The daily insults visited upon Australia from China are not even worth covering these days. The muckraking is typical of a paranoid communist regime with a glass jaw. It is obviously counter-productive to its Australian interests but that’s how these bullying regimes work. As Australia’s Ambassador to China, Graham Fletcher, says today:
- China has lost the ability to be “objective” about Australia.
- It doesn’t realise the harm that it is doing to itself by being unreliable in trade and vindictive.
What is more interesting (and exciting) to report today is the same wolf wankery has suddenly and dramatically alienated the EU Parliament as well. Via Sinocism:
The PRC may have done more in the last four days to damage PRC-EU relations in very deep ways than anything the Biden administration could have done. The destruction of H&M’s China business over Xinjiang cotton likely also kills any chance the EU ratifies the CAI.
The targets of the mass tantrum campaign over whether companies use Xinjiang cotton have expanded beyond H&M to Nike, Adidas, Burberry and likely more firms. This whole thing was manufactured by the Communist Youth League digging up a 2020 statement from H&M and posting about in Weibo just after the EU issued sanctions. The propaganda system, the Foreign Ministry, and the Ministry of Commerce have all joined in, along with the masses online. Tens of stars have publicly renounced their contracts with the targeted firms. So far the protests have stayed virtual, but I would not be surprised to see people burning their H&M and other offending apparel. Those Douyins will be lit.
As this is the 100th anniversary year of the CCP we should expect more of these kinds of campaigns against any foreign provocations.
Bill Bishop argues, rightly, that all corporations doing business in China are caught between Scylla and Charybdis. If they do business with the genocidal regime they face revolt at home. If they pull out they face revolt in China.
This is the new China and goes to where it is headed. Arguably, it is not an irrational CCP that is the issue. Rather, the CCP is deliberately creating enemies worldwide to stoke an irrational Chinese nationalism in the polity that can be mobilised and controlled by the CCP as its economic legitimacy fails.
It may be that the CCP is particularly pissed at Australia given we’ve rebuffed their gifts of yuan and corruption. But this movement is much larger and coordinated than that.
Meanwhile, the CCP’s Australian patsy, The Labor Party, is wrestling with the dragon:
- Labor right is pushing to toughen its stance on Xinjiang.
- Labor left, led by Panny Wong, is trying to keep us kowtowing.
The draft platform is as wishy-washy as Albo is on everything:
“Labor believes that China is, and will continue to be, of great importance to Australia, to our region and to the world. It is in both our countries’ interests to have a productive relationship, even when there are differences or disagreement.
“We must engage effectively with China while always standing up for our democratic values, including human rights, as well as advancing our national interests and safeguarding our sovereignty.”
As Labor blamed the Morrison Government for the CCP’s worldwide aggressive turn last year, it hardly did any of that. It played politics and curried favour with the CCP. I remain deeply concerned about Labor’s China corruption.
But democracy starts at home and it can’t be led to any good end by a rape protection racket so we must deal with that first.
