As someone who has been associated with the Sydney Morning Herald for more than 50 years as a cadet, reporter, correspondent, leader writer, foreign editor and still occasional contributor, I can’t think of a lower level of commentary ever run in the newspaper.
Caught with trousers down?
When Scott Morrison learned about the now notorious Tweet of the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, he wasted little time, just 45 minutes, in assembling Canberra’s media pack to vent his outrage at this slur on the reputation of every Australian who’d ever put on the uniform.
As Morrison was still in quarantine from his Japan visit, his press conference had to be done by video link. The camera did not reveal if Morrison had put on his suit pants for the occasion. Carefully curated photos had earlier shown him getting around the Lodge in Zoom dress – shirt and coat on top, boxers and thongs below. But it was a case of a lie getting half way round the world before truth has time to put on its trousers.
The image posted by Zhao was clearly a graphic artist’s Photoshop montage, the kind not unknown in our media, meant to shock, but not the “fake” that Morrison and many reporters took it to be. And the Prime Minister was overlooking the uncomfortable fact the Brereton report had found credible evidence that some of our soldiers had cut the throats of Afghan 14-year-old boys, if not a small girl cuddling a pet lamb.
But it immediately sucked airtime from the previous news in China relations, that last Saturday the $1.4 billion wine export trade had been scuppered by tariffs up to 212 per cent, coal ships were idle outside Chinese ports, and China’s punishment of Australia on Morrison’s watch was now getting up past $21 billion a year. Maybe that was Morrison’s snap calculation, as federal parliament convened for its last session of the year. Morrison’s attempt to rectify the fiasco on China’s WeChat online forum was of course blocked.
Rising to the bait
Well down in the coverage was any discussion whether Morrison had been wise to play it the way he did. The Lowy Institute’s Hervé Lemahieu was not the lead in the story by Eryk Bagshaw and Anthony Galloway in the Sydney Morning Herald with his comment that Morrison should not have been the one to respond.
“We shouldn’t deploy our top asset – head of government – to respond to a propaganda post from some junior level official in the Chinese Foreign Ministry,” Lemahieu said. “These guys seek attention and we have given it to them,” Mr Lemahieu said. “That [the tariffs] is the big story, and to me it looks like they are trying to switch the subjects and make Australia look like the villain. We shouldn’t have fallen for it.”
Damien Spry, an expert on social media in Asia at the University of South Australia, wrote on Lowy’s The Interpreter website that Australia had now joined a list of those China’s “wolf warrior” diplomat in chief Zhao had deliberately provoked. “By reacting with fury we’ve done what a troll would hope,” Spry said. “Internet trolling referred originally not to beasts under bridges but to a fishing term – to cast a line and entice prey to hook themselves. By demanding an apology from the Chinese government and saying they should be ashamed, we’ve taken the bait.”
If it’s not “secret” it’s not news
Canberra’s intelligence community has meanwhile discovered that much of the Chinese-language media in Australia has been taken over by Beijing-aligned interests, and pushes the line of the Chinese Communist Party. As reporter Kate Wong noted in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age yesterday, these outlets have poured scorn on Morrison over his response to the tweet.
The Office of National Intelligence, recently handed over from Nick Warner to Andrew Shearer, had “confidentially briefed” the government about this, the Sydney Morning Herald–Age journalist Nick McKenzie and colleagues report, citing “official sources who could not be identified because they were not authorised to speak”.
These sound like the same kind of sources who tipped McKenzie off to the impending raid on NSW state upper house member Shaoquet Mouselmane, allowing McKenzie to be outside the MP’s house with a camera crew when ASIO and the Federal Police arrived.
All hush-hush. But hang on, this report on Chinese language media was compiled by the ONI’s Open Source Centre, which “collects, interprets and disseminates” non-classified material “of political, strategic or economic significance to Australia”, has analysed 20 months of content from 14 online Chinese-language news sites and 10 popular WeChat sites. It has also checked ownership structures and Communist Party links.
So all based on open sources and public records, with findings that seem to repeat and corroborate the findings of academics like UTS communications specialist Wanning Sun. Why the secrecy, except perhaps to make it more newsworthy for those getting the leak?
And as for answering academic John Fitzgerald’s question at the end of the news report – what do we do about it – it seems Morrison’s government is leaving it to the US State Department and Falun Gong to set up a counter Chinese-language campaign, as we have noted previously.
We should also keep in mind that the CCP’s efforts to control the diaspora’s information flow is not primarily aimed at interfering in Australia, but preventing the diaspora becoming a base for subversion of the Chinese system. Former ambassador Geoff Raby, spruiking his new book China’s Grand Strategy and Australia’s Future in the New Global Order, reminds us that Qing dynasty was undermined by Sun Yat-sen and other exiles in Japan.
Winners and grinners
In these difficult moments, Morrison has gained vocal support from various Tory backbenchers in Britain and US Republicans like Senator Marco Rubio, and strangely New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, but very few from Asian friends. Amanda Hodge for The Australian did the rounds of Southeast Asian foreign ministries to find a few words of support for Morrison. No response, except for Taiwan and the Philippines. The region had been “scared into silence by Beijing’s aggression” said the headline.
Anthony Albanese and Labor colleagues were meanwhile slapped down by The Australian for suggesting Morrison’s handling of China had worsened the trade picture. “As countries across the region that are threatened by Chinese bullying closely watch Australia’s standoff with Beijing, it would be hard to exaggerate the importance of our own leaders not saying or doing anything that plays into China’s hands,” it editorialised yesterday. “Anything that suggests we are divided as a nation in our response to Beijing would do just that. Bipartisanship, not party political point-scoring and ill-timed criticism, is vital if Beijing’s destructive belligerence is to be successfully confronted.”
The paper’s Canberra correspondents Simon Benson and Ben Packham weighed in with comment pieces condemning Albo for breaking ranks. Columnist Niki Savva started out playing with the Gareth Evans analysis ran on this website that Morrison had been too strident, but veered back to safe News Corp territory by quoting ASPI’s Peter Jennings: such criticism was just another version of “shut up and take the money”. Business could wean itself off China in five years if it wanted to diversify, Jenning said, not mentioning that would be about the time it would take China to diversify out of Australian iron ore by opening up Guinea’s Simandou deposit.
Schlock and awe from Hartcher
In the Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday, international editor Peter Hartcher said that if Zhao was supposed to be a Wolf Warrior diplomat he was “obviously no diplomat. And as for wolf warrior, it’s more like schlock monger.”
“Did Zhao or his masters stop to think of the effect that this might have?” Hartcher asked. “Is this really going to pressure Australia into yielding? It won’t, of course. It’s entirely counterproductive to Beijing’s cause. It only exposes Xi’s regime as thugs and grubs, rallies Australians around their government and hardens Australia’s resolve. It’s the clearest sign yet of desperation in Beijing.”
Taking it lower
A week earlier, Nine News political editor Chris Uhlmann had also put Zhao Lijian in his place over his list of grievances against Australia, later expanded to 14 by the Chinese embassy and handed to a Canberra reporter.
“What China is demanding of Australia is that it give up its sovereignty and shut up forever,” Uhlmann thundered in his regular oped, reluctantly published by the SMH and The Age by mandate of their new management.
“While some university chiefs and some business executives might be taking this list and checking it twice for potential moments of self-enriching obeisance, no Australian government can seriously consider any of it. If we swallowed this set of demands, do you imagine it would be the last? What do you want your children and grandchildren to concede?
“When Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian laid all blame for the poor relationship at Australia’s door, he intoned: ‘Whoever hung the bell [on the tiger’s neck] must untie it.’ This invites Australia to mine its own vast cultural heritage and respond in kind. Given I don’t have to worry about trying to reboot a relationship with a country that has the temperament of a toddler, let’s go with: ‘Take your list and stick it where the sun don’t shine.’”
As someone who has been associated with the Sydney Morning Herald for more than 50 years as a cadet, reporter, correspondent, leader writer, foreign editor and still occasional contributor, I can’t think of a lower level of commentary ever run in the newspaper.
Comments
28 responses to “Hook, line and sinker: China threw the cast and Scott Morrison fell for it”
Morrison’s enraged response has been widely criticised as a political mis-step, but if you look at his track record it is entirely in accordance with his character. At the least suspicion that his wisdom or truth have been questioned, Morrison flies into child-like fury, particularly if the questioner is a woman. His patriarchal, religious “headman” persona sits skin-deep beneath his glib marketing schtick and ability to bluster with confected outrage in order to score what he sees as political brownie points. Our only saving grace is that he does not carry around the red trigger button of a nuclear arsenal.
Morrison would have been better to not comment at all. End of story. China just wants exactly what Morrison has given them. They played him. Can see Xi sitting around with green tea chortling with his buddies… “See, how easy was that!”
He has no finesse does he. Like when bushfire victims refused to shake his hand and he grabbed their hands and shook them anyway.
US through the CIA has a long history of comms strategy that includes writing the stories of the main stream media. I suspect that this is the case with SMH, especially Hartcher’s diatribe.
If you are looking for CIA operatives Kimmy Kitching is the go to girl. Went from Brisbane Girls Grammar through a series of corporate sedan chairs into the Heath Services Union. Found to have falsified douments by Fair Work Australia and endured a divorce where the matrimonial mansion was flogged off, bankruptcy followed but still living with the ex. Out of the disgraced Landeryou stable. Vehementlly anti-PRC. As Gough remarked at an AWU national conference at Surfers Paradise “We are a long way from the shearing sheds comrades.”
The Brits, gringos, KIwis have all weighed in to defend little bro Oz from the big bad bully China.
After all, this is a family affair.
Any time now, the Canucks will join hand to uphold the family honor.
http://www.swans.com/library/art7/gowans11.html
Trudeau has his hands full with protests from India over his gratuitous commentary on the 250 million farmers revolt in India against the Modi government. So much for the Quad and Indian co-operation in the Pacific. He is also back tracking furiously to release Meng Wanzhou. Dont think they will be saying anything about the cartoon war. Oh dear.
Notice that the [[[five liars]]] single out China for alleged ‘human rights abuses’, but
they all studiously turn their head away while
real abuses are almost a daily affair in Kashmir
and the Indian NE .
Thanks for the head up on Trudeau.
But Canada , as part of the [[[five liars]]] crime syndicate, has zero moral authority to lecture on human rights.
http://www.swans.com/library/art7/gowans02.html
Anyway, this is a refreshing change from the
[[[five liars]]] double standard on ‘human rights’.
If this serve to rattle that QUAD arm gang,
so much the better
To create the atmosphere for war
The Sydney Morning Herald consists mainly in “gotcha” moments, exaggerations and ill-informed reporting. The list is long as Hamish’s examples show, and the rag’s “Independent” claim is not met. What is left worth reading there? The letters pages are more thoughtful, and the environmental pages often have depressing, factual revelations. The rest acts as the LNP’s mouthpiece, notably the anti-China stance, but it’s the result of an imperial white male supremacy which will do nothing about what has been done to Indigenous peoples to this day. The Herald is quite unable to criticise this extremely dark side of Australian greed and rapacity: surely the “white trash of Asia” applies.
China is just ripping off the hypocritical mask of the Western colonial establishment. While the west weaponised human rights, they’ve dropped more bombs on sovereign countries while winning Nobel peace prizes given out by the same establishment.
The arrogance of things for a non-Western country questioning the beacon of “human rights”. Turns out, West’s version of freedom is freedom for me, death to others. I can do it but you can’t point it out.
If nothing else, China is effectively crushing Western colonialism apologists within her own border, a lot of which are mesmerised by the Western propaganda apparatus.
What goes unsaid is that the cunning brits are passing laws (Overseas Operations Bill) that makes sure any war crimes is buried while the US sanctions anybody who even attempts to investigate. Not much peep about it on Fairfax or Murdoch pamphlets on the morals of the whole thing.
“Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused the court of “illegitimate attempts to subject Americans to its jurisdiction”. The Hague-based ICC is currently investigating whether US forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54003527
https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2019-21/overseasoperationsservicepersonnelandveterans.html
I find it amusing that the same countries that sucked the lifeblood out of China during the imperialist years, and more than 100 years of opium trade, now don’t seem to get it. UK, US, Germany and little Oz (their mate for anyone’s overseas war). We even sent troops to the Boxer rebellion. Even back then Australia was willing to bash the Chinese as they had done since the Australian gold rush.
England left both India and China poor countries (they were both formerly the richest countries in the world) and those Indians who lived in Bengal where most British opium was monocultured, suffered several deadly famines because they could no longer grow their own traditional food crops.
England started the exploitation of China, but by mid to late 19th Century everyone was in on the imperialist coup and the drug trade in China, Germany, and the US included. Everybody had a little bit of Chinese coastline at the time, and British had already taken Hong Kong by duress. China also paid the equivalent of a US $17 billion in reparations after the first Opium War for destroying British opium. The US also made a fortune out of supplying Turkish opium, so much so that it is said that the early US railways were built from opium money (ironically with a lot of cheap Chinese labour). The Roosevelt family for example, with descendant US presidents like Theodore and Franklin Delano were recipients of this wealth through Warren Delano, US opium trader par excellence. Many of the big name families in the US made their early fortunes out of illegal opium trade.
There is also a strong case to be made that Theodore Roosevelt backed Japan into becoming the Asian version of Western imperialism, and supported Japan’s invasion of Korea (formally 1910) which led to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and a great deal of suffering for the Chinese who got in their way – the “rape of Nanjing” comes to mind, as well and the attacks on Shanghai etc. Unit 731 is another dimension of horror.
So it can be said China knows all about Western attitudes of prejudice, and as a country it has been patronised, vilified, besmirched, abused, talked down to, underestimated, targeted by Western racism, robbed of wealth, compared to barbarians, and never respected for any of its economic success and cultural value to the world.
Morrison, Lord Downer, Wolfman Andrew Hastie, Johnson, and the various US players like Pompeo, the SMH tribe of China haters, and all the same imperialist countries continue to view China as inferior, bound to crash, to be less capable than Western nations – as they sneer down their noses in the best of white man imperialist superiority – born to rule as usual. They need to put another rebellious colonial outpost back in its place, the view is obvious, the natives are becoming unfriendly, they are not towing the line.
This method of course, will never work with China because it has had a gutful. Now it has reached the size and capacity to be a world leader, and worthy of respect for what it has achieved, China knows it doesn’t have to kowtow anymore. Instead, we need to show China a little respect like we do for Western countries – then we will get somewhere. But if the abuse continues, mainly out of Western ignorance of the country and its people, and fake anti-China news that appears every day in our mainstream newspapers continues, Australia will become further alienated from Asia and we’ll be heading to poor country status clinging onto our British past.
Morrison shows no understanding of China in the least, he is anathema to good relations with China.
Now you raise Lowy, in their 2020 poll, 94% wanted to “reduce our economic dependence on China”.
Guided by crass self interest, Morrison has room to shift shape, again and again on China. Labor shifts are ruled out, because automatically they would be “racist”. Read Eric Kaufmann on this.
That Lowy poll is rather uninformative. Now if I had been polled, I too would have agreed we should reduce our dependency of China just as I would if it were US, UK, Japan or NZ. No country should be dependent on another and we should aim at being much, much more self reliant.
However by agreeing we should reduce dependency on China does not mean I support the anti China rhetoric or demands for apologies etc.
Sir,
Yes, but who is lining up to buy our products? Many of these 94% will be losing their jobs if the decoupling actually becomes severe. As I said before, Indians don’t eat beef, Indonesians don’t drink wine, for religious reasons. We are already trading to our max with Japan, Korea and ASEAN countries. The US and Europe compete with us. South Americans produce good beef and wine. They are also big exporters of seafood. Easier said than done.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
The Afghan imaged certainly had hit a raw nerve and the knee jerk reaction from a PM is really a point of no return as perceived by the Chinese. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Perhaps Andrew Hastie should have made that response and at least it did not come from the leader, which has a finality about it.
The Chinese has strike gold on this issue and continued the assault with an additional cartoon plus a lengthy video directed at Pm Morrison (with English subtitles) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCAh9urpDvI
This video showed how irritated the Chinese are about PM Morrison.
Thanks for that link. I’d watch it again with comprehensible sub titles..
If Morrison had responded at all, which is doubtful, it should have been with more dignity. He could have said something like “The allegations are indeed shocking and shameful, and rest assured they will be independently and transparently investigated, and the findings acted upon.”
Upholding transparency and the rule of law are by no means this government’s strong point, but at least they are way ahead of China on this.
The simple thoughts on the simple mind of Morrison were simply: ~I’ll use this shit to deflect from the real murders carried out by Australian soldiers in the illegal invasion of Afghanistan~
Not sure about the comparison in your last phrase; your post would have been complete without it – but we seem to be unable to pass up any chance to denigrate China. Just FYI
http://cooksourdough.blogspot.com/2017/07/this-democracy-thing.html
It is all so familiar – LNP electioneering 101. Keep Australians insecure, nationalistic and beholden – never mind the cost whether it be lives or lucre. If it fits with the thrall of America all the better. It’ll only get worse as we get dumber. China just told us whats going on, that Morrison’s behaviour is all about whipping up nationalist fervour . Fancy focussing on journalistic coverage of the daily issues – fiddling while Rome …
Outrage is Morrison’s signature response. My deteriorating little grey cells required assistance from google to remind me of the other recent outrage from the PM which rebounded and drew attention to similar matters he might prefer to be overlooked—the beneficiaries of privatisation. In case others have forgotten, it was, of course, the heinous matter of gold watches.
Others have reminded us that China has many grievances to address, but we all have to live together and I wonder how we will prosper (or even survive given the challenges of climate change) if we keep picking at them. On the 14 which currently exercise Beijing, I can’t understand why China would not welcome the investigation of the COVID source given it is convinced it originated elsewhere.
I think an “investigation” into the origins of covid would attempt to point to china, right or wrong.
But that would then lead to all sorts of alternative propositions and depositions, that only cries of conspiracy theory could quell.
Obama administrations contributions to Wuhan labs, The WHO, Gates, event 201 and certainly a medical exposition of exosomes themselves, would be outside the terms of reference of that investigation into source of origin.
And Austs contribution through CSIRO
It is important to recall the sheer insanity and provocative nature of Morrison’s “plan”.
Morrison wanted:
1 “Reform of the governance” of the WHO, with one element being removing the right of individual members to veto proposed health strategies.
2. An “independent review organisation” which would examine the performance of the WHO in a global health calamity, such as the current Covid-19 calamity, when it has ended.
The next demand was the kicker.
3. He wanted to give the WHO the power to send a team of investigators into a country (guess which one) to determine the factors behind a disease outbreak. He likened them to weapon inspectors deployed to countries to verify disarmament programs. Iraq ring a bell?
To make it worse the champion from the Shire made his demand in April when PRC was still in a life and death struggle against the pandemic.
Morrison said he raised the idea with Trump during telephone talks on “managing” the coronavirus the day before he released his “plan”
He tweeted: “Just got off the phone with US President @realDonaldTrump. We had a very constructive discussion on our health responses to #COVID19 and the need to get our market-led and business centres economies up and running again.”
These words should condemn him forever.
Australia then voted with the US in the UN against a resolution from Mexico about the global response to the pandemic and offered no explanation why we rejected the resolution. 179 countries supported the resolution. Morrison had completly isolated Australia in regard to the pandemic.
Our PM is a blundering fool completely out of his depth. He has done immeasurable harm to our country. And we have a moral coward as Opposition leader who cant land a blow on him. Couldn’t bruise a grape Albo.
The headline on yesterday’s Age read “Intel agency reveals how China runs local media” (The Age 3/12). Then it proceeded to repeat arguments that Chinese language newspapers are being controlled from Beijing. I ask, can we propose a counter headline “Thirty years of past history reveals that Rupert Murdoch runs 70% of local media”?
All of this may provoke a sense of humour if it was not so serious and demonstrates yet again a massive lack of leadership at the top of the federal government, not to mention a completely uncritical anti-China attitude manifested by the mainstream media.
It seems to me “the offensive tweet” – a digitally created piece of propaganda is saturated with Christian symbolism. Perhaps this is what really got up Morrison’s nose with this so called offensive tweet is that he sees it as an attack on his Christian faith.
For example the prominence of the lamb in the image – Lamb of God? Sacrificial Lamb? In one version of the biblical story when a person sinned, they would take a lamb to the temple to sacrifice,” “To be called a Lamb of God means that God gave Jesus to be killed like a lamb for our sins so we could live forever.”
Also the soldier holding a knife to the (Muslim) boy perhaps an allusion to Abraham and Isaac? In one version of the bible story this teaches the need to follow God’s commands to be good and religious?
It has been commented that the Afghanistan war adventure was partly inspired by Geo W Bush’s Christian Crusade. God wills it?
However, I don’t think Morrison reaction to the tweet is helpful in dealing with “godless communists” whom it seems have a much deeper understanding of aspects of our culture than we do of theirs.
In regard to the Philippines as a daily reader of the Manila and Mindanao english language media i could only find one reference to the Morrison twitter war. Todays news however is dominated by President Duterte’s invitation for Putin to visit the Philippines next year. For those who are interested in the decline of US influence in the Philippines.