It’s time to stand up to China’s bullyboy tactics
IF we don’t stand up to China now, we never will. There will not be another opportunity for Australia, along with the rest of the free world, to show this dictatorship that it can no longer bully smaller nations into submission.
For years the world has turned a blind eye to China’s aggression, economic coercion and human rights abuses. If we don’t hold the line, in the midst of a pandemic that started in China and spread due to the communist regime’s cover-ups and ineptitude, then we can kiss goodbye the notion of national sovereignty.
Australia has done nothing more than call for an independent inquiry into the origins and handling of a virus that has killed thousands and devastated the global economy. China’s insanely disproportionate response is to openly threaten our country, including talk of imposing an 80 per cent tariff on Australian barley, banning imports from four Australian abattoirs and other forms of economic retribution.
That’s not how an ally behaves. That’s how a deeply secretive and corrupt regime that has plenty to hide about the coronavirus catastrophe behaves. To submit to China’s intimidation would be disastrous and certainly not in Australia’s long-term interests.
We learnt last week that while China was hoarding medical supplies from around the world in January it was pressuring the World Health Organisation not to declare a global health emergency, according to German and US intelligence reports.
The WHO’s capitulation and kowtowing to China throughout this crisis is in itself worthy of an independent investigation. When the WHO did eventually declare an emergency it was at pains to praise China’s conduct despite the regime’s secrecy, gross negligence and misinformation campaign.
China’s ambassador to Australia Cheng Jingye has called the Morrison Government’s push for an inquiry “dangerous” and suggested that Chinese citizens would boycott Australian products, travel and educational courses before launching into Beijing’s latest bizarre conspiracy theory.
“The Chinese public is frustrated, dismayed and disappointed with what Australia is doing now … Maybe the ordinary people will say, ‘Why should we drink Australian wine? Eat Australian beef?’ ” Cheng told the Australian Financial Review.
“Some politicians here claim the virus originated in Wuhan, China, which is not the case. The fact that the epidemic first broke out in China … does not mean the source of the virus originated in China.”
Australia should summon the ambassador to express our disapproval and to explain why he is propagating conspiracy theories.
France did not tolerate incendiary remarks from China’s embassy in Paris, demanding a please explain from ambassador Lu Shaye. Indeed, no fewer than seven Chinese ambassadors from France to Kazakhstan to the African Union (representing 55 member states) have been summoned in recent weeks. Sweden has closed all Confucius Institutes, which sadly persist in a number of Australian universities and elite schools, and axed twincity relationships with China. Spain and the Netherlands are among countries that have rejected Chinese-made medical masks and testing kits, hundreds of thousands of which have proved to be faulty.
The European Union foreign policy chief and vice president Josep Borrell – who in March warned that China is using the crisis for political gain – has backed Australia and there is a possibility of the inquiry being approved at the WHO’s forum today.
Even New Zealand has grown a backbone and joined the US and Australia in calling for Taiwan to be admitted into the WHO, a move sure to enrage Beijing. A global alliance against China is forming as countries count their dead and measure the economic fallout that is certain to lead to many more deaths in the months and years to come. Crippling financial hardship, ill health (both mental and physical) and increased deaths from suicide, cancer and heart disease will be legacies of the Wuhan coronavirus.
The West allowed China to grow in strength in the mistaken belief that the more we trade with them the more they’ll come to embrace our values of democracy, freedom and equality.
The idea that with economic prosperity China would become more open has been shown to be nothing more than a naive fantasy. China’s litany of international and domestic transgressions are too long to list in a single column, but finally there is a push back, including the US senate voting on Friday for a bill to sanction Chinese government officials for “gross human rights violations” over the treatment of the Uyghur minority, around two million of whom are in concentration camps. But while much of the free world is finally standing up to China there is a quisling subset among us doing Beijing’s bidding.
Among them is Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas who warned last week that the “vilification” of China was “dangerous, damaging and probably irresponsible” before blaming the Federal Government’s “inelegant interventions” for China’s decision to punish our farmers instead of blaming the Chinese dictatorship’s habit of intimidation and economic coercion.
Victoria is the only state that has signed up to China’s contentious Belt-and-Road initiative. An issue that may come back to haunt the Dan Andrews Government in the lead-up to the next election.