Australia -China relationships

 What can one say as Australia's relationships with China plunge to new depths.

Not sure that politically Australia's pollies understand fully the nuances of communicating with Asian nations, especially China. We made the mistake of setting off a chain of events by going out on our own and calling for an independent investigation on how the COVID19 virus got going in China.  We should have left this to the World Health Organisation.  I am sure China would have felt then and still does, concerned that the virus broke out in Wuhan.  They did not need to be reminded, but rather we should have embraced them with offers of concern and assistance if they needed it, offers to share genome sequencing of the virus rather than being seen to blame, even though blame was not part of the call we made.

Having noted the above we have made decisions that have riled China in the context of national security, eg, banning Huawei from participating in the development and roll out of the 5G network.  We can only hope that bodies like ASIO are on top of it all. We have banned commercial deals that Chinese firms wanted to make in Australia thus adding salt to the wounds. Yet should China punish us economically for such moves? Applying sanction type punishments nation upon nation is not new and we may have to wear it and find other markets and start to take our natural resources like iron ore to manufactured goods level.  We may not be as wealthy in the long run as selling the raw product, but we would be more self reliant.

China has a long history in Australia going back to the gold rush days of the 19th century. They could still live with us and we with them in a cooperative way or could continue to pressure us with the economic power that they undoubtedly have. I guess they must ask themselves whether they want to be a power for peace in our region or to continue to right what they see as the wrongs of history, eg, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

It is not about democracy versus communism or if it is, it should not be.

I have not mentioned alleged human rights abuses and find such actions abhorrent, however Australia has a poor history with the now defunct White Australia policy against all non caucasian persons and the application since 1788 of terra nullius against the Australian Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Maybe we should get our own house in order and not make independent accusations about other countries.  There are world bodies, of which we are a signatory, who have a global voice on such issues and represent us.

Maybe China can look back and recall the thousands of Australians who died to free South East Asia from the Japanese in WWII.

This is all very tricky but in the end we humans want a peaceful cooperative world where poverty and disease are reduced and each human has the chance of some joy in living. Our PM to his credit has recently publicly acknowledged the wonderful job China has dome in reducing poverty for its peoples.

May the Force be with all humanity as it strives for peaceful coexistence.

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