China Briefing | Anti-China hysteria vs need for trade: Australia struggles with a rising Beijing
Australian former politician Bob Carr’s new book sheds lights on how ‘China panic’ has sailed passed all evidence
In fact, the strategic and geopolitical arm-wrestling between the two countries, albeit starkly different in sizes, is much more than what it appears to be – Australia acting as a proxy of the United States taking on the mighty China.
To a great extent, it has fast become a test case for other Western countries, including Canada and New Zealand, traditional allies of Australia and the US, on how to forge closer economic ties with an increasingly powerful China on the one hand, and trying to push back against what is perceived to be Beijing’s political interference in their countries’ strategic sectors.
As other countries watch and learn, the jury is still out on when or how the rivalry between Beijing and Canberra will end.
China: the real reason Australia’s pumping cash into the Pacific?
But victims have already emerged – they are the 1.2 million Australian Chinese in a country with a population of 24.4 million.