Some terrific material was offered over the weekend by The Australian on the fiftieth anniversary of Gough Whitlam’s historic visit to China which began an opening-up process for a hermit kingdom that was to become a superpower. The Australian reran a bunch of pieces authored by Gough at the time. They are marvelous reading.
It ran, too, a piece by the eminent Stephen Fitzgerald, one of Australia’s greatest Sinologists and Australia’s first ambassador to China. It was not such good reading:
- China wasn’t lovable in 1972 but we engaged it.
- Now it is so big and powerful we must do so again.
- Nations like Japan, which have great enmities with China, do so.
- We need more backchannels.
- And:
The broad Australia-China relationship, while sustained by strong business, education and cultural links, risks long-term damage if it is allowed to wallow in suspicion, hostility and fear as it did in the 1950s and ‘60s, Dr FitzGerald said.
“It goes all the way back to the nineteenth century,” he said. “Paranoia about China has been dormant or active and the extent to which it is active has depended in part on the encouragement that governments have given to it. That was the case certainly back then in the late 1960s and early ‘70s and it is certainly the case now.”
“Because we have 1.4 million people of Chinese ancestry living in this country, it has begun to put them under suspicion and I think this is really tragic for Australia. It is divisive, it is unfair and it is deeply wounding to many of our Chinese Australians. And we have to find ways to put a stop to this.”
This is typical of the obsolete view promulgated by Labor-friendly China fanbois and it offers us two important insights into the road ahead.
In terms of politics, it helps explain why Labor is so wedded to China. Labor’s proudest modern achievements are yoked to this tradition. Its greybeards are embedded within the architecture of the failing regime of Chinese engagement. It will never let it go and will remain vulnerable to toxic CCP influence until a generation of new leaders emerges. This may take another decade or two out of power.
In terms of Australia’s national interest, Dr Fitzgerald’s view is also clouded. We do not need to engage more fully with China. Why? Because we engaged too fully and nearly lost our liberal democracy in the process. Now we need a divorce.
Everyday Australians fully get this even if eminent Sinologists and Labor do not:
How far we push away from China is up for grabs. There were two phases of historic integration to consider in divorce proceedings.
Up to the GFC, engagement was commodities exports based, accompanied by Chinese liberalisation.
After the GFC, engagement was people imports based, accompanied by illiberalisation.
At the moment, we are unwinding the second stage and should continue to do so with all haste. That does not mean being mean to local ethnic Chinese. On the contrary, that is every bit as backward as Dr Fitzgerald’s worldview.
The remaining question is whether or not to divorce the commodities relationship as well. To my mind, unwinding the second stage is not enough. Given the evolution of the CCP into an illiberal power-projecting tyranny with its eyes clearly set upon the destruction of neighboring democracies and regional hegemony, we should also sue for custody of large parts of the first phase of integration. Sending iron ore to China so that it can be repurposed as missiles and bullets sent back from the barrel of a gun is beyond absurd. It is suicidal. Other commodities are fine.
That’s the reality of today. Divorce is about protecting liberal democracy from the world’s greatest and most vicious tyranny. It is also about protecting local ethnic Chinese that the totalitarian CCP claims to own, in violation of everything that we stand for.
This evil empire could be spreading from the ocean floor or Mars and the response should be the same.
Divorce it.
