China-Australia relations

While Australia’s formal sovereignty resides with the British monarch as part of the Commonwealth, its real sovereignty is to be found somewhere in Washington.

Visit by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to Beijing aims to heal wounds between nations and maintain move to more sustainable policy.

PM Anthony Albanese’s coming China visit is aimed at resetting bilateral ties that have been strained by a laundry list of issues ranging from tariffs to the pandemic’s origins.

The market impact of foreign buyers has been exaggerated. Pointing the finger at foreigners is a distraction from the main problem bedevilling Australia’s housing market – a severe shortage exacerbated by the lack of needed planning reform.

Australia has no business playing the victim when the lines between strategy and economic interests have become increasingly blurred. Beijing should treat with caution renewed efforts to get relations back on track, and avoid rewarding Canberra for its coercive behaviour.

Canberra is risking a regional war for its overlord, the United States, against its biggest trading partner with which it has grown prosperous.

Pandemic upheavals have exposed the reliance of universities in the West on international students, particularly from China – as Hong Kong’s universities become good at attracting mainland students too.

America’s ‘war on terror’ has cost millions of lives but the enormity of this violence and suffering seems to have no place in the Western consciousness.

Australia is promoting the need for maintaining a strategic balance in a region where states had already acknowledged China’s leadership role despite backing continued US presence.

Academics and rights groups have slammed such laws for undermining Australia democracy, which have made Australia ‘one of the only Western liberal democracies to have made foreign interference a crime’.

Australia’s ruling Labor Party is still clinging to the idea of a US-led global order, despite criticism of the risks and cost of Aukus project.

Between the warmongering ‘red alert’ headlines and submarine sabre-rattling, harmony seems to be sadly absent from Australian society and public discourse of late.