Some in Australia stuck in the Cold War

In a highly inflammatory opinion piece in an Australian newspaper on Thursday, Andrew Hastie, the head of Australia’s parliamentary intelligence and security committee, drew a comparison between China’s rise and that of Nazi Germany.

In a newspaper column, the federal member of Australia’s Liberal Party, which leads the ruling coalition, likened the West’s attitude to China to the inadequate French response to the World War II advances of Nazi Germany.

Such remarks are deplorable, and risible. While they are so preposterous they do not merit refuting, they do shine a spotlight on the narrow-minded and problematic world view of some Australian politicians.

Such a distorted and prejudiced view of China’s development exposes a catastrophic failure of reason that prevents a just and objective perception of what that development means for Australia and the world.

Although Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison distanced himself and his government from Hastie by claiming that those remarks were not the views of the government, it is no surprise that such biased comments should flare up in a country that is eager to strengthen its ties with the United

States at a time when the US administration is doubling down on its trade war attacks against China and trying every means to contain China’s development .

It is surely not just happenstance that Hastie’s remarks coincided with Mike Burgess becoming head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. Burgess was previously in charge of the Australian Signals Directorate, which played a key role in Canberra’s decision to ban China’s Huawei from Australia’s nascent 5G broadband network.

Yet even the most biased Australians cannot deny how much their country has benefited from China’s development in recent years. In fact, Australia sets an example of how a developed economy can benefit from its ties with China. And bilateral trade aside, Chinese tourists and students also play an important role in contributing to Australia’s economy.

Admittedly, the status quo of China-Australia ties is far from satisfactory mainly due to Australia’s penchant for hyping up the so-called China threat in the past few years.

To resurrect the development momentum of bilateral ties, Canberra should not tolerate such an ill trend continuing to poison bilateral interaction.