It’s confusing trying to get a clear line from Australia’s Sinophobes about Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s meeting with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
Today Nine newspapers’ resident China hysteric Peter Hartcher declared “mission accomplished”, arguing that faced with a choice from Xi between “kowtowing” (always good to have a Chinese cliché) and “standing up”, “we stood up”. Hartcher says proudly: “The government made no substantive concessions to Beijing … Xi has undone almost all the elements of coercion policy. It was an embarrassing failure …”
Not so, says military-industrial complex consultant and Sky commentator Michael Shoebridge. “What has Australia had to give up to get this meeting and handshake? Quite a lot,” he insists, claiming Australia has repeatedly compromised and “each of these compromises … shifts the balance of influence and power in the region in Beijing’s favour”. Shoebridge told Sky Albanese’s visit was “propaganda gold” to Xi, which if nothing else seems to suggest the world watches Albanese with an intensity hitherto unsuspected by Australians.
And former Liberal adviser John Lee says: “There is a dangerous element of naive and fuzzy thinking surrounding the prime minister’s trip to China and his government’s approach to managing this difficult relationship.” Elsewhere at News Corp, the far-right shit-flingers of the Sky after dark zoo are saying Albanese should have gone to Israel instead of “cosying up to China”, a position endorsed today by teal roadkill Dave Sharma from beyond the political grave.
The Coalition has also attacked Albanese, suggesting he shouldn’t have gone to China unless China removed bounties on Hong Kong democracy activists here. Scott Morrison (who, remember, is still a Liberal MP) reckoned China would exploit Albanese’s visit.
(This is the place to insert a reminder that a mere eight years ago, the Coalition and News Corp were on a unity ticket celebrating Australia being pulled into China’s orbit — Paul Kelly’s words — while pushing for an extradition treaty between the two countries and attacking as racist anyone who questioned Tony Abbott’s “free” trade deal with Xi.)
So who’s right? Is Albanese a feckless, anti-Semitic panda-hugger ditching our Israeli friends for a photo-op with a tyrant? Or is he a plucky little Aussie fighter who stood up to the playground bully?
All Albanese has really done is re-establish an adult presence in the room when it comes to China relations, after three-and-a-half years of juvenile rhetoric from the Morrison government, which included an unprovoked demand for an investigation into China’s role in the origins of COVID-19, senior bureaucrats orating about “the drums of war” and Peter Dutton throwing around garbage about “Manchurian candidates” about Labor.
None of that changes that it was China that plunged relations into the deep freeze in an effort to intimidate Australia, blocking Australian imports (so much for the News Corp/Liberal triumph, CHAFTA), arresting Australians journalists and relentlessly attacking Australia via state media. But Morrison and Dutton’s juvenile behaviour — much of it designed to impress then-US president Trump — served up ample opportunities for the Chinese to feign outrage.
China has, at least for now, ditched the aggression: most of the trade blocks have been or are being removed, alleged embargo breaker Cheng Lei was released, and the wolf-warrior diplomatic shtick has been ditched, the Chinese having worked out that it was entirely counterproductive and only served the interests of Western Sinophobes.
By dint of patience and restraint, Albanese and Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong have patched up the relationship to a reasonable state, even if it is never going to return to the kind of joyful embrace celebrated by Murdoch and the Liberals in the 2010s. But let’s not pretend it hasn’t happened entirely because the Xi regime decided the deep freeze wasn’t working. Neither starry-eyed panda-hugger like Abbott nor railing Sinophobe like Morrison, Albanese has merely set the stage for a China that has switched back to engagement.
There’s one enormous hangover from the Morrison-Dutton Sinophobia years, however, that Albanese has not merely refused to discard but has embraced even more enthusiastically. AUKUS began life as a quest by Morrison for a national security issue on which to wedge Labor, premised on what was then, and remains now, a poorly explained strategic rationale of needing nuclear-powered submarines to help the US fight China — specifically, and bizarrely, nuclear submarines from countries that speak English.
Morrison and Dutton bet that Labor would baulk at the idea of abandoning one multibillion-dollar sub program to start all over again with a much larger and much longer program that would leave huge gaps in our naval forces, enabling them to portray Labor as soft on China.
In fact, Labor signed up with enthusiasm, leaving us with a colossal bill over coming decades and no clarity on key questions about construction and maintenance and no response to obvious questions such as why we aren’t buying French submarines instead. It’ll be taxpayers of future generations who will have to cough up for this folly.
Has the prime minister done us proud in China, or embarrassed himself and Australia? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
