Ignorance and prejudice on China are now entrenched in Australia, fed by media repetition of false narratives; possibly encouraged by US and UK origin foreign influences; and enabled by stubborn and inept Australian political leadership.
The Australian Financial Review (AFR) annual Business Summit 8-9 March 2021 offered a useful snapshot of the state of the Australia-China relationship as being experienced by Australian business. The title of the main panel carried the desired upbeat message from AFR:
‘Beyond China: where do the new opportunities lie?
What is at stake with Australia trade and political tensions?
What are the opportunities to diversify China trade risk?
How should business deal with China’s assertive diplomacy?’
Panellists were mostly despondent. They saw a stagnating Australia-China policy relationship, and a complacent Morrison government unwilling to seek circuit-breakers to try to get it moving again.
This dramatic bar chart of Chinese investment in Australia 2014-2020, produced by the East Asian Bureau of Economic Research at ANU Canberra and published recently by the UK Financial Times, tells the real story:
‘Chinese investors turn away from Australia after Canberra crackdown’, Jamie Smyth, Financial Times 28 February 2021
I have not seen this striking graph reproduced in any Australian media.
According to Smyth, the value of Chinese investment in Australia collapsed last year in the face of tougher scrutiny by Canberra, a breakdown in bilateral relations, and a global downturn in foreign investment owing to the pandemic. Five Eyes intelligence network members, ‘including’ US and UK, rushed to tighten oversight of Chinese foreign investment on national security grounds. Chinese investment in Australia which had peaked at A$16.5bn in 2014, the high point in the relationship, fell dramatically to A$2.6bn in 2019 and A$1.0bn in 2020.
I predict it may fall even lower in 2021, put off by hostile messages like the Australian Treasurer’s veto
in August 2020 on the $600mn sale of Lion Dairy, a major Japanese-owned Australian dairy corporation – a producer of no strategic significance, already foreign-owned – to a Chinese buyer. This was seen by Beijing as crude Sinophobia.
There has been no sign of leadership by Scott Morrison. He passionately condemned a Chinese social media meme satirizing reported Australian SAS war crimes in Afghanistan: this is the only China issue on which he has exerted himself over the past year. He declined on 19 November 2020 to rebuke Senator Abetz’s McCarthyist suggestion to Chinese Australian witnesses in a Parliamentary Committee that they should condemn the Chinese Communist Party in order to prove their loyalty to Australia. A few days earlier, Morrison had said Australia will not back down to Chinese threats on security, freedom of speech or human rights.
The Australian anti-China think tank industry, nurtured by lavish Western defence industry corporate sponsorship and wealthy pro-US alliance Australian donors, would see the ANU graph as cause for celebration. I wonder whether Peter Jennings, Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) might have a printout on display, with the caption ‘We stopped these’?
The picture I take away from reading around the Australia – China relationship is that it is pretty much dead in the water now, and that the Australian public is uncomprehending and confused as to why. It is a favourable climate for the growth of anti-China prejudice and anti-Chinese racism in Australia, as in the US. Some Chinese Australians quietly worry about this.
It was therefore poor judgment – certainly poor timing – for the prestigious Lowy Institute to publish on 3 March 2021 a survey exploring Chinese Australian opinions on a range of current hot issues (e.g., views on democracy, views on China-Australia relations) and comparing these with attitudes of a general Australian citizens’ polling sample. The headline takeout was that Chinese Australians are less supportive of democracy than average Australians: more grist for the mill of people like Abetz.
The Lowy study does not seem to have considered the appropriateness of such an exercise focusing on one particular ethnic group in Australia’s multicultural society. How would other communities, e.g., Jewish Australians, like to be publicly put under the microscope in this way, testing their possible deviations from average Australian views? This survey is another sign to me of how Australian policy elites have lost balance and perspective on China.
The abnormal is being normalized. We have allowed the incompetent and borderline racist Morrison Government to lead Australians blindly towards a possibly permanent estrangement from China – a great power that is already by Purchasing Power Parity GDP data the world’s leading economy. This was completely unnecessary. We had a good relationship with China when President Xi visited Australia in 2014. Since then there has been a tragic failure by Australian policy elites to perceive and defend Australia’s real national interests.
The Chinese government for its part is now walking away from Australia without regret. They must consider that they have done their best, and if Australia is too dim and ungracious to respond to their offered olive branch from Foreign Minister Wang Yi through Kevin Rudd, then so be it. Australia as a diplomatic partner is no longer of much interest to them. They have bigger fish to fry.
Our remaining bilateral economic relationship – still substantial in monetary terms, it is true – is a historical legacy of better times, to be wound back by China once they have developed friendlier sources of reliable supply through resource investment elsewhere. The love and mutual respect is gone.
This situation is quietly deplored by more thoughtful people in the Australian business sector, while being celebrated by Australian outliers of the Five Eyes anti-China information warfare industry. Key influencers of public opinion here – mainstream newspaper and network television senior editors and commentators, strategic think tanks like ASPI, and the intelligence agencies – now pretty much speak with one voice. They applaud, for Western alliance strategic reasons, the major economic and political decoupling of Australia from China that is going on. What better way to demonstrate our loyalty to our great ally? They happily point fingers at the alleged ‘aggressive’ policies of the Chinese Communist Party. They shrug off the damage being inflicted on the Australian export economy and its long-nurtured human relationships. Complacently, they advise Australian business to work harder to develop new markets – having themselves vandalised the best world market Australia has ever had or will ever have.
It is unknown, perhaps unknowable, how much these policies are being steered by Washington and London. Whatever Five Eyes clusters of influence have been set up in Australia over past decades, their traces have become so naturalised in Australian policymaking elites now that US or UK sources of foreign influence are hard to pinpoint. This is not to say they do not exist. It is logical and supported by history that they would exist.
Meanwhile, pro-China relationship voices in Australia are being intimidated and elbowed out of the public marketplace of ideas. Geoff Raby, still Australia’s leading independent China expert, on 2 February 2021 endured a disgraceful attack under Senate privilege by maverick Independent Senator Rex Patrick. One has to wonder who encouraged Patrick and fed him data on Raby’s directorship of the Chinese coal company Yancoal which has major assets in Australia, and its tax dealings with ATO.
Raby had, correctly under Australian law but no doubt painfully registered himself as an agent of Chinese influence under the 2018 Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act.
Bizarrely, Patrick now accused Raby of ‘selling his influence to foreign corporate tax dodgers’. Raby has no way to defend himself. The intention seems to be to discredit Raby as a source of expert national interest-based advice on Australia-China relations.
Tony Kevin is a former Australian ambassador to Poland and Cambodia, and a member of the Emeritus Faculty at Australian National University. The author of Return to Moscow (2017), he has independently visited Russia six times since 2016. He has delivered lectures and taken part in academic conferences in the Moscow Diplomatic Academy and in Saint Petersburg on the outlook for Russia-Australia relations.
Comments
36 responses to “‘Ignorance and prejudice on China are now entrenched in Australian media’. Part 1”
Inciting racial hatred is really good for political elites. A large number of votes can be obtained quickly and cheaply.
But for China, once its opponents start to incite racial hatred, it shows that the country’s political elites can no longer think of other ways to maintain their position.
If Australia defines itself as China’s opponent, it should be known that China’s greatest advantage lies not in the economy, but in more room for political adjustment. Compared with Australia, China does not need to instigate fear and hatred of Australia in order to maintain the stability of its regime.
But as a Chinese, I hope Australia and China can understand each other more. It may be difficult to reach a partnership, but when encountering destructive factors, the economic relationship between the two countries can last longer.
“Essentialist thinking” seems to characterise Australian perceptions of the CCP, the Chinese government, and yes, even China as a whole. Essentialist thinking divides the world into “democratic” vs “authoritarian”.
The US is forever democratic no matter how authoritarian its actual policies are (towards its own non-White population and non-Americans). Australia is forever democratic no matter how authoritarian its policies towards indigenous Australians.
Whereas China will be forever “authoritarian” no matter how much the Chinese government engages in public consultation over government policies, no matter what China does to lift its peoples (non-Han minorities as well as the “Han majority”) out of poverty, no matter what support China gives to multilateral institutions to combat climate change, vaccinate the global population, and achieve the global sustainable development goals.
This essentialist thinking is not limited to “right wing” think tanks. It seems to characterise many people who think of themselves as social democrats, liberals, left-leaning, etc.
I would like to argue that we ought to re-examine our tendency towards essentialism. Are there no way for a country like China to be democratic short of party-based elections? Is Western style party-based election the only way for a country to be democratic? Is it so unreasonable for China to look at the partisanship that characterises so much of Western democracy and say, “No thank you, that’s not for us”?
We must try harder to re-examine our prior beliefs and engage in reasoned discussion with people, societies, systems and countries that are not like ours. Democracy works best with good reasoning and public discussion. Global democracy works only via good reasoning and public discussion.
The only problem with your argument is you assume the political class doesn’t know this. You can’t wake someone who is pretending to be alseep.
Biden revealed as much in his latest interview with CNN. All the anti-Chinese stuff is fake, essentially he admitted it on TV.
The motivation is simple, keep the existing system so the existing class of people keep benefits without the plebs reaching for the pitchforks. When there are no alternatives, people will accept status quo no matter how bad. China is that alternative that can’t be discussed.
Ha ha, what you say reminds me of the Upton Sinclair quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
I should add to my original remark that I’m certainly not arguing that China is beyond criticism, or that there is no area for improvement, or even that China is better than the United States.
Just arguing we should resist our tendency to engage in essentialist thinking. It’s essentialist thinking that led to Europeans inventing racist ideology based on Darwinian evolution. I understand even the respected philosopher, Immanuel Kant, had racist views.
We each seem to have an innate tendency towards essentialist thinking. Apparently it is something children develop quite early on.
Sir, I can’t imagine a more illogical conclusion than the finding “The headline takeout was that Chinese Australians are less supportive of democracy than average Australians: more grist for the mill of people like Abetz.” What greater support for democracy can they demonstrate than uprooting themselves from their countries of origin to live in an Australian liberal democracy? Does Eric Abetz represent the average Australian? If he does, then what he did in attempting to coerce the young Chinese Australians into condemning the Chinese government is an act of fascism rather than democracy.
I can’t agree more with Mr Menadue that the media are displaying traits that are worrying. I understand enough about democracy to know that there is a level of separation of powers between the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government to prevent abuse of power by people in positions of power. I also understand that democracy stands on a fourth footing, a free press that informs the public, thus enabling them to make informed decisions as to who to vote for to represent them. However, when the free press has a political agenda and colludes with the government in misinforming the public to their political advantage, we have a compromised democracy. The proof of what I say is abundantly clear when the media had a hand in bringing down a couple of Prime Ministers in the recent past; and in their campaigns against the Rudd government’s emissions trading scheme etc. Even in the US, they were known to have helped Donald Trump win his presidency. Would we allow the media to choose our government for us too or again?
Mr Ti, here you go with I may have Chinese ancestry but really I want to be white too!! I wasn’t kidding about the inferiority complex part.
Seriously, you need to go to China and see it for yourself instead of remembering what your parents tell you about Qing China in 1911!
Chinese come to Australia not because of democracy lol, I mean you can’t vote unless you naturalise but nobody gives a crap about that. Pretty sure they can vote in Iraq too and nobody is flocking there anytime soon. They come here for the relaxed environment, clean air, less competition, and relatively “cheaper” real estate.
None of which has anything to do with some mickey mouse voting system to keep the plebs stupid. China too can have all of this if it can kill some natives in some far off 7 million square kilometre remote island and take over completely with a seed of 20 million of it’s own citizens.
Nothing can prove this more than an recent article (2019) on the Australian Chinese Embassey website on instructions on how to restore one’s former Chinese citizenship due to popular enquiries.
http://au.china-embassy.org/chn/lsfw/hzlxz/c2/t1664881.htm
*face palm*
Slightly off tangent… I remember someone even argued on this site that Chinese migrants from the ‘ex British colonies’ make for better citizens (presumably better than those from the PRC). I don’t know how, but perhaps he might have reasoned that those people are more likely to continue to happily accept a colonial social contract, like they had to when they were part of the colonies. Or perhaps in his view, migrants from the PRC are problematic.
I think it has less to do with British colony as it has to do with the PERIOD of time when these people emigrated. Basically China only started it’s great revival from 1978 (Mao laid the groundwork however).
The likes of Mr Ti has an image of China at the time when his ancestors left China which typically is around late Qing early Minguo period, both when China was at its weakest. This is where the inferiority complex kicked in, with such a large distance between Western lifestyle compared to impoverished China, they develop this psychy where everything in the West is great and anything in China is no good without understanding the causation of China’s fall (weak military and late industrialisation) and West’s rise (early industrialisation and colonialsm).
You can see Mr Ti’s reasoning that its all about voting that’s what makes a nation strong etc completely getting causation ass backwards.
China bashing now shifted well and truly into Panda smashing. Zealous overreach will have its limits. It just takes time. And it will eventually bite the owner.
Thank you Tony. (1)
Meanwhile we see a that US investment is on the increase and is around nine times that of what China invested.
As people like Bruce Haigh have pointed out in his articles on P&I, Australia is no longer Australia, we don’t make real decisions on our behalf much anymore. We are completely swamped by American culture, American news, American entertainment, American pop culture, American deep state, American administrations, American military, CIA, and it is like we are the same country. We are a vassal state. Only the flag needs to change to reflect the true state of sovereignty. Even the UK has receded in importance now, unless it can serve as a smoke screen like with the Royals.
Since Howard was elected we’ve seen this creeping in further and further and the worst example was the unctuous slide into a completely illegal war in Iraq which is still not resolved. The case for war was clearly fake: I can still remember Colin Powell power-pointing false images of Saddam’s ‘apparent’ nuclear facilities and chemical weapons manufacturing locations, not to mention nonsense about nuclear fuel coming from Africa which caused the Valerie Plame affair when her husband outed the George W. Bush administration’s claims as fake as well. We are also still waiting to find Saddam’s “human mincing machine” that Howard was so terribly serious about. Once again puffed up nonsense about human rights violations perpetrated by another country and leader was used to bolster hate against Hussein, but the wrath from the US and its ‘Coalition of the killing’ was a far greater human rights violation than Saddam ever did in his entire life. He unfortunately made the mistake of aiming his highly inaccurate Scud missiles at Israel, and there was oil to be had. He never got to tell us his side of the story, he was executed quick smart. Since then not one of the liars who presented these fake cases has ever been even the source of an inquiry. Now they have the license to bully on the basis of bullshit.
But things have only gotten worse under Morrison, a happy clapper, Shire boy, daggy dad,Homer Simpson, and US sycophant who does not seem to be able to tell the difference between Australian sovereignty and his allegiance to US sovereignty. That appears to have a lot to do with his former allegiance to Trump and Pompeo, and the mysterious Church he follows. Turnbull the toff was not much better; he started the anti-China nonsense originally, also with attempts to divide the Chinese community. Due to these two, one wonders what license the CIA has in this country to carryout its operations, but certainly the Australian media is now a disgrace in its welcoming and deliberate construction of fake news, and now even the ABC is one of the worst promulgaters of rubbish it cooks up about China. Then there’s Nine Entertainment and Murdoch’s propaganda machines. I guess Nine ‘Entertainment’ is a very appropriate term because the news coming from that source these days is entertainment often bereft of truth, moreover constructed from bias, and with China it’s just another example of how racism can be used to twist minds in this country every time. I’ve never seen such a concerted campaign against another country with as much permanent diatribe being spat out at such an extraordinary rate almost every day of the week. Manufacturing consent for another war is obvious. The ‘axis of evil’ is now just China.
I feel for Chinese people in this country, whether they be Australian citizens or not, because it is once again another ethnic group beyond white Australians of British ancestry like me that is targeted. Ironically we never get targeted unless we are poorer section of the community, or part of a minority such as being disabled, or unemployed which has become a metaphor for being a bludger again in Covid-19 times. Now we are also targeted because any Australian that has a different opinion about China is not acceptable to the fascist norm. Everybody must hate China, and who cares what is rubbed off on people with Chinese or even Asian features. I read recently that two Vietnamese sisters were the focus of one racist physical and verbal attack.
The Liberals since Howard have milked racism for all its worth, but never mentioned the word unless it was to tell us they weren’t racist. Do they think people are credulous? Well yes, because apart from the politicians here, a great many Australians do carry the adaptable racist gene, and you can see how it is used to easily dupe minds. While Aussies are told they are being patriotic to stand up to China, they in fact are standing up for America whose condition is so bad it not only likes choking black Americans in its own country these days, but also has designed a bully boy plan to choke an entire country’s economy and place in the world called China.
As an Australian by birth and from British ancestry since 1788, I reject Morrison’s phony attempts to invoke nationalism and patriotism. We are being duped about Australian interests, but we are only here for America’s continued domination. During this new millennium we’ve seen Indians, Africans, Afghanis, Middle-Easterners, Muslims from many countries, and now Chinese people with a long history of racism being perpetrated against them, used as a political tool. In some cases this kind of racism has brought war, it did for Iraq and Vietnam.
China may do things we say are wrong, but the response by the media and government is so seriously disproportionate, and once again an ethnic group in this country must pay the price for Liberals (since Howard) in the hope they might attract a few more ugly racist-minded voters.
Morrison is destroying this country at every level possible. He is sacrificing Australia while many Australians suspect nothing. The media here is now just fake news, it ain’t worth a cracker. The only hope is independent media and that Australians start waking up from their deep sleep filled with mainstream media dreams. Plato’s cave allegory serves a a perfect analogy as to how we are being duped. (2)
(1) Every time I see your name Tony I still think about the “dog that didn’t bark” and SIEVX, one of the most hideous stories of Australian politics and the decline of anything decent the Liberal aligned AFP ever stood for. A lot of very bad relations were formed between the AFP and the Liberals way back then. They are still there.
(2) Plato’s cave allegory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave
George, great commentary as per usual. We should mention the March 4 Justice event too. One of my ex female colleagues said to me a little ago that if we could banish SOME of the very conservative and middle-aged powerful white males in entrenched leadership roles, and have some real diversity, this would simply be the best country in the world!
Well I’d like to be commenting on that too. I am right there with the women and men who demonstrate today in support of basically what comes down to equality. Women are not treated equally by some men because they (the men) don’t believe in equality, they believe they are peripheral to there importance, and there to be the servants of men – even when it comes to sexual abuse overriding female sovereignty and autonomy as in rape. Of course that gets worse when you have a group of people in parliament, and particularly the conservative Liberals and the Nationals – who are essentially always against equality – believe in some people being entitled to much, much, more than others. And what do they expect to get out of treating women as lesser human beings? They don’t get anything in the end, especially any form of genuine love.
I find the fact that Christian Porter announced his law suit against the ABC on this day is an even greater affirmation that people are correct when they allege him to be a misogynist. It’ s like when Abbott made himself minister for women, an arrogant effort to show women how to get back in their corner.
No one likes being treated as a lesser equal, even non-human animals don’t like it as many scientists have observed. Give two animals fruit, but one gets a much sweeter kind of fruit that they recognize, and the other one actually complains. With chimpanzees, they’ll actually spit the less sweet fruit back in your face as a mark of disdain.
So many of our problems in the world come down to inequality and that is the focus of constant conversation among all people of the world on many issues. We could and should talk about this a lot more it is so fundamental to the issues we now face. Sure people are not always born equal, but as humans we can do better to honor a sense of equality where we can make a difference. Or help those born unequal to have more equal lives.
It’s the very same thing with why I stand up for Chinese people in this country and beyond, the inequality is palpable in the way they are spoken about, and so it is with China as a country as well. One could say that about any ethnic group that is bullied.
It is interesting that often those who do not support equality, and are generally on the right side of politics which always supports a top down hierarchy from rich to poor in society, also think they are more special than other people when it comes to prestige and hubris. As far as I am concerned these are antiquated ideas that are also associated with earlier centuries when women and many others had no rights, not even to vote.
What a racist remark. And sexist. Lovely. But racism is fine if it’s anti-white. And sexism is fine if it’s anti-male.
A little belatedly I would like to point out that there were two other rallies in Canberra on March 15th – the final stop of John Shipton’s tour to push to “bring Julian Home” – at which some eminent speakers put our relationship with the US in proper context – Bernard Collaery, David McBride and Andrew Wilkie amongst others. But the other rally, which lasted the whole morning, was from the East Turkestan Islamic Party, protesting with false claims about rape and torture of Uighurs – no doubt intended to capitalise on the Women’s march focus on the same issue. And this case, if not the rally, were supported and promoted by Rex Patrick.
It seems also not coincidental that only four days earlier, SBS took the extraordinary decision to cease broadcasting the Chinese news in Chinese in Australia, because it claimed the station had broadcast “propaganda” about the Uighur rape stories – denying they were true.
I actually think the racial part is secondary, primary is China is growing and is projected to grow to the point where the Anglo nations will no longer have monopoly in world affairs and it’s got the pirates in suits panicked.
Instead of speak softly carrying a bit stick, all the Five eyes got now is talk loudly carrying a banana since they know there is not much they can do. Unfortunately, talking loudly certainly generates a lot of racial hatred with the plebs but that really is just fine for the political elites.
Rememeber US is living the high life due to USD, once that’s under threat, US will get at least a 30% paycut, and nobody wants that.
I actually think the racial part is secondary, primary is China is growing and is projected to grow to the point where the Anglo nations will no longer have monopoly in world affairs and it’s got the pirates in suits panicked.
Instead of speak softly carrying a bit stick, all the Five eyes got now is talk loudly carrying a banana since they know there is not much they can do. Unfortunately, talking loudly certainly generates a lot of racial hatred with the plebs but that really is just fine for the political elites.
Rememeber US is living the high life due to USD, once that’s under threat, US will get at least a 30% paycut, and nobody wants that.
You are correct about the primary reason, but racism must be cited for two reasons:
1. It, along with fear and xenophobia, is a powerful tool to use for ethically devoid politicians who seek to use tribal forms of nationalism and phony patriotism to achieve their ends. It works a treat for starting wars. Goering told us how to do it.
2. It seriously affects people of certain ethnicities or ancestries in any country that happen to be the same ethnicity as the country or people that are targeted. It is much worse for any person in a country whose features standout from the principal ethnicity of the country. That usually translates in this country to either dark skinned people or Asians.
Both 1&2 are being used here deliberately and in the US to strengthen the campaign against China or the primary cause you state and I agree with.
The US, UK and Belgium are the biggest foreign investors in Australia, but there never has been a racist campaign run against any of these three.
I agree George, unfortunately, tribalism is deeply ingrained in our animal brains, it takes a lot of executive function to over come it and most people just can’t do it. Oh well, just stay safe!
Meeple- “Talk loudly and carry a banana”! Most insightful statement of the day! Roosevelt or was it Truman is turning in his grave 🙂
National Chinese Australian community are very grateful that we have upright fellow citizens like Tony Kevin and you George, John Menadue and many others to speak up for us. We are not alone and we rely on our fair and just rules of laws to protect us whoever are in government. China and Chinese peoples of our ancestral land are peace loving peoples as a whole. They have the best last 40 years of peaceful coexistence and development with shared peace and prosperity with the world. They have finally eliminated poverty and built a decent society for themselves including peoples in Xinjiang,and Hong Kong etc. Why do they want to rock the boat? To those misguided and misinformed leaders, journalists, commentators and peoples in the the West, please go visit China and find out the real truth about China and Chinese peoples. Of course we all are human. China’s system is not perfect either. Is US and Australia a very perfect one ? God helps us.
Thanks Dr Ka Sing Chua. Ignorance about China is a very big problem here. Let’ s hope we can solve that by correcting the misinformation. I genuinely believe Australians are missing out by knowing so little about China, it could be of great benefit to both nations instead. I think if they like Chinese food, and so many well priced Chinese goods in the shops, then if they had the opportunity to learn more about China and Chinese people, they would not be so easily deceived by the government and media
Undeterred, Geoff Raby gave a calm, rational defence of China at the Adelaide Writers’ Festival a couple of weeks ago. If only more voices like his could reach Patrick, Abetz, Hastie, Payne, Reynolds and indeed Morrison, before our tertiary education standards fall further for lack of Chinese funding.
PRC investment in Australia has collapsed because Beijing has progressively closed China’s capital account from 2016 following the loss of more than $1tn in its foreign currency reserves.
Any account of the deterioration of Australia-China relations needs to include an account of China, no?
Ignorance has been entrenched by zealous censorship.
How many Australians have read China’s 14-point indictment of our treatment of them?
How many have read China’s complaint to the UNHRC about our human rights violations?
How many of us know that Huawei offered to develop its 6G security module in Australia?
How many know that China is one of the world’s three top democracies?
Or that China leads the US 26-2-2 in UN-defined human rights?
Our ignorance is appalling.
And how many have read US Ambassador Chas Freeman’s address to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs of 21 February last, ‘Playing at War Games with China”?
It is brilliant, detailed exposition of China/US policies and the folly of his country’s approach. En passant, one can also see how slavishly and stupidly Australia follows US ‘dictates’.
Just Google, ‘Playing at War Games with China’ for a very un-Australian/MSM view of big power relations.
For a veteran US diplomat that has spent a long part of his career in China (since working as interpreter for Nixon) and also much time spent in the Xinjiang region, he is yet another remarkable American who knows full well what is going on. He must have 50 years or more of Mandarin fluency up his sleeve, so very capable of reading and listening to Chinese media and much more.
Both he, and Australian expert on Xinjiang, Dr David Brophy, both say if you shut the door on China, and only vilify the country, it will not work in having any influence, especially if they are hypocrites themselves in their behaviour.
How correct they are.
All of which presumes our chief motivations should be financial. I would like to see a calm discussion of what price we are prepared to pay for championing human rights – including of First Nation’s people and refugees in Aus.
The doctrine of human rights is a failed attempt to reconcile morality and individualism. Human rights are a string of a priori assertions largely inherited from English law (now manifestly failing to preserve its own civilisation). The most hallowed of them (freedom and dignity) are philosphical hogwash. Human rights are the moral principles of those Swift called, “The most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth”.
Well yes. There are other traditions like Christianity and Confucianism. Which depends on if you think any attribution of freedom and dignity to people is worthless.
And now ‘human rights’ have been oh so cleverly weaponised by the masters-of-the-universe. Works only too well! Dozens of colour revolutions in Eastern Europe, Ukraine, selected Middle Eastern countries (of course not Saudi Arabia or Bahrain!), Hong Kong, Taiwan, and now Myanmar/Burma.(Never mind the millions displaced, killed or otherwise left to rot).
Hats off to the CIA! A++ for performance and return on investment!
The other motivation would be political protection from the 5 eyes mafia club. Nobody wants to be Whitlam.
It’s more than First Nations and refugees which is bad enough, but also such things as our engagement in an illegal war in Iraq that resulted in innumerable atrocious deaths of innocent men, women, and particularly children, where the media were completely controlled by the military, and no one ever faced justice over the fake cases made for war.
How does this serve us in berating and claiming the moral high ground with China over human rights abuse?
China may try to change minds, but we are advocates in the mass killing of people (illegally) that don’t fit our view of the world.
How does this convince China that we or the US follow the international rule books when we are part of illegal wars?
Well said George.
Thanks Evan, and the same to you.
“Be cunning, not emotional” – India’s option to deal with China | Kishore Mahbubani | Dutt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lpfi2FVpQY&t=327s
EN ver. [Global Future Dialogue] China Challenge and Future of Asia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLPlvZCn1rk&t=77s
Kishore Mahbubani — A China Agenda for Biden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOecjyd4-Ng
I would like to share 3 videos with readers that show the ASEAN mindset about US and China. Ambassador Mahbubani message in all 3 videos is simple, economic alliance is far superior than military ones. The Korean and Indian interviews gives a deep insight of how Asia Pacific countries are managing their relations with US and China. An insight to how China manages her relationship with her close neighbour is education. If more Australians can watch the video, we will have a better understanding of the geopolitics up north.
Ambassador Mahbubani is also a message of peace.
You sketch the weird, mind bent, dark situation well, Tony. There is the additional very serious dimension of how we are cut off from engagement with the advances of new technology. Other members of the Quad are tech titans while we slump into a strange state of economic progress marked mainly by real estate prices.