“I knew you would sell your mother for an Etruscan vase. But I didn’t know you would sell out your country and your soul… to the slime of humanity”
Prof. Henry Jones (Sean Connery), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
There’s been plenty of back-and-forth over the merits of Australia’s stance in the diplomatic and trade war China has declared on our nation. Defenders of the status quo argue that Australia cannot afford to get the communist behemoth offside. The Morrison government, they argue, must “mend fences” and “get the relationship back on track”. Lobster fishermen, winemakers, and university vice-chancellors, who have seen their rivers of gold suddenly vanish, are held forth as sob-story examples of the government’s impetuous foolishness.
Agriculture-focused investment banker David Williams of Kidder Williams said every time China is locked out of an Australian investment deal, it lowers the purchase price by 10 per cent or more.
“Not having the Chinese there as investors or as buyers of businesses is taking a minimum of 10 per cent out of the price of what we can raise in Australia,” Mr Williams said.
“Whether you’re selling businesses or raising money we need that Chinese capital to expand food production, agricultural land and plantings. That’s got to be good for us and then they are also going to take some of the product. It’s a win/win for Australia and we need to have them back here. It’s not like the Chinese are crowding out Australian investors, our super funds don’t want to invest in agriculture.
“The government has got to find a way of solving the defence and national security problems while still finding a way to trade with them in the same way as America and Germany and everyone else in the world seems to be able to.”
The Australian
What is missing in this argument is the simple moral question: should we trade with a brutal dictatorship?
This is, after all, a regime presiding over an unfolding, officially-sanctioned genocide. Forced organ harvesting, mass detentions, forced sterilisation and abortions, concentration camps, forced labour: this isn’t something from history books of the 1940s, it’s all happening, right now – and Beijing is the culprit.
Economic sanctions have been slapped on other nations for far less. Can we really keep on trading with China at the cost of our souls?
What would we give up to meet China’s so-called 14 grievances? Our press freedom? Our ability to drive our economic destiny? Our democracy?
Innes Willox is chief executive of the national employer association, the Ai Group, one of the largest industry groups in Australia. While clearly not in the same league as the soulless plutocrats who are willing to openly undermine the Australian government in exchange for China’s billions, Willox still misses the real point.
As a former foreign policy advisor to the Howard government, Willox of all people should understand the realities of dealing with a communist regime.
A lesson from the mid-1990s – when Australia held the economic upper hand with China but when there was a major falling-out over Taiwan – is that we didn’t blink, didn’t back down and didn’t forget who our friends were.
It was difficult, no doubt. I was there as an adviser to foreign minister Alexander Downer during some of the toughest meetings with Beijing – listening to former premier Li Peng – “The Butcher of Beijing”- explain his rationale for the Tiananmen Square massacre and then dismiss those in the room with a wave of his hand. It was among both the most fascinating and scariest few minutes of my life[…]
We will miss their students, tourists and the market they provide. We won’t miss the abuse, our lobsters being left to die at their airports, our coal being left at ports for months at a time, their petty bureaucracy, their authoritarianism and their determination to punish.
We are being harassed and bullied to tease out who stands on whose side in the fight for post-pandemic economic and strategic dominance.
The answer, then, should be simple.
But let’s keep talking and trading where we can and should. One day we will need each other again, diplomatically and strategically. There will come the time for the “pull aside” or a chance corridor meeting at a global conference that signals a thawing of relations and we can begin a proper reset.
The Australian
Would Willox have advised a “reset” with, say, Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan in the 1940s?
That may sound like hyperbole, but, given what we know about modern China’s humanitarian record, the analogy seems apt.
Do we really want to sell our souls to the slime of humanity on even the most favourable terms?
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