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Has Australian big business finally woken up to what our pathetic socialist government refuses to admit? Which is that China is neither a trustworthy nor a desirable business partner.
Australia’s direct investment in China has more than halved since Anthony Albanese was first elected in 2022, as companies remain concerned about heightened business risks and the Chinese economic growth rate has slowed.
The entire stock of Australian direct investment in China was only $1.6bn at the end of 2024, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data.
Last year, Australian direct investment in China fell by more than 25 per cent from $2.1bn, according to the ABS. It has fallen every year since 2019, shrinking by almost 90 per cent from a peak of $15.5bn.
What happened after 2019 to change business’s mind? In early 2020, of course, China summarily banned some of Australia’s most lucrative exports, from barley and wine, to lobster. The bans cost Australia billions and sent shockwaves through exporters. Producers who had grown fat on sending their best at top dollar to China, while Australians had to make do with overpriced seconds, were suddenly crying poor and begging Aussies to buy their stuff.
All because then-PM Scott Morrison dared suggest that the Covid virus really did come from China, which we now know to be nothing but the truth.
But telling the truth is exactly the sort of thing a communist dictatorship simply will not abide. Hence its brutal trade war on Australia.
Now they want us to just pretend nothing happened?
Which is apparently exactly what Anthony Albanese wants.
Speaking at a press conference in Chengdu on the final full day of his six-night trip to China, the PM said there were both global and bilateral reasons for the fall since 2019.
“Covid had an impact on global economic investment, but also there were the specific issues during that term of the Morrison government,” Mr Albanese said.
Yes: Morrison dared speak truth to the communist giant. Albanese prefers to crawl on bended knees.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has feted a rare intimate lunch with Chinese President Xi Jinping […]
“He was very personal. It was a very personal discussion,” Albanese said of the lunch in Beijing’s Great Hall on Tuesday.
“We got to know each other a lot more; a lot more about our backgrounds, our upbringing, our views, a lot more about everything … There was humour.”
Please tell me the embarrassing little creep didn’t start banging on about how he was raised in a cardboard box in the poor suburbs, again.
Grovelling to murderous Chinese dictators is in Labor’s DNA. Never forget that Labor ‘hero’ Gough Whitlam made his name by scurrying to China to kow-tow to the Mao regime in the middle of the mass murder and deranged destruction of the Cultural Revolution.
The communists in Beijing are even more duplicitous than the communists in Canberra.
Despite the huge imbalance in investment levels, China’s government continues to complain about Australia’s foreign investment regimen, which it claims unfairly targets Chinese firms.
Premier Li Qiang on Tuesday repeated Beijing’s longstanding complaints in a meeting with the Prime Minister and senior Australian business figures.
“We hope that the Australian side will treat Chinese enterprises visiting Australia fairly and properly solve the problems encountered by enterprises in market access, investment review and other aspects,” Mr Li said.
We’ll treat China as fairly as it’s treated us.
Or at least, we would, if there was anyone other than a snivelling little Marxist quisling in the Lodge.
For once, even the dunderheads who run Australia’s boardrooms are showing more commonsense than the dunderheads who run parliament.
For more than half a decade, Australia’s big four banks, led by ANZ, have drastically reduced their direct investment in China.
Former China bull James Packer’s Crown casino had earlier offloaded all its investment in the People’s Republic of China after the gaming company’s staff were arrested on accusations of breaking the country’s strict anti-gambling laws. Mr Packer has since called China “uninvestable”.
The fall is not unique to Australia. Foreign investment into China by wealthy liberal democracies has plunged since before the pandemic. Most Australian companies have also reduced their headcount in China as they have downsized operations and switched to local staff.
Even Treasury Wine Estates, owner of Penfolds, no longer has a China-based executive in the country, its largest market.
Once bitten, perhaps, twice shy.
