pompeo, you are talking war. I suppose after 19 years of war this Century so far it s about time for the military industrial complex to make a killing in profits too.
Biden has a monumental amount of work to do to rid his country of Coronavirus, unite his people together again after the current ‘uncivil war’ (yet to end), get America’s economy back on track, support his people, and stop spending billions on more wars and obscene military budgets. He has to do something about the obscene transfer of money to America’s 0.6% who hold half the countries wealth. He also has to heal the divide between black and white, and build trust in America internationally once again. Attempting a war with China would be an absolute folly when your own country is so divided and infected with this pandemic. Athens was like that during the Peloponnesian Wars, and look where that got its people.
I told you at least twice I didn’t need any info or guidance on this from Pompeo. He was a johnny come lately as far as I am concerned, and now he is a “johnny gone.” And the only people talking up a war are you and Xi Jinping. Believe what you will.
Yet in my first comment (paragraph 3) which you replied to, I specifically referred to Pompeo’s comments on genocide.
“And the only people talking up a war are you and Xi Jinping. Believe what you will.”
Where do I do that? Where and when did Xi Jinping say that?
And still, what is your solution?
Rob could you please detail your vast experience in PRC? And your presumably eye witness accounts of “genocide” as you claim? Forgive me, but i am rather advanced in years and i had a fellow contact me on my email. He said he was from Nigeria and he had some money to deposit in my account. Well i was over the moon mate with my good fortune. But i am a little wary in a life of dealing with bosses so i asked him for verification of his personal details. Well, he replied that he would like my bank account details. Unfortunately, we are at a stalemate as he hasnt replied with his verified details. Now champ dont get me wrong. I have an open mind but not an open bank account. Could you please identify yourself and supply those details of your vast experience in PRC that i have asked you for, if its not too much trouble? Otherwise i will put your claims with those of the bloke from Nigeria.
“China is not mass killing Uyghurs to the point of genocide,and to be truly a genocide it requires that the great bulk of a certain ethnic group of people are killed within a nation.”
Okay, so you’re finally admitting it, China may not be killing enough Uighurs to classify as genoise, but nonetheless, they’re killing them in large numbers.
Thank you for finally fessing up to what the CCP has been doing.
So when are you going to tell us what the solution is? I keep asking.
Meanwhile you stand on the sidelines and criticise those who do not support your views on China, but never initiate a discussion yourself.
I say again, what is your solution?
A solution for what? All I do is counter your CCP propaganda. I have no problem with China being a one party state, but I do with the rubbish posted here day after day lauding China and the CCP as same sort of nirvana, which it isn’t by a long shot.
have to go.
In other words you use the Uyghurs for you own purpose, but offer no solutions for the claims you make on their behalf.
You also use the opportunity to make false and wild and exaggerated claims about the motivations of those who write here.
Nobody lauds “China and the CCP as some sort of nirvana” either – you are way off the mark with your comments on that.
Solution for imprisoning an ethnic group that wishes to retain its own identity and language? How about letting them live their lives like they always have.
I’m guessing George, that you’re pro Palestinian; I don’t know how you handle the cognitive dissonance of that when you look at how the Israelis treat them, to how the Uighurs are treated.
That is not an answer, but an opinion on what the Uyghur people want. How do you suggest that may be achieved? It’s all very well to point the finger but you are very coy on suggesting how it could be achieved. Otherwise you offer no solution that could answer to your claims.
If you keep saying I’m Neville Chamberlain, you by default imply that it requires declaring war on China, the very opposite of what Chamberlain did.
That’s what Churchill did later with the Germans by rejecting Chamberlain’s passive approach and declaring war, but they had in fact already invaded Poland, a separate country.
Sorry George, you are a hypocrite. You deny the reality of the Uighurs and demand “evidence” and you go on to make your own unsubstantiated claims.
Again George, how did Xi make his billions serving his people? Corruption is how.
With your constant denial of the Uighur problem I now think you’re just another sockpuppet.
Just more wild accusations and not one question answered.
I have never denied the Uyghurs situation. Your invention again
No reference to your claims on Xi Jinping’s wealth.
And more name calling diatribe.
“I have never denied the Uyghurs situation” That statement is just laughable.
Champ some bad news. Uygur people are using social media and uploading vast amounts of material to refute the genocide. The first time in history that a mass movement of people have used social media to counter CIA propaganda. Its a major development in the fight against anti-PRC propaganda. For reference you might like to chat with this bloke?
Jilil Tursun Tuohut, an Imam from a mosque in Ayake village in Luopu county, appeared in a video uploaded online, in which he said to Pompeo:
“My family’s life as well as people’s living standards in the region have improved greatly in recent years. We don’t need your care and please mind your own business.” The Imam shows us around his house. The first time in history that victims of “genocide” have made videos about “genocide”. Drop him a line on social media.
“Genoise” is that a cake? Fessing up? Are you a two bob yank mate?
I’m not your mate, and never will be.
It’s all about ego battles for you isn’t it, same as Donald. No wonder you cannot understand diplomacy or trying to work with different cultural views so that diplomacy can mitigate the potential for wars between different countries. If everyone functioned as you do, we would be at war all of the time.
And if we all functioned like you, we be under a bigger yoke than we already are.
George, as usual you make a lot of assumptions. If I was voting in the US it would have been for Sanders, in the UK Corbyn. In the M.E. more for Iran and the Palestinians. I just object to the glossing over and denial of how the CCP is portrayed here.
I guess you are aware of the latest CCP for the SCS and their Coastguard?
George, where did Xi’s billions come from. Don’t try and hide on this, explain it or be quite about how corrupt you think the west is.
You still have not given any evidence about the claims you make over Xi Jinping’s wealth.
We’ve also been over that before more than once, and you gave no answers.
And in any case if US presidents can be billionaires, like Trump, and generally very wealthy people in terms of millions if you want to be president, why do you hold double standards with one country and another.
So, Mr Trade Unionist of Wollongong, I guess like Georgie Porgie you’ve accepted that China has killed its own citizens as you’ve not responded to dispute it; how embarrassing for you both to have to have slammed the door in your own faces!
“Experts estimate the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders at more than 770,000 at the time of the invasion in 1788. It fell to its low of around 117,000 people in 1900, a decrease by 84%.” Genocide, check.
Historical population of Uyghurs in China
Year Pop. ±% p.a.
1990[157] 7,214,431 —
2000 8,405,416 +1.54%
2010 10,069,346 +1.82%
Official figures released by Chinese authorities place the population of Uyghurs within the Xinjiang region to be just over 12 million, comprising approximately half of the total regional population.
Man Chinese sucks at Genocide. Should learn a thing or 2 from the Brits.
How many plebs can think for themselves these days.
“The population of Aboriginal Australians at the time of permanent European settlement is contentious and has been estimated at between 318,000[9] and 1,000,000[10]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australians
Just that fall from 770k to 120k should have got you thinking, but then I doubt you’re interested in the truth.
“How many plebs can think for themselves these days.”
Not many by the looks of it.
Does United Front pay well?
You are a perfectly good example of why the US is always at war.
Okay, Neville Chamberlain.
d_n_n
You don’t even notice what you reveal about yourself when you write. You need to be more careful.
I asked you what was your solution to do something about the Uyghur people.
Your reply was: “A solution for what?” As if it had not even crossed your mind.
I have asked the same question before in terms of what should be done about China and the CCP. You never give an answer.
Then, rather sloppily, you accuse me of being a Neville Chamberlain who of course is famous for not declaring war on Nazi Germany.
What you reveal about yourself here is that your real solution is WAR against China, better known as regime change by Pompeo and other previous belligerent minds like George W. Bush – your fellow countrymen.
Your question re a solution for the Uighurs is a dumb question, George, it’s like asking what was the solution to Hitler’s treatment of the jews.
The solution for Hitler’s treatment of the Jews was WWII.
You are just avoiding saying what your real intent is here, and that is to push for war on China, otherwise you would respond to that.
“The solution for Hitler’s treatment of the Jews was WWII.”
The “Final Solution” was not the cause of WW2, to call it as such is to imply that WW2 was a result of what Nazi Germany was doing and that is just false.
“You are just avoiding saying what your real intent is here, and that is to push for war on China, otherwise you would respond to that.”
See, you accuse me of making wild unsupported claims and here you go AGAIN. A war with China will have NO WINNERS whatsoever, regardless of who comes out on top in a military sense, we will ALL lose, no matter where we live on the planet.
Another point I will also make is that when your argument based on guessing what people intentions are here fails, even when substantial evidence is presented to you, you resort immediately to playground name calling.
It is well known to be a juvenile method to employ in any pseudo-argument that would not even get you through first year university. It is comparable to Donald Trump’s abusive behaviour, a man who resorts to exactly the same method when he senses he is cornered.
It is the first genocide in history where the population of the “victims” has increased significantly.
Biden is a war criminal. For balance Lee Kwan Yew said this of Xi Jinping in his book “One Mans View of the World” (have you even read it?): “He struck me as a man of great breadth. I would put him in the Nelson Mandela class of persons.” Now Biden has the blood of a million Iraqi civilians on his hands. I will go with Lee on this one thanks all the same champ.
You’re amazingly shameless! Now you’re quoting another one party state leader (former) that doesn’t hesitate to use it’s powers to maintain its control over the country.
If you were to live in Singapore and make comments about the Singaporean leadership like you do Trump, you’d be in jail in no time whatsoever.
You have a real thing for authoritarian states.
Another swing and a miss. Singapore is not a one party state. Singapore has 12 registered political parties that participate in elections of universal suffrage and compulsory voting. Where do you get your stuff from? Skye? Fox News? Champ if i was living in Singapore i would be supporting the governing party but perhaps having a look at the Workers Party. There are several reasons for this. One is that the PSP share the colors of the Sydney Swans.
Again, shameless, A party that lost an election when exactly? It controls the Justice system, media and the “laws” under which it works. Admittedly, a decent system, unless you cross the line. Threaten the gov and you’ll pay for it.
You must know this, you cannot be so ignorant!
P.S. You just proved my point like George did with his genocide defence. You called Biden a war criminal, go and call Lee Hsien Loong a war criminal in Singapore, or in that regions media and then pass through Singapore and let me know how many decades they sentence you to prison for that.
When you can point me to the example of Singapore committing the war crime of a war of aggression i would be more than happy to call Lee a “war criminal.” But if i did without a shred of evidence, the total absence of any war participated in by Singapore since its inception and the total innocence of Lee of the charge, i would be committing libel. And would be justifiably sued. As i would be in Australia. You are spinning out of any rational orbit champ.
If China has committed genocide of Uyghurs, how come the population of Uyghurs in Xinjiang region has increased 20% in the last ten years to 12 Millions?
aa cc, try to a least read the posts.
Not just from the official news services. If you are able to read comments and messages on various online platforms regarding Australia and China conflicts , especially those from HK and China, you will find a huge amount of negative comments against Australia. They regard Australia as the aggressor. Australia is the one who bites the hand that feeds you. Australia used to have a good image among Chinese citizens and they used to love to travel to our country but unfortunately is no more now.
Yes I agree with you 100%.
“Australia used to have a good image among Chinese citizens and they used to love to travel to our country but unfortunately is no more now.”
Exactly.
And that is why we need to tone down the belligerent anti-China rhetoric, it is not working. Far more has been achieved in the past with effective diplomacy and letting China open up by itself.
Same with America, a country that in the past Chinese people held much respect for. Many still do today despite the Trump abuse. Chinese people call the USA Měiguó (美国) which means ‘beautiful country’.
Those who use fear do so to protect their thefts. The LNP and the USA….
Minister Wang Yi in December asked Australia to “consider seriously” what China means to it: Is China a threat or a partner to Australia? He further asked, “If Australia sees China as a threat, how can China-Australia relations improve?”
China now sees a positive opportunity to make a clean start that Trump is gone. They are hoping for a reboot in policies, and want to work constructively with Biden and the Democrats.
The only way things can improve here in Australia now, is by a change of government as well, the damage caused by Liberals since Turnbull and particularly under Morrison is non-repairable, it has just gone too far.
While Labor have not clearly differentiated themselves from the Liberal’s dominant view, they are capable of working through diplomatic channels far more effectively. But they also have a problem to overcome with the Australian people, given that they have been fed nothing but negative propaganda concerning China and its people for many years now.
I have even questioned whether some of our MS media sources were not actually being paid by US interests to write so much Sinophobic garbage.
While a bigger China might constitute a bigger threat – as it would be with any other country of such economic scale – there is a lot of milking of latent ‘yellow peril’ views here in Australia, something in our history since the Lambing Flat riots of 1860-61 that gave rise to the White Australia Policy. That policy was only ever introduced to keep Chinese people out of Australia (well before Mao and communism) in the most racist manner possible.
George there is a disgraceful history of anti-Chinese racism in the trade union movement also. Particularly with William Lane and the AWU. A disgraceful racist tradition carried on by the current crop of billy goats in the extremely overpaid AWU leadership today. It was particularly virulent against the great Federated Ironworkers Association leader Ernie Thornton when he became the Australasian representative at the World Federation of Trade Unions in Beijing. The A.C.T.U. withdrew recognition of the W.F.T.U. and Thornton was blacklisted by the CIA stooges then in control of the FIA. Thorton was denigrated as “Peking Ernie” by the vile Laurie Short group racists. He was elected Sydney president of the Federated Engine Drivers’ and Firemen’s Association. Ernie Thornton died while driving a crane on a Sydney Building site. There is also a strong wonderful history of Australian working class solidarity with the Chinese people of course.
I agree with all of that, and it was that actions of early unions that brought us the White Australia Policy which was mainly about keeping Chinese out of Australia after the lambing flats riots 0f 1860-61. Labor supported it too, even John Curtin, but it was weakened by the Liberals, and finally put to complete rest during Whitlam’s brief time in office.
Curtain said: “This country shall remain forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here in peace in order to establish in the South Seas an outpost of the British race.”
Not much different to our first prime minister Edmund Barton’s views presented in the immigration restriction act of 1901:
“The doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman.”
While it is impossible to dismiss the benefit of the early establishment of unions with the introduction of the industrial revolution, and establishing rights for workers, today some of those organisations have digressed to becoming monsters in the own greedy and corrupt behaviour, and lost the view that they are there to represent the people, and the underdog. What was once the poverty stricken proletariat class they stood up for, has now become a very well cashed-up cohort of Australian society.
I agree George. The depth of anti-Chinese racism in colonial Australia is expressed in the NSW Select Parliamentary Report Into Common Lodging Houses in 1876. The Report which was extremely influential anti-Chinese propaganda for many years alleged opium dens, immorality, white women being forced into prostitution by Chinese. The Report came out of the fear of infectious diseases spreading in working class slums. The Chairman of the Committee was Angus Cameron, the first trade union official to be elected to an Australian parliament and a raging sinophobe. By 1887 the Chinese Minister in London, Liu Jui-fen formally complained to the British Foreign Office about laws discriminating against Chinese immigrants in the Australian colonies, and in particular to the imposition of a £10 poll tax on Chinese in NSW. In 1888 the Chinese Emperor Guangxu sent a delegation of Commissioners to Australia to report on the treatment of Chinese people in the colonies. The Sydney Morning Herald and New South Wales Premier Parkes claimed that the Commissioners were sent by the Emperor to set up the establishment of a Chinese colony in Australia. Nothing has changed that much.
Thanks for that, you are filling in the gaps I don’t necessarily know about. The more that I research as well as learn from you and others makes me realise just how much historical precedent there is for the anti-Chinese sentiment issue in Australia.
I don’t know if you have heard of David Brophy from Sydney University – he wrote a book about the Uyghurs and spent quite a lot of time there researching the issues after having learnt several languages to do the work effectively (“Uyghur Nation
Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier”). I have not read it yet but I would say he is Australia’s leading expert on the Xinjiang region. I noticed today that he will be publishing a new book titled “China Panic: Australia’s Alternative to Paranoia and Pandering”.
Previously he also wrote a review on Clive Hamilton’s “Silent Invasion” where he points out the paranoia and fear, the lack of actual understanding of Chinese culture, and the absence of any criticism of the US, the ones who have been pushing the anti-China agenda in the US, and in Australia.
The title of his book appears to address what many of us think could be a better approach rather than jingoistic and belligerent nonsense. It’ s what people like D_N_E just cannot comprehend.
https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/china-panic
Thanks for that. I will try and get hold of a copy.