China is now showing its true face to the world: a brutal bully, too gutless to pick a fight with the biggest kid in the playground, so it tries to shove around someone smaller.
For decades, the communist state has tried to soft-soap a gullible world that it’s a reformed, good global citizen. One by one, in 2020, the masks have been stripped away.
When the Wuhan virus erupted in China, Beijing lied and covered up and allowed a deadly virus to spread around the world unchecked. At the same time, it secretly stripped the world of vital medical supplies.
When the Australian government led calls for an independent investigation into the origins of the virus, China responded swiftly and viciously, slapping a series of trade sanctions on Australia. At every turn, it’s doubled down, until it reached an abysmal low, even for China: tweeting a fake photo of an Australian soldier killing a small child.
Whether it was the rogue act of a witless official or a sanctioned escalation in the phony trade war against Australia, all eyes are firmly focused on China.
Either way, the diplomatic scales have tipped heavily in Scott Morrison’s favour.
Apparantly, China has yet to learn that it cannot comport itself on the global stage in the manner in which its used to acting at home. It’s one thing for state media to print obedient propaganda about dissidents while the Chinese Communist Party “disappears” one million Uyghurs into re-education camps in Xinjiang – quite another to openly bully even a middle Western power.
As the world looks on, Beijing’s position has been demonstrably weakened. Its credibility is in tatters and it has lost the moral argument in its dispute with Canberra. How it responds from here may determine the course of its relationships not only with Australia but other Western democracies.
The early signs were not encouraging of a possibility for the mature repositioning by the Chinese leadership. It is hard to imagine any scenario that could serve as a justification for the deliberate offence that the doctored tweet sought to inflict[…]
Before this, regional leaders and key allies had been expressing support privately to Scott Morrison and their shock at China’s impetuous and increasingly aggressive actions.
China is giving the world an object lesson that a brutal communist dictatorship remains a brutal communist dictatorship, no matter how much it pretends otherwise.
Its list of 14 demands last week would have been justification to re-examine diplomatic ties. The fake photo of the Australian soldier has not only raised it to a new level but injected a sophomoric understanding of the West.
Beijing has unintentionally signalled a great weakness. It clearly has no playbook for how to deal with a country that refuses to acquiesce to power used irresponsibly.
Morrison has responded in a cool-headed way that was the only way he could respond, despite his deep personal anger. It has afforded him significant moral authority in the face of increasingly hysterical behaviour. To retaliate with a break in diplomatic ties as some have suggested would have delivered a victory to Beijing if indeed its strategy is to keep escalating and provoking until it can force Morrison to buckle or elicit a retaliatory response for which it can then blame Australia.
The message of reassurance from Western allies is they are watching with rising concern.
Morrison has made it clear that, while he is ready to talk to Xi Jinping, he will never submit to conditional dialogue.
Beijing has signalled that it has no intention of apologising.
The Australian
Indeed, Beijing is using its sock-puppet state media to ramp up the rhetoric, telling the Australian prime minister to “kneel down on the ground, slap himself in the face and kowtow to apologise”.
This is the real face of communist China.
The question now, for other leaders thinking of signing on to China’s BRI and for businesses all-too-eager to hold their noses and chase Chinese cash, is: is this a regime you really want to deal with?
That was the moral question facing governments and businesses in the 1930s and now again in the 2020s: which side are you on?
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