China fanboys come in all shapes and sizes. Some are smarter that others.
University of Queensland Vice Chancellor Peter Varghese is a more subtle and dangerous version than the likes of foghorns like Geoff Raby and Paul Keating.
Varghese wrote this week:
The central strategic axis of the Indo-Pacific region is – and for the foreseeable future, will remain – bipolar: a competition for primacy between the US and China.
And while Australia has chosen where it sits, most of the region is determined not to choose either. They do not buy the line that they have to choose, and they certainly do not buy the line that we are engaged in an epic struggle between democracy and autocracy.
There is currently an unresolved tension at the core of Australian strategic policy. On the one hand, our foreign policy embraces a multipolar future where no country dominates.
Our defence policy, on the other hand, quietly conflates US leadership and US primacy, and is increasingly fixed around doing what we can to ensure the retention of US strategic primacy. That includes, it would seem, aligning our force posture to fit into the overarching US strategic objective, which is to deny China primacy by doubling down on US primacy.
…A new strategic equilibrium in the Indo-Pacific region is likely to take an organic form rather than the two fixed and competing alliance systems that characterised the Cold War. And while the competition for primacy between the US and China will shape its contours, a stable balance does not require any one power to hold primacy. Indeed it may well work best if no single power holds primacy.
Put another way, Varghese wants to constrain China not contain it.
The problem with this line of thinking is its false assumptions.
Does the US still hold primacy in Asia? No. Did it ever want to keep it? Evidence suggests not.
The US has spent two decades allowing China to build its economy by attaching itself to US import demand.
Sure, this was done via China adopting economic liberalisation, a US ideology.
But it predictably resulted in the meteoric rise of Chinese soft power worldwide and especially in Asia and Australia.
That soft power is tinctured with deep illiberal tendencies.
This very discussion is proof of it. In decades past, Australian policy would never have dared mull a future without US primacy yet here we are utterly dependent on Chinese export revenues.
In terms of hard power, US primacy is intact. But why would Australia want to undo that? Given China is already an equal to the US in Asian soft power, it needs to be counterbalanced with hard.
Just look at the torture of the Philippines and its borders for proof of that. Some might also include Taiwan, though to my mind that is a civil conflict, which should be sued to crush Chinese soft power when the time comes.
The recent episode of the 14 conditions to end democracy is a salient lesson in why Australia should not encourage Chinese power of any kind to grow further.
In the 14 conditions case, Beijing misused its soft power to demand that Australia shut down free speech and sovereign policymaking.
Unsurprisingly and appropriately, this resulted in Australia intensifying hard power engagement with the US.
Now just imagine that Beijing had military parity in the Asia Pacific (not even primacy) and during some similar episode in the future it parked an aircraft carrier off Bateman’s Bay while issuing its 14 demands.
There is no continental defence regime (championed by the likes of ALP greybeards) in which Canberra would not capitulate instantly. Yours truly would be off the new Pilbara labour camps.
In short, Varghese has dressed up more CCP propaganda in a range of fancy terms that hold no meaning in the world of real politik.
US primacy in Asia is already gone. Containing further erosion is a matter of life and death for Asian liberalism.
Notably so for Australia’s China corrupted universities.
Led by Varghese’s UQ.
