The Prime Minister thinks he can set the terms with Beijing. But hard choices and compromises are required to manage our region’s ruthless great power.
We should not be surprised that Australia is finding it hard to get our relations with China right, because we have never encountered a country like this before.
China today is a ruthless country determined to use its growing power to expand its influence and reshape our region to suit its interests, with little if any regard for the interests of others. But it is also a country that we must learn to work with, and not just because no other country will offer anything like the same export opportunities in the years and decades ahead.
As our region’s strongest state by far, it will do more than any other country to shape Asia diplomatically and strategically, with huge consequences for our future security and influence.
That means China is more important to us in more ways than any country has ever been, except for our great allies Britain and America, and China is not in any sense an ally, let alone a “mate”. There will never be any sentimental ballast in this relationship, from either side – just the cold, hard calculus of advantage.
Managing this relationship will be the most difficult as well as the most important diplomatic challenge we have faced. We will need to be clever, finding ways to achieve our aims in ways that cause the least ructions in Beijing. And we have to make compromises, giving way on some issues to make progress on others.
Sometimes it won’t be pretty, but that is the way international politics works when you are dealing with great powers.
It is not clear that Scott Morrison has understood this. He seems to think that Australia can set the terms of the relationship unilaterally. Again and again over the past few months, as things have plunged to new lows, he has told Australians that there is simply no choice but to defy Beijing the way he has done. Anything else, he says, would betray Australia’s interests and impugn our sovereignty.
This absurd oversimplification of such a complex and important issue is, frankly, an insult to our intelligence.
But we know why he does it. In the age of Brexit and Trump, Morrison is alive to the popular appeal of a leader seen to be standing firm in defence of our national independence and identity from interfering foreigners.
We do need to guard against Chinese interference in our politics, but we might talk less about how we are doing it.
Morrison has been happy to defy Beijing to present himself in this light. He has found plenty of flag-waving jingoists to encourage him. But now he finds that it is bad politics as well as bad government to trash this most important relationship for short-term applause.
The reality is that international relationships, like any other kind, always require a good deal of accommodation and compromise. Our national interests do not all lie on one side of the issue, and we need to balance competing interests that pull us different ways.
It is simply not true to say that doing this undermines our sovereignty or threatens our democracy. It is what we have to do as a sovereign nation to get the best outcome we can in a world where we cannot have everything our own way.
That means we are going to have to make some hard choices and some nuanced judgments. We do need to guard against Chinese interference in our politics, but we might talk less about how we are doing it. We do need to keep an eye on Chinese investments, but we should not exaggerate the risks they pose. And sometimes we will have to accept risks to avoid unacceptable costs.
This is what our neighbours are doing. Morrison’s trip to Japan last week was designed to show that we can deal with China by teaming up with other regional countries to isolate it. He brandished the low-level defence administrative agreement which he signed as evidence that Tokyo was on board for this.
But that is not so. This week, hard on Morrison’s heels, China’s Foreign Minister went to Tokyo to plan a state visit by President Xi Jinping. That is possible because Japan has been able to build better relations with Beijing without compromising its core interests. That shows how different Japan’s approach to China is from ours, despite the much more serious differences between them.
In a ham-fisted attempt to mend things with Beijing, Morrison in a major speech this week, and in these pages on Wednesday, distanced himself from Washington by saying Australia was not taking America’s side against China. He stressed that Australia does not see China as a strategic rival the way America does.
But he also said that Australia is “absolutely committed” to its alliance with the United States. How can that be so, if we do not share America’s strategic aims? Do we support America against China or not? If not, how can we claim we are committed to the alliance, given that containing China is America’s highest strategic priority – and will remain so under Biden?
The answer seems to be that Scott Morrison still hopes the rivalry between America and China is a passing phase. He thinks Australia won’t have to choose between them, because things will go back to the way they were in John Howard’s day.
Back then, China accepted American leadership and America welcomed China’s rise, and Australia had no hard choices to make. But those days are past because China is different now, and we must learn to live with it.
This article has been republished from the Australian Financial Review; 26 November 2020
Hugh White Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University
He served for many years as a senior defence and intelligence official with the Australian government.
Comments
46 responses to “Morrison has misread China”
Looking at all the comments led me to believe that one of the major faults in the Morrison government has ben been the quality and efficacy of the advice given to him. The leader falls because it has not been shown a better way to address the challenge of a rising China; and without having to choose sides bw US or China. The re-formatting of the National Foundation for Australia-China relations was a good example of a bad advice as illustrated by an article by Prof J Chey (see https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/canberra-shuffles-its-china-briefcases/) . If relations are to be reset, then the composition of this committee has to be changed following the toning down of rhetorics on both sides.
Professor Hugh White,
Let’s assume for a moment that your categorisation of China as “ruthless” is accurate and correct.
How then will you categorised the only country in the world that has waged nuclear war by dropping two atomic bombs on the civilian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – after the Japanese have indicated their willingness to surrender?
In case that nuclear war is insufficient evidence of aggression, we can add US military adventurisms in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua…
Jeffa, you can loathe the United States as much as you like, and clearly you do. But surely you can see it is beside the point in an article about Australia and China.
I find myself much more in sympathy with the comments here than the article itself, a fairly typical product of ANU Strategic Studies. That clique fail to understand that it is China that is exceptional. Surprisingly being a geologist gives me a better understanding of why that is so. China is the culture that has grown up on the most fertile large tract of land on earth. It is the geology and meteorology that have made Chinese culture what it is: the vast extent of rich alluvial soils, steadily replenished by nutrient-rich loess sediment from the Yellow River, and by rich sediment from the rapidly-eroding Tibetan Plateau in the Yangtze. That geology combined with a temperate climate have provided the environment in which the world’s biggest culture in terms of population and organisation would necessarily develop. Wherever those people ventured outwards, they found country that was inferior to their homeland. What they occupied of the inferior lands was merely for the defence of their homeland against jealous barbarian invaders. China’s has, for thousands of years, been a culture militarised for the defence of its lands. It was for many centuries xenophobic and self-sufficient, until, at a low ebb, it wisely cherry-picked science, socialism, and aspects of economics, from Western intellectual culture. Those choices enabled China to pick itself up after suffering from internal corruption, exploitative trade with Western drug pedlars, and mass murder, rape, and rapine by that other culture made barbaric by their conquest of native people, Japan.
Western culture, which has dominated the world for centuries, has a barbarous streak inherited from its forbears who lived in poverty, very often by rapine, in the forests of Germany and Scandinavia. Those people emerged as predators on ancient civilisation and eventually conquered it, giving us the Dark Ages, which are still recognisable in our lust for war, and in the squabbling tribes of the political right and the post-modernists in our university arts faculties. It is that heritage that makes Western culture a conquest culture, whose more barbaric members see other cultures, without exception, as a threat or an opportunity for exploitation. Hugh White is right about most other cultures, which have a history similar to our own, but he is wrong about China for the science-based reasons given above.
“Just doing me job”
Reporting the results of disinterested inquiry has been my job for 52 years.
Take it easy, you’ll be as old as me if you keep that up.
you are giving ScuMo too much credit for being able to think. All he actually did with China is kotow to whatever Donald Trump told him, starting with the Huawei ban.
Now he is backtracking because Biden isn’t such a clumsy diplomat and is backtracking on China to try and keep the USA relevant, so ScuMo is following the new leader.
Biden not such a clumsy diplomat?
That’s for the giggle.
Morrison is a rank amateur who plays populist politics in order to ingratiate himself. He’s effectively, a version of Trump-Lite. The man has no vision, few policies and a whole lot of spin and marketing. This Australian Government is incapable of managing the complexities inherent in, simultaneously, managing delicate diplomatic relations with Washington and Beijing. When faced with such a dilemma, Morrison’s cultural identity as a white, privileged, Anglo-Saxon, middle aged male, who is used to getting his own way, will always prevail and he’ll plug for the Anglosphere.
It is a shame Hugh White tarnishes his otherwise first-class objective analysis of Morrison’s ongoing China policy trainwreck by some egregious and false allegations of Chinese ruthlessness, which others have already capably rebutted.
I want to inject some global bank CITI quantified forecasts from AFR 28-29 Nov , which speak for themselves. On a downside scenario (the most likely, given Morrison’s continuing wilful aggression towards China), Australia faces a 20% decline in total merchandise exports, leading to a $76 billion loss in our export earnings, causing a sizeable 3.8% hit to nominal GDP . (Without adding in inevitable multiplier effects). CITI predicts that in this scenario, the A$/US$ exchange rate would be around 16 cents lower over next 12 months. These are disastrous forecasts by any reasonable measure.
Yet the Australian elite – including Liberal backbencher, the Labor Party, and MSM top commentators – continue to insult China and shrug off the significance of these costs. For example, Phillip Coorey, in an AFR comment ironically alongside the CITI bank forecasts, describes Beijing’s latest move on wine as ‘even more poisonous given it did not have the basic decency to inform the [Australian] government.” This is only a sample of the general level of commentary in Australian government and media circles, while our business , rural and higher education communities look on in silent horror.
Sir,
With due respects, you seem equally determined to create further misunderstanding by portraying the Chinese as ruthless and attempting to reshape the region. I would say that the Chinese are not any more ruthless than any Western country. If history were the proof of character, it was the Western nations which ruthlessly colonised other parts of the world and perpetrated a lot of atrocities in the process – the conquistadors is a case in point. Another is the slave trade and the labour of slaves which contributed in no small way to the prosperity of the US. The British empire in the 19th century covered about 25 percent of the earth’s surface. Did you think that the British did this without an iota of ruthlessness? Oh, they innocently found themselves in possession of 25% of the earth’s surface. This is not to suggest that the present government of China is devoid of ruthlessness. They are as bad as you and I.
Why is Australia desperately trying to match the Chinese in aid to the small nations in the Pacific if not to shape the region to one more to our liking?
Would the Australian government be singing the friendship between Japan and Australia if the “Rape of Nanking” were to happen say in the city of Perth which had about the same population at that point in time as the estimated murder of more than 350,000 Chinese in Nanking? Nobody is claiming that Australia cannot be or shouldn’t be an ally of Japan. But the underpinning rational is nothing short of ridiculous.
We are all flawed humans and being so we are all ruthless, cruel, domineering, hypocritical, deceitful, irresponsible, violent and greedy. All these negatives can be heap on any state or type of government or race and be believed by the ill informed. There is an iota of truth in all accusations but the pot should not be calling the kettle black – and very loudly so. Has it occurred to you that Marxist and Leninist communism was also western ideologies that was adopted by China under the desperate circumstances it found itself in the 1930s and 1940s? If only people can be persuaded that underneath all that difference in colour of skin, culture, history and politics, we are essentially the same. The West had a role in creating the China of today. Even in the worse of situations, some serendipitous good can come out of nefarious intent. In that respect, I am an optimist.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
I read somewhere that in the last 200 years, between the British, French and the US, they have invaded, pillaged, carried out genocides of indigenous peoples across the world more than 300 times. In contrast, the Chinese would have defended their country against invaders, etc. less than 10 times. Chinese civilizational history tells us that they are interested in basically 2 things, their prosperity and their culture. The culture does not encourage warlike inclinations. It is Westerners who don’t understand, or who don’t want to understand the Chinese, that they ascribe their own Western predilection for wars, to Chinese motivation or objectives. For millennial, the Chinese state tried to keep out “barbarians” to achieve one thing, which is to be left alone in their China.
Because the various dynasties were too busy subjugating their “own” people.
Under Mao China stood up. Under Deng China became rich. Under Xi China became strong. The “ruthlessness” they complain about is actually strength. Let them cry into their dribbling senile nostalgia for past white colonialist and neo-colonialist supremacy. It is over.
Don’t panic…Hugh White is always trying to justify his bullshit job.
Excellent article which I don’t think will cut through with those currently in power. Morrison is a narrow ideologue with all the attendant intellectual failings of such people as has he has amply demonstrated all the time he has been in the public eye. As Prof. White has written, we need a nuanced and intelligent leadership, one that ‘ride the waves’ of competing big power demands while preserving our way of life. This will be very difficult as Prof. White will know from his debate with Prof. Meirsheimer at the Centre of Independent Studies last year where he was bluntly informed that any deviation from the US policy line by us will result in retaliation from the US which, given their blood stained history of interference in other countries affairs, will not be pleasant. However, we must find a way and this means finding appropriate leadership in both the political and bureaucratic spheres.
Whites’ job is hypnosis maintenance, couched in considered diplomacy.
With his simplistic jingoism Morrison has backed himself into a corner lined with shock jocks and people like Abetz. In doing so he has lost any credibility and room to manoeuvre. In a striking way he is very similar to Trump in that he believes bluster will always prevail over intelligence and diplomacy.
Don’t Panic …They’ll change their rhetoric if Twiggys’ exports take a hit.
He will simply apply for (and get) compensation. Remember the market rules!
You’re right … Sometimes I relapse into false hope.
Marise Payne, needs to stop doing diplomacy on Insiders and other TV shows. Her strident calls for an investigation into the Covid 19 pandemic, made on the ABC program, ‘Insiders’, was intemperate and should have been conducted via diplomatic channels. It appeared that she wanted to lay blame on China and the Chinese took exception to the way she acted. No surprise we are being punished via trade restrictions. China doesn’t like to lose face in public but, in the past, has responded to diplomatic overtures. Time our government ministers were schooled on the way China’s leadership thinks and acts.
don’t forget Krudd & Julie Bishop actually started the China bashing, ScoMo was only doing his master’s (Trump) bidding.
Trump is not his master…These bums are dogs and main chance equivocators in every act.
ScuMo is baiting them with every move. He started by banning the superior Huawei 5G technology because the USA can’t compete with its old, backdoor ridden rubbish. He supports the USA spying from Alice Springs, he gives the USA access to our ports for US Navy bases, so they can try to intimidate China.
At least NZ has the balls to tell the USA where to go with their Navy (and doesn’t allow them in their ports).
ScuMo’s latest farce is blaming China for covid-19, yet another lapdog support for Trump and the USA.
ScuMo is an idiot, every move he makes to provoke China does nothing more than create a backlash against Australia.
He’s like a trojan horse destroying Australia from within.
That’s all true of course.
But you’ll find Scomos’ Masters are much and much less visible than Trump.
Trump is that Rich kid that crashed the old boys cricket game, gave everybody the shits, flipped them the finger then buggered off and couldn’t care less.
The crowds watching the game felt good about that .. but they still don’t know why.
If she actually did want a ‘selective’ investigation into the “Covid-19 pandemic” ..The last place the huge ornamental Cameo Payne would want to look is on Rich Planet TV and its SCAMDEMIC Videos.
There is some wild and contrived entertainment there BUT, also some very eye opening realities.
to manage our region’s ruthless great power.
really another Chinese expert oozing out of the West!
There is no point in believing we can make sense of China by a skin-deep knowledge of present-day China. We will be little the wiser. especially with articles presented like this!
Chinese civilization is over 4,000 years old: as a political entity it is over 2,000 years old, the longest continuously existing polity in the world. 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 to arguably the world’s most successful civilization. China has been the most advanced country not just once but at least four times; and we are on the verge of this becoming five. A country, a culture, and a people with the most extraordinary history that is fast becoming the magnet of the future.
The west has dominated and effectively controlled the world so that we think of modernity as western modernity. We cannot understand china in western terms and this is the great challenge and our mentality is why we don’t understand china.
China has never been an expansionist power it does however have a universalist view
of itself in other words that china was the highest form of civilization just like Europe had a universalist view and the US !
Europe’s interpretation of its universalism was that it should civilize the world which of course is exactly what happened with colonial empires and gun boat diplomacy.
The two things that really matter the Chinese one is economic and the other is culture
this is very very different from the Western tradition the European tradition and the American tradition where military expansion and political influence, have been extremely important!
A decades long model of being an irrelevance ..
And being put on stage occasionally to confirm it…Hugh White.
Exactly!!
Scomo start it by trying finger pointing at the Chinese as a way of deflecting from his inadequate Covid 19 responses.
I don’t think Morrison reads anything much. I don’t believe he has many original thoughts. All his utterings seem to come from the right wing of his party and some right wing publications and think tanks. Morrison is a marketing guy who interpretes his world through the amount of successful spin. I don’t think there is much original thought going on in Morrison.
And he is very successful in convincing Australians that he is not merely an empty vessel but is full of rich ideas.
Don’t forget to watch out for those announceables. Then watch out if any real action ensues. Two announceables spring to mind – the dress code for Australia Day, and nothing happened, and the electric vehicle policy, and nothing happened.
I am sure that there is a database somewhere with all those unfulfilled announcables and promises by Scotty documented. I am yet to find it.
the only thing that needs to happen with expensive EV’s is for the rich w*nkers who own them to pay a road tax, to maintain all the roads that everyone else is subsidising them for (yet again!)
Australia was the only country in the world to make Trump an odds on betting favourite with the bookies in last US election. Dont underestimate the gullibility of aussies or the shrewdness of our bookies.
Hugh White states that: “China today is a ruthless country determined to use its growing power to expand its influence and reshape our region to suit its interests, with little if any regard for the interests of others.”
Looking at our erstwhile ally, we could rephrase this to:
The United States is a ruthless country determined to use its waning power to maintain its influence and reshape the world to suit its interests, with little if any regard for the interests of others.
All the more reason why we need a far more nuanced approach to dealing with both China and the US than our Government has displayed over recent years!
ha ha well said, I often do the same switching of countries with the USA when i read blatant propaganda.
Apart from this unsubstantiated accusation of China’s “ruthlessness” the article was actually very balanced.
yep seconded, I think the China ruthlessness comment was a bone deliberately thrown in to appease the masses and the editor (although I’ve kind of felt like the AFR has been running a business moderate line on China on some pieces at least)
PM Morrison living in the past, making matters worse for Australian business, wrecking our relationship with China just to score points with domestic voters. How good is that?
Indeed Cameron, that is how I more or less rephrased that same sentence.
Exactly!
It really is time to insist that commentary in reference to the US and the PRC’s comparative record on human rights be grounded in analysis. According to the Partisan Electoral Intervention by the Great Powers dataset (PEIG) by Levin of Carnegie Mellon University, 117 partisan electoral interventions were made by the US and the USSR/Russia between 1 January 1946 and 31 December 2000. Eighty-one (or 69%) of these interventions were done by the US.
https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Levin-study.pdf
Agreed. As any Latin American will tell you, US history is full of ruthless pursuit of its inerests in contrast to its rhetoric which reflects ideals far too often not lived up to. As any Native American will tell you: White man speak with forked tongue. But Hugh has got China right in an excellent article. We must never forget the importance of Chinese history to Chinese. Scomo really doesn’t undertand any culture outsie of the Shire.
Scomo really doesn’t understand any culture outside of the Shire. Most insightful read of Scott, our Marketing man, who knows nothing more than… Marketing!
Get off it, he didn’t even get that right. Sacked by both ours and NZ gov tourism boards.