OpinionCan Australia overcome its China fears to manage its balancing act in the western Pacific?

Asian neighbours admire Australia and are grateful for its aid over the years, but they also get turned off by its smug sense of superiority

Some don’t tremble at the mere mention of China and even admire the rise of a Chinese/Asian superpower

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China’s aircraft carrier Liaoning (centre) takes part in a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy drill in the western Pacific Ocean, in April 2018. The pitch that China should be a national security worry for everyone in the region seems unconvincing. Pacific island nations are not eager to be played as pawns by Canberra or Beijing. Photo: Reuters

Published: 3:00am, 30 Jul 2019Updated: 4:38am, 30 Jul 2019

Australia has a China problem, and it’s not clear that anyone can help it out of the box it’s in.

Yes, it’s a China box: the ground underneath the Asia-Pacific is starting to shake, and the incipient foreign-policy shakeout Down Under may well tell those of us “Up Top” how the rest of the region will settle politically in coming decades. Is Beijing the demon driver of the problem?

China, of course, does have a problem with Australia that can perhaps be illustrated this way. At a conference on US-Australian relations some time ago in Los Angeles, someone asked an Australian government official how his otherwise intelligent country, with its advanced economy and educated citizenry, could have lined up like a sheep behind the unthinking US government of George W Bush and thrown its troops into the horrible Iraq war.

The rejoinder was that this is what reliable allies and friends are all about – there when you need them, without a whole lot of grumpy questions being asked.

Perhaps, but good friends are also for warning their good mates how to avoid stupidity. Yet Australia, or so it might seem, has hardly ever met an American war it didn’t like.