Nuance out the window with Australia’s house divided on China relations

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Nuance out the window with Australia’s house divided on China relations

By Gareth Parker

It was Abraham Lincoln, two years before he clinched the Republican nomination to run for US president, who said: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Lincoln was talking about an issue of values and principles, slavery, but these past weeks Australia has looked like a house divided on the geopolitical question of our times.

Scott Morrison and WA Premier Mark McGowan are not seeing eye to eye on China.

Scott Morrison and WA Premier Mark McGowan are not seeing eye to eye on China.Credit: WAtoday

The nation’s most popular state premier, who oversees the jurisdiction that far and away does the most (and most lucrative) business with China, is publicly and stridently opposed to the national leader, Scott Morrison, who is in lockstep with the leaders of our closest and most powerful allies.

“A captain ought, among all the other actions of his, endeavour with every art to divide the forces of the enemy.”

That was Niccolo Machiavelli in Book VI of his The Art of War, describing a tactic deployed by Phillip II of Macedon, Julius Caesar and Napoleon among others.

In Perth on Tuesday, opening the national conference of the gas industry, Mark McGowan returned to criticism of the Commonwealth’s handling of our foreign affairs.

Calling for a “national reset” of the relationship with China, the Premier told oil and gas executives: “The federal talk of conflict, of trade retaliation, can and must stop.”

It was the third public criticism of the Commonwealth in a week, kicked off by the Prime Minister’s speech last week to the Perth USAsia Centre on his way to the G7.

The PM did not mention China by name. He instead talked about values, and called on like-minded liberal democracies to defend the rules-based international trade order.

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But there was no mistaking the target, and indeed like-minded liberal democracies did unite over the issue, firstly in the trilateral face-to-face meeting between Morrison, Joe Biden and Boris Johnson, and then in communiqués from both the G7 and NATO.

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“We recognise the particular responsibility of the largest countries and economies in upholding the rules-based international system and international law … we will do this based on our shared agenda and democratic values,” the G7 communiqué said.

“With regard to China, and competition in the global economy, we will continue to consult on collective approaches to challenging non-market policies and practices which undermine the fair and transparent operation of the global system.”

Said the NATO statement: “China’s stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order … China is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal with more warheads and a larger number of sophisticated delivery systems to establish a nuclear triad … we remain concerned with China’s frequent lack of transparency and use of disinformation.”

This is the geopolitical context, and so it is jarring to see a WA premier so starkly at odds with a growing global alignment of friendly nations.

What do Japan, the foundation partner of WA’s lucrative iron ore and LNG industries, make of it all?

It should be noted that while there may be a difference on matters of style, in substance McGowan’s criticism is in the same broad form as that of his predecessor, Colin Barnett, who has on more than one occasion since his defeat criticised the federal government for “poking the panda”.

In a November 2019 column in the Australian Financial Review, Barnett predicted accurately the sectors which would be hurt first if relations were not repaired.

His insight was that in iron ore and LNG, China had learned from early failures by copying the 1960s Japan model, with large Chinese state-owned enterprises taking equity positions in major producers and projects, backed by government-to-government relationships “locked into Beijing”.

“The same is not so true for agriculture and the service areas of tourism and education,” Barnett wrote.

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“Their trading partners are less likely to be state-owned enterprises and more likely to be private Chinese companies which don’t have the same degree of political and financial support.

“For Australia, the new areas of growth are the most vulnerable, should we lose favour with China.”

So it proved throughout 2020, and so the question is whether we can lose favour yet with China over critical energy and materials exports.

It is not just military and geopolitical think-tankers, but many ordinary people, who ponder whether our iron ore is going into China’s military build up.

McGowan calls for nuance from Morrison and has hardliners like Peter Dutton and Andrew Hastie in his sights, but there wasn’t much nuance in his own commentary last week, which had a certain mercenary character with its predominant focus on the economic aspects of the relationship.

The Premier labelled the Commonwealth’s handling of the relationship as “insane” and “off the planet”.

“The idea that somehow we should be promoting the idea of armed conflict with a superpower is madness and I don’t get why there are the senior Commonwealth government officials, why there are defence force officers, why there are senior politicians in the Liberal Party talking about this,” McGowan said.

“It’s absolute madness.”

There wasn’t much nuance from the former SAS man Hastie on Tuesday either, who labelled McGowan’s recent commentary “naïve and hysterical”, a “straw man to attack the Prime Minister to mask the WA Labor government’s hospital failures, among other things”.

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“He should not confuse his recent electoral success with a mandate to run his own foreign policy that is weak, gutless and contrary to Australia’s national interest.”

Last November, Chinese officials handed a Nine News reporter a list of 14 grievances, with an official saying: “Why should China care about Australia?”

The list includes the banning of Huawei from the 5G rollout, the passage of foreign interference laws, calls for an inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus, speaking out on the freedom of navigation of the South China Sea, speaking out on human rights violations in Xinjiang (where Australia is accused of “peddling lies”), “thinly veiled” allegations of cyber attacks, and the foreign relations laws which allow the Commonwealth to veto agreements struck with states (Victoria’s Belt and Road deal) or universities (the assortments of Confusician institutes) for example.

Which of these issues would Australians have their national government compromise on?

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