Caution urged on Beijing

AUSTRALIANS have expressed grave concerns about China, with 70 per cent saying we should be more cautious in our dealings with the Asian superpower.

The sentiment was captured in a YouGov survey of 2297 Australians, conducted exclusively for NewsCorp, with the concern about China cutting across all age groups, and all states.

Just 8 per cent of respondents said the current relationship with Beijing was “about right”, while 12 per cent said we should have closer ties, and 10 per cent said they didn’t know. Seventy per cent said we should “be more cautious” – one of the strongest unified responses to any of the 38 questions asked in the survey.

Professor Clive Hamilton, an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), said the survey results were predictable, “as there has been a collapse in public sympathy towards China since Beijing’s aggression against Australia”.

“We need to accept that Beijing will continue with its diplomatic deep freeze and trade punishment for the foreseeable future,” he said. “We’ve adapted to that and the forecasts of disaster have not materialised. We are better off for being less dependent on, and less afraid of, China.”

Professor Hamilton said he was interested in the 12 per cent of Australians who wanted closer ties with China.

“Who are these people? I’m guessing a mixture of craven business people, pro-CCP Chinese-Australians, and elements of the ‘anti-imperialist’ left,” he said.

Professor James Laurenceson, director of the AustraliaChina Relations Institute at Sydney’s UTS, said the caution was not surprising, “given we are entering the sixth straight year of heightened political tensions between Canberra and Beijing”.

“Beijing hasn’t helped … by disrupting selected Australian exports and taking other actions like detaining Australian citizens on murky allegations,” Professor Laurenceson said.

“At the same time, we shouldn’t miss that China’s support for the Australian economy at an aggregate level has never been higher.”