Quick TakeWhy Australia needs a smarter China policy
Diplomacy between Beijing and Canberra is at a low point – a sophisticated approach by Australia is required
With the 45th anniversary of official Australia-China ties around the corner, Australia should be gearing up to celebrate. Instead, we find ourselves mired in one of the lowest points of our relationship in many years.
This week, the Australian ambassador to China was summoned to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to discuss recent developments concerning accusations of Chinese influence in Australia. This followed Cheng Jingye, the Chinese ambassador to Australia, lodging a formal complaint to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade about the “wild and morbid” accusations. Chinese media has been producing a heavy dose of negative reports about Australia while the Australian press has been featuring no shortage of stories about the dangers of Chinese influence.
Labor politician Sam Dastyari has resigned after accepting cash from a Chinese donor.
Until recently, Australia was seen as kind of cuddly and rather irrelevant. Beijing taxi drivers would smile and say, “Ahh! Kangaroo!” when I said where I was from. Sometimes they would add they were glad I wasn’t from the United States. Now, however, Australia is in the top three of China’s least-favoured nations after the US and Japan.
Relations were already chilly because of Australia’s public denouncements of China’s activities in the South China Sea, and the refusal to sign an extradition treaty. They started to go downhill dramatically after Fairfax-ABC aired stories of Chinese influence this year. The ill will has been inflamed by local politics. The issue of Chinese influence around the Bennelong by-election this weekend has been an embarrassing display of politics before substance by both parties. According to the 2016 Census, 21 per cent of the constituents of the Sydney electorate of Bennelong have Chinese ancestry, and 13.3 per cent were born in China. This gives Bennelong the highest percentage of ethnically Chinese voters in any electorate in the country – a point not lost on politicians contesting the seat.