Australia’s call to arms against Chinese government intrusion into Western universities signals a momentous change of tack in its foreign-policy agenda. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has issued a blunt warning to university students affiliated with the Communist Party of China, urging them to respect freedom of speech in Australia.
Australia’s record period of uninterrupted economic growth is chiefly due to the coincidental globalization of China’s markets. Meanwhile, Australia’s foreign policy has never departed from US security patronage and global leadership.
In particular, Australia is a partner of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network along with the US, the UK, Canada and New Zealand.
Even before Donald Trump’s presidency, the increasingly assertive postures of China’s major-power diplomacy has triggered an Australian debate on the long-term sustainability of the split security/trade system of alliances in the Asia-Pacific region.
In this regard, Australian foreign-policy experts have divided in two distinct camps, one of forced choice and the other of sustained dualism between the US and China.
Variously spread on both conservative and progressive circles, “choicers” and “dualists”, so to speak, seem to agree only on the underlying premise that China’s rising influence beyond the mere economic sphere is a matter of serious concern for Australia, and thus it requires a major revamp of the country’s foreign-policy agenda.
For the past few years, government policy has struggled to keep Australia’s relations with the US and China on parallel lines. However, Julie Bishop’s tough stance against Chinese interference in Australian universities appears to move away from the dualist strategy and toward the American choice.
The writing is on the wall, considering Australia’s quick support to President Trump’s new strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia, as well as the security partnership in the Philippines to fight Islamic State, a strategic shift that may bring Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte back into the US alliance fold.
In fact, Australia appears ready to sacrifice its multilateral trade agenda in Asia for the US-led protection of the liberal world order. But Australia should not necessarily pay an economic price for this choice, at least according to Trump’s binary and transactional worldview.
In fact, the US administration is close to triggering a trade war with China using as a legal pretext the findings of the White House’s Omnibus Report on Significant Trade Deficits, as well as the perceived nuclear crises with North Korea and Iran.
Australia is one of the few US allies with a bilateral trade agreement of Trump’s liking, that is with a significant US surplus. This makes Australia one of the best-placed economies to take advantage of US trade adjustments within emerging corporate value chains that bypass China’s sphere of influence.
With this economic logic in mind, an open cultural clash with China looks like Australia’s drill for crossing the Rubicon of the US-China struggle for geopolitical hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region.
Rohit Pandeya as a mark of an independent and sovereign Tibet, can you name a single country which recognize Tibet as a country. India???
Perry Kamath yes some Chinese eat dog. and so do Korean and your buddy Vietnamese. The rejoinder is Indians are cow-pee drinkers, rat worshippers, turd producers on elephant jockey street and pee like dog everywhere on the sreet.
Is being a client state of the United States the price we pay for the sake of not becoming a vassal of China?
hahaha indeed you can buy everybody. The universities will have to respond to this because they have to. The Australian conservative government has been defunding the universities for decades such that they need external revenue to continue operations. And the Chinese provides that. If they leave, many of the universities will be on life support. Its Australia who is isolating themselves in Asia. Its the conservative govt who is at odds with the rest of Australia becuase of some idiot lecturers who made an error of fact not freedom of speech! Why does the AFL go to China? Some day a reckoning will come with the atitude that Chinese money is very good but you would rather hold your nose and keep the Chinese at arms length.
oh so the Chinese have no right to express themselves in the western university huh? so much for democracy
I hope australians are good at swimming, they will need it when they ships sink during the crossing.
Australia is now totally dependent on imports from China. We have lost our manufacturing base here. China is now taking us by economic stealth in many areas . Our Govt are fools at our future peril !!
If you dont need their money, then it is fine.
So your view is, indians are lovely people..
And if China pushes its oppressive tactics in the U.S. your students will not be welcome here or anywhere else. China looks to be on a course to isolate itself. You cannot buy everybody.
Chinese Students can choose not to go the australia.