Its not just the banning of some of our trade that is unacceptable. So too has been the language expressed towards Australia. The wolf warrior denunciations of Australia and its leaders by Chinas diplomats has been astonishing. That is not the language of modern diplomacy and it is not the language one would expect from a mature nation that wants to engage successfully with the international community.
In contrast to Chinas aggression, Australian leaders have been restrained in their language and patient in their responses. The Prime Minister made a statesmanlike speech last week to the British think tank Policy Exchange (of which I am the chairman) extending an olive branch to Chinas leaders. He made the entirely appropriate comment that Australia did not support the containment of China and looked to engage in dialogue with its leaders so differences could be understood and even resolved. Sun Tzu would have approved of Morrisons patient diplomacy.
This carefully crafted speech was met with the banning of Australian wine exports to China.
Chinas aggression will, in the end, prove to be entirely counterproductive. There are two reasons why.
First, other countries have indeed been warned that China will treat them with the same aggression should they in some way transgress and incur the wrath of the Communist leaders in Beijing. The message from Beijing is clear. Tremble and obey. Yet within the privacy of presidential palaces and prime ministerial offices this will, of course, cause pause for thought, but at the same time it will arouse fear. Throughout the Indo-Pacific region, Chinas aggression has aroused concern that China aspires to dominate the geopolitics of the region through economic bullying.
There is one obvious way to counter this. That is to become less economically dependent on China. Investors will start to look for other destinations for their investments in the region such as in Vietnam, Indonesia and India. Governments will see the advantage of entering into arrangement such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will help divert trade away from China and reduce their dependence and vulnerability to China.
And while on the subject of the CPTPP, President Xi Jinping told the G20 summit recently that China would like to join. Well, China hasnt got much chance of doing that if it behaves as it has recently behaved towards Australia. Australia for one should make that crystal clear to Beijing.
So what Beijing has done through its aggression towards Australia is to remind the rest of the region, and indeed many countries beyond, that becoming too dependent economically on China is a dangerous place to be. As countries divert their trade and their investment away from China and that is the consequence of Chinas aggression that will not be good for China and its economy. And in the end, it wont be good for Chinas place in the world.
Secondly, Chinas aggression towards Australia has had the effect of corralling other regional countries and particularly liberal democracies to balance Chinas power. The evolution of what was once the Trilateral Security Dialogue which I set up with the Americans and the Japanese in 2006 into the Quad is obviously designed to balance Chinas power. The fact that India has joined in is not a strategic plus for China.
And look at what the new appointees in the incoming Biden administration have had to say. Antony Blinken has spoken of binding the democracies of North America, Europe and the Indo-Pacific together in a new movement of democracies. So has Jake Sullivan, the new national security adviser. How can all of this be in Chinas interest?
The China’s leadership under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao never made the mistakes of Xi Jinping. They knew they had substantial economic power but they used it sparingly. They worked very cleverly at trying to minimise the unity of Western nations and the countries of the Indo-Pacific. The fact that the West was often divided in its approach to China was very much to Chinas advantage. The regime of Xi Jinping has had the reverse effect. It has united them not in a policy of containment of China but of balancing Chinas power. They have become very cautious about China.
When I was the foreign minister, we often put in a good word for China in Washington, Jakarta and Brussels. The Bush administration in particular consulted us on what its China strategy should be. We urged engagement and constructive collaboration, not confrontation.
But now, Beijings foolish aggression has thrown all that goodwill away.
In all my experience of politics both nationally and internationally, one of the observations I would make is that the more politicians succeed, the more they risk overreaching. It is the fatal flaw of political success. Domestically, we saw Kevin Rudd overreach with disastrous consequences for his political career. Internationally, we are now seeing the leadership of China, a country that has so successfully reduced poverty and given dignity and relative prosperity to more than one billion people, now overreach.
Im sure Sun Tzu will be turning in his grave.