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Treat ‘confrontational’ China with more caution, Australia’s deputy PM urges
- Barnaby Joyce pointed to Beijing’s actions in the South China Sea, Xinjiang province and northern India as reasons Canberra has ‘to be more cautious’
- A focus on bolstering defence capabilities was also imperative ‘in light of the … more overt role the China Communist Party is playing’, he said
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Australian Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said the government needs to treat China with more caution after relations with its largest trading partner hit new lows.
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“They have made the world look at them in a different light – their actions in the South China Sea, their actions pertinent to the Uygur people, their actions in northern India,” Joyce said in an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday. “They seem more confrontational.”
“We have to be more cautious,” he added. “We wish that was not the case. I don’t think that is a win-win situation for the world. I think that is a bad situation because it means people’s attention and resources and attitudes are taken down a different track to what is beneficial for all.”
China-Australia relations have been in free fall since April 2020, when Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s conservative government called on Beijing to allow independent investigators into Wuhan to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. That has had repercussions for Australia’s trade relationship with China, which has imposed tariffs and other restrictions on a range of goods including coal, barley and wine.
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In response, Morrison has sought to bolster relations with “like-minded democracies” to buffer what he sees as China’s increasing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region. That has included strengthening US-led groups like the Quad security arrangement and the Five Eyes intelligence partnership, further stoking the ire of Beijing.
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