Give us all a break, “Beijing Bob“:
Angela Merkel is the leader of America’s most important ally. The differences between democratic, US-aligned Germany and Communist-ruled China are real. China’s cutting edge industries now challenge Germany’s lead in manufacturing.
But today Angela Merkel is in China, to talk to its leaders in Beijing and to promote German innovation in Shenzhen.
…If I were foreign affairs minister today my language on the South China Sea would be identical with Julie Bishop’s. Namely, that Australia will exercise freedom of navigation pursuant to international law but that we will not provoke an increase in tensions. I’d be stating that differences must be resolved peacefully, that all parties must respect international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and so on.
But the current freeze in relations is not due to difference of substance. We’ve lost our chance to press our case like Germany, India and Japan simply through loose talk, presumably to impress the Trump administration with our impeccable alliance credentials.
No, Bob, we’re in the process of extricating ourselves from a soft power assault of questionable funding that included your think tank.
If we want to argue from analogy then let’s ask what Japan or India or Germany or the US would have done if they’d woken up one morning to discover that their governing capital, intelligentsia and business elite was awash with Chinese dough buying sovereign favours. You can imagine the full-throated outcries that would have reached McCarthyist proportions.
Sure the Government has said a few things that pushed back. But, cripes, that’s it job in the circumstances. It’s a bit of a dill and ham-fisted but the response was hardly disproportionate to the “silent invasion”.
Bob, it’s time you step aside from the brand wreckage of your China “institute” so that we can take you more seriously again.
You are needed elsewhere in the population debate.
