With a mainstream media climate like this on China and dissenting voices being discouraged, it is hard to see any early prospect of easing tensions.
The Australian people have been badly let down on China by our policy elites.
Geoff Raby had published in November 2020 an important new book
China’s Grand Strategy and Australia’s Future in the New Global Order.
It was thoughtfully reviewed by James Curran for Lowy Institute,
Taking China seriously: A review of Geoff Raby’s “grand strategy” | The Interpreter (lowyinstitute.org)
and by Hugh White in the Australian Book Review.
https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/current-issue/909-china/6981-hugh-white-reviews-china-s-grand-strategy-and-australia-s-future-in-the-new-global-order-by-geoff-raby
Yet I have the impression that Raby’s public commentary on Australia- China relations has been wound back since November 2020. Why and by whom? Who benefits from silencing his moderating voice?
Raby’s 20-minute book promotion interview with ABC Radio National’s Fran Kelly on 3 November 2020
was revealing of increasingly polarized attitudes in Australia. Raby eloquently called for a circuit-breaker which, he argued, China had actually been trying to encourage diplomatically, but without meaningful Australian policy response.
Kelly’s comments and questions to Raby showed how deeply the ABC is now indoctrinated within the dominant Five Eyes Western disinformation narrative against alleged Chinese human rights violations in Xinjiang and Hong Kong and alleged aggression in the South China Sea. For Kelly, whatever the BBC reports about China must be gospel truth: whatever the Chinese Communist Party (sic) say in China’s defence must be false. This is now the dominant ABC News and Current Affairs editorial line. It accords with similar views in Fairfax, News Limited, and to an extent even in the media voice of Australian business, the AFR.
Raby published his last regular Opinion column for AFR on 13 January 2021.
Gracefully – perhaps with a gentle touch of irony – he announced:
‘This is my last monthly column after contributing to The Australian Financial Review’s opinion pages for the past seven years. The forum is now well populated with many excellent commentators. It has become the premier place for short-form articles on foreign and strategic policy, inevitably heavily focused on China, which opinion makers read – and by which they are influenced.’
Actually, there are fewer and fewer Australian public voices arguing for a healthier Australia – China relationship. And those who do still write thus are now increasingly careful how they present their ideas.
In an important analysis published in AFR on 16 December, Hugh White wrote:
‘Throughout 2020, as our relationship with China collapsed and our economic opportunities evaporated, Canberra has clung to a homely analogy. Beijing is just a schoolyard bully, and if we stand up to them they will soon slink away. That makes it all look easy, but the analogy is dangerously misleading. This is not a schoolyard, China is not a schoolboy, it hasn’t slunk away, and nothing about our predicament is as easy as the government would like us to believe.
Instead of backing down, Beijing has week after week relentlessly escalated the pressure both diplomatically and economically, and there is no reason to expect this to stop. We are being steadily squeezed out of the market which has powered our prosperity for decades, and which offers by far the best prospects in the years ahead. As a result our economy may never be the same again. So we need to find a better way to understand what is happening.’
White suggests that it is relatively cost-free for China to punish Australia as an object lesson to other countries on how not to conduct diplomacy towards China. But, he argues, the Morrison government left itself wide open to this, and is still stubbornly refusing to recognise the lessons.
Let me return to the AFR 2021 Business Summit discussion (drawing on the very useful AFR running blog on 8 March).
In the earlier warm-up panel, DFAT Secretary Frances Adamson said blandly that despite tensions, ‘economic complementarity continues to exist and will well into the future’. She said Australia should continue to develop its relationship with China. Peter Costello noted smugly that pro-China commentators in Australia had recently become less ‘aggressive’.
AFR’s China reporter Mike Smith (withdrawn from China by AFR management’s decision) hosted the main panel, comprising Professor Jane Golley, Director of the Australian Centre on China in the World at ANU; Professor James Curran of Sydney University History Department; Tim Ford, CEO of Treasury Wine Estates, whose huge China market had been cancelled by China; and the Japanese Ambassador.
Golley said the government should scrap the megaphone on China and speak softly behind the scenes. She warned there has to be a way to ‘level off’: if things continue as they are, she fears for Australia’s prospects. The future is pretty grim, she said.
Curran said Australia needs to develop ‘a coherent and more comprensive concept of China policy’: otherwise we will ‘keep shooting ourselves in the foot’. Curran questioned US capacity to ‘prevail’ over China. The gap between American resolve and capacity is a ‘grey area’. He said the Biden administration continues Trump’s hardline approach to China. The content-free Quad (neither Japan nor India really believe it) offers no solutions for Australia.
Ford said flatly it is impossible to find other Asian markets to replace China’s mass consumption of Australian wine. He suggested Australian leaders have to lead and engage: ‘They’re clearly at an impasse’. He would not be drawn further on whether Canberra has managed the relationship poorly, but he was optimistic the present ‘spat’ may be a ‘short term disruption’.
Later, Fortescue Metals Chief Executive Elizabeth Gaines had a thoughtful one-on-one conversation with senior AFR columnist Jennifer Hewitt. Gaines called for more diplomacy towards China and more behind-the-scenes discussion and negotiations. She noted Fortescue had not seen any change in its relationships with its Chinese customers despite the political tensions. She said the WA government had taken a different approach to China than the Federal government, noting Premier Mark McGowan had visited China four times over the past four years. She commented that ‘the strength of the Australian economy … is due to [our] strong trading relationship with China … I think we need to nurture that relationship’.
I will round off this rather bleak pen picture by quoting some comments by Peter Hartcher, Political and International Editor of the SHM, on 2 February 2021 (‘China’s delinquency should not be apologised for. We’ll be sorry’)
Hartcher spearheads the dominant mainstream media narrative on China. AFR is a little more circumspect, but not by much. These days, Hartcher resorts to blatant propaganda invective against China and those who call for ‘more nuance’ in Australian relations with China. He is burning boats here.
“The argument to allow [China] more ‘strategic space’ was … an invitation to a rogue power to smash its way to dominance …
Beijing is injuring its neighbours, destabilising the region, and ignoring the rules that middle powers like Australia rely on for national security and sovereign survival …
What sort of nuance would [former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Philip Flood] suggest we use against a fascist power that is crushing human liberty at home – including a program of genocide in Xinjiang – and using brute force to make illegal territorial grabs abroad?
The truth is that Xi’s regime is not entitled to the ‘strategic space’ it is seizing from its neighbours … It is a dictatorship determined to break Australia’s sovereign will. Australia is seeking to defend itself and its interests; Beijing is the aggressor.”
With a mainstream media climate like this, and dissenting voices being discouraged, it is hard to see any early prospect of easing tensions.
The Australian people have been badly let down on China by our policy elites.
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
20 responses to “Ignorance and Prejudice on China is now entrenched in Australian media – Part 2”
While this government points the finger at the new whipping boy called China, we are seeing something very like fascism increasingly develop within the federal government. The best way to avoid suspicion that a government is waxing fascist is to target other countries and make accusations towards them while hoping no one looks at what you are doing and claiming the moral high ground. In fact you avoid telling them what you are really doing. Its a secret. No doubt in Morrison’s government all sorts of things are going on behind the scenes and Australians are not privy to know about any of them. ‘Democracy’ is being sidestepped. The cover-ups about Morrison’s sackings from high level jobs in the past already served as a warning. So should the alignment of certain police organisations in this country with a government be of deep concern. Then there is the silent and secret Home Affairs.
This attitude started years ago when as immigration minister Morrison first turned reporting on asylum seeker boats approaching Australia into a once a week update (if we were lucky). That was modified very quickly into not commenting on “on water matters”, then not commenting on “operational matters”. Now there is virtually no commentary and it is though places like Nauru don’t exist anymore. (Incidentally let’s also remember how several rapes and suicides took place there as well which the government took no responsibility for either). Sooner or later Morrison was going to direct this kind of evasive behaviour onto all Australians and avoid every bit of scrutiny he could. Robodebt anyone?
The federal government’s intent is obviously that it becomes increasingly unaccountable,opaque, and evasive, and is going to enormous lengths to avoid any scrutiny of its actions. It’s leading to fascism, and it has been emboldened amongst the key players by observations made on how Trump behaved and avoided scrutiny. See what you can get away with.
The newest Morrison technique has been to pull out its embattled members and give them long breaks to make them inaccessible. They are withdrawn from the media in the hope that Australians will forget; or maybe the ploy is that Australians are supposed to just get used to the stonewalling, secrecy, arrogance and obstinacy this government creates. This has been the number one method introduced by Morrison himself, the holidaying prime minister who has been experimenting with it since he disposed of Turnbull. He has vastly reduced the sitting time in government, and is more frequently shutting down debate in question time with the compliance of Mr Speaker. Let’s also note that in recent months he staged a trip to Japan for no particular reason (well maybe irritate China) so he could also avoid parliament by quarantining at the lodge. Surprisingly that was with an entourage that was equipped for photo shoots and presenting him in the usual daggy dad manner to appeal to his base. His presence in Parliament could not be run with video conferencing methods, although he could do it to open the session of parliament (good kudos), and has since taken part with video conferencing sessions in international meetings when it suits. Coronavirus became the excuse for parliament not sitting either. What other country with such a low infection rate completely shut down parliament for such an extensive period of time ?
At the moment three people are out of the picture, it is not just Reynolds and Porter, but also the high flying pro-Liberal staffer (named by the Kangaroo court website) that is apparently in hospital due to mental health issues. Its been over a month. No one knows if he actually is doing any of that, and he is clearly part of those being looked after by a protection racket. The media don’t seem to be even interested in finding out who he is, but Shane Dowling of Kangaroo Court could find out as he also could with naming Porter before he came out, and the woman who is alleged to be his victim. Are the the media totally useless? In other situations the are totally predatory, but not with the Liberals. Different ball game.
While I find Facebook-style conspiracy theories devoid of evidence obnoxious, I do think that there is certainly an undisclosed collusion going on in Australia to allow this right wing fascist group to surface. It stretches right across Australian media where key players are observable. I would also allege that Morrison has been groomed for the job all the way to the top and the Liberals and their think tanks like the IPA have penetrated virtually very organisation possible that help in the cause. Just think about how widespread this is. What is driving it?
This group are paranoid about white skinned people, viz. Westerners losing their dominance, wealth, and control of the world. If you look you can see signs of it everywhere and the same key players are popping up. Think about those who pushed for Western degrees at universities for example. Abbott, Howard, Abetz et al. Our most internationally respected universities smelt a rat and said no. The university that cracked was also a big donor to the Liberals. There is no doubt that there is something flavouring all reporting in Australia, and now only Liberals get international diplomatic postings post politics. Why they even got their man in the top job of the OECD, with much help from Downer and Brandis, and Australian taxpayers.
I say fascism is the game, and we better watch out. It comes in with stealth, but once they are in control it is too late. Many Australians are falling for the two minutes of hate directed at China everyday. Orwellian to say the least, but it is getting increasingly like Oceania in this country at the same time. Double speak, thought crimes, and two minutes of hate. All observable.
While the US is ultimately the driver of a China containment policy (that’s no secret anymore) Australia is cooking up its own special version of fascism and white supremacy by paranoid fools driven by an ideology that should scare the pants off anyone who is paying attention.
My siblings are reluctant to discuss geopolitics over the phone with me now because they fear some Australian agencies may be eavesdropping. They genuinely have this fear. Recently, one of the Chinese community leaders I have known and respected told me that everyone at the community leadership level is scared. By that he meant scared of being accused of associating with the “wrong” organisations or people and scared of being accused of breaching government security rules. I feel so sad and letdown because the Australia I know was never like this. To me Australia seems to have become more and more like a police state.
That’s where the fascism comes in, they only tolerate their ideological views, and they reflect a great deal of obstinacy and inflexibility on this. Secret court cases to hide previous actions of the government, police inquiries into Chinese academics who are even critical of China, prosecution of whistle blowers, internet meta-data collection, tapping phone conversations, hacking computers. Who knows? I am not even of Chinese ancestry, but I worry myself from time to time as well. This is not democracy but the hijacking of it for their cause. And behind it is the backing of very wealthy corporate interests, also symptomatic of fascism.
They chant “freedom of speech” but any astute person will agree its only for them and their right wing supporters. In terms of fascism they actually do bundle together with a narrow band of acceptable views which they are exceedingly aggressive in inflicting on everyone else apart from their favourites. They believe they do no wrong.
The hypocrisy is that it is exactly what they charge China of doing, yet we are said to live in a democracy.
Their fear is not misplaced. First it was NSW Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane who has much links with the Chinese community, and then Sunny Duong a Chinese-Vietnamese community leader in Melbourne- both were pulled up in raids by the AFP. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/06/i-have-nothing-to-hide-melbourne-man-accused-of-beijing-links-vows-to-fight-foreign-interference-charge
If you are a leader in the community, best not to say or write anything (in English or Chinese) that is seen as pro-China.
Australia circa 2021. That is the way it is!
George, Good of you to tell it like it is really. The Western lynch mob is again gathering around China. Almost an exact mirror of the fake news of 1899 that China- the Yellow Peril- was a threat to Western civilization. So much so that the West had to break China up! Like how Lord Beresford planned to slice up China, and take the juiciest parts for themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Break_Up_of_China_1899_Lord_Charles_Beresford.jpg
And they did attack China in the following year with the Eight-Nations Alliance. And Australia was there too.
The relentless anti-China frenzy and demonisation in Australia is even crazier than in America. Pretty ridiculous and plainly stupid. In the LNP world, our economic interest is not our national interest. Our national interest seems to be whatever America deems THEIR national interest.
Short of a nuclear Armageddon, the economic centre of the world is returning to Asia, specifically China. I think many of the masters-of-the-universe actually believe they can take down China by using their not inconsiderable media power, and threats of military force to shatter China’s ascendancy. It ain’t gonna happen!
For Australia, this is the greatest strategic error. When all is done, and if we are still around without the nuclear wipe-out, all we will have done is to earn the enmity and wrath of China for a long long time. (Let’s remember that to protect themselves from the USA, China and Russia would have logically a joint strategic nuclear plan in place. They would be stupid not to have one.)
Yes I think Australia has replaced the US even for the Chinese media as the most concerning country in its loose anti-China rhetoric and supportive media. Its a very worrying development.
Scotty can’t hold the hose, but he might order the bullets. A soldier knows a weak opponent
Sir,
In my readings about the freedom of speech evoked by its abuse by the MSM in regard to their anti-China campaigns, I came across this quote from John Stuart Mill:
“..the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.”
The problem we have with an errant MSM is that errors take time to be exposed and meanwhile they get internalised by many who are ill informed; remembering that Trump supporters remain Trump supporters regardless of counter-arguments.
Great analysis.
The whole media establishment have turned into domestic propaganda hate campaign so the capital behind these forces are preserved. With indoctrination from birth on how great the capital driven press is and how great mickey mouse voting is for everyone, the plebs are as gullible as ever lapping every single word.
Nothing works as great as FUD and tribalism with the added benefit of selling the story. What’s not to like.
Well done Tony, on both articles. Well researched and well put together. Those that believe in a better and productiive relationship must work quietly behind the scenes until clear air is regained with the defeat of Morrison’s LNP rabble.
The Chinese must take some heart in the fact that they are treated no worse than women in Australia by the Morrison government.
Thanks Bruce. Wise advice.
Hartcher is a Hatchet man: well-spoken, knows nothing about China
At this point in time, entrenched and regressive forces in the west are threatened by China’s rise. And the likes of Peter Hartcher are their attack dogs. Don’t believe them.
Years ago now, Elvis Presley made a special trip to Washington or maybe it was New York, to warn then President Nixon about the ‘fifth column’ effect of the Beatles ‘invasion’ into the US pop market. Nor was he alone. If memory serves me well, and it probably doesn’t, Carol King was another prominent voice who expressed alarm at the British invasion. In other words, the US pop establishment understandably saw the invading British bands as a threat to their hegemony.
At the end of the day when most of the cows and chicken had come home, the British invasion proved a welcome injection of energy into a sluggish US pop music industry, and the fears and concerns of its echelons proved groundless. In the end the British ‘invasion’ was a fillip to audiences and performers alike. And these days, the hostility expressed by Presley and others like him is an almost forgotten blip in an otherwise expanding global pop market.
The contretemps between the US pop establishment and the rising British one may seem like a trivial analog to draw between the US and China. But really all these kind of narratives are driven by vested interests at the top of the tree who don’t want to relinquish their positions. Would that we could silence these voices, however all we can hope for is that they eventually run out of steam and the lies they tell to preserve their own power and influence.
Journalists these days have all been to University. I should have been able to predict the Australian media’s position on China more than 10 years ago when a horde ANU students was filmed screaming abuse at Lee Kwan Yew during his (last?) Canberra visit. Lee ran a political system somewhat different from the one the students saw as the basis for their career prospects.
Many thanks to Tony Kevin for a great essay. ASEAN leaders have the wiisdom to maintain friendship with the US and trade with China despite some of them have border issues and territorial claims in the SCS. Trump’s trade war lacks forward planning and this folly is continued by Biden. The US agenda is plainly hegemony and we are sucked into it log stock and barrel. QUAD’s agenda could lead to war in the SCS.China is not the enemy yet we are involved in the containment of China/ Where is the advantage to us? How does it beefits us. Somehow the signing of the RCEP by Australia and QUAD activities are not compatible!
The fact that a character like Hartcher has been put in a position where he decides for millions of Australians what they read about China should be a matter of the gravest concern. He did not get his job as the result of a mere oversight by management. Years ago he made his views as a fanatic Cold War throwback perfectly clear, repeatedly characterising both China and Russia as “fascist” powers, with no redeeming features, that had to be opposed at all costs. If those who placed him in his job share his views (and clearly they do, otherwise he would not be there) then we are looking at a very bleak future.
And of course the other half of Nine Entertainment’s anti-China brigade is Nine News political editor Chris Uhlmann who is no different.
That is exactly why some of my friends and I have cancelled our subscriptions to SMH.
At least you have the choice! Spare a thought for Chinese Australians now deprived of their daily Chinese language news broadcast, which SBS decided was not suitable for their ears as it broadcast stories that contradicted US-Australia-UK claims about the rape and torture of women in Xinjiang. Instead, the morning broadcast of Euro-standard “news” in English from DW presents the government-acceptable viewpoint – if they can understand it. This happened suddenly and without warning on March 10th.
The media is even more powerful than politicians unless politicians control the media. (ABC).
What the media does is choose the focus on what they consider important to inform people about.
They zoom in or magnify what they see is important, no one else gets this privilege to tell the story.
Often things are taken out of context, they can cut to the information that they want to expand on, thus overriding what people actually say. This is often accompanied by creative imagination to sensationalise comments or paint an entirely different picture to what anyone actually says. It’s called editing, a very innocuous word.
They omit what they don’t want to say, or don’t want you to know for the sake of vested interests.
What is referred to as news, which people tend believe is the truth of a situation, can be misconstrued in any way they like. They can write pure fantasy if it suits.
They exploit human vulnerabilities that are preset in human minds. Such things as fear, sex, violence, are characteristic of this modus operandi.
They present themselves as the moralisers of society when their own moral views are pathetic.
When they allow sections for comments on stories they can manipulate the comments by sifting out those that suit the story, or suit the tribalist and biased view they are trying to push.
There is virtually nothing that criticises the media, and the organisations put in place supposedly to do it are toothless tigers. If criticised they can run a concerted campaign against the critic and in some cases destroy their lives.
The media always gets the last say. You cannot win.
The motives behind all of these tools that they use are many.
They can be politically motivated, be at the service of big vested interests, at the service any of any group that pays, or paint stories with sensationalist content purely out of a capitalist profit driven desire to sell more of their ‘news’ products. It is clear that with some media services there is an established win-win process going on between media and government. Government news services like the ABC can either be infiltrated with politically aligned key people, or cowered into presenting certain views because of the threat of government criticism if they don’t like the story (Emma Alberici). This can also be done through budget cuts aimed as punishment.