Australia and China, the Prime Minister told the secretary of the Shanghai -municipal Committee of the CCP on Sunday: “Dealing with each other in a calm and consistent way”.
“And we want to continue to pursue our national interests, and it is in our interest to have good relationships with China”.
It is the kind of polite diplomatic language that can often sound eye glazing during bilateral meetings on official journeys. But this time it had a particularly focused resonance, given that there is little that ‘calm and consistent’ comes from our other major international partner: the United States of America.
There is the current and escalating trade war that President Trump has released the world, and in particular about countries that have close economic relationships with China.
And there has also been his constant pressure on allies to increase their defense expenditure, confronted with the prospect of an American withdrawal of his troops – and military expenditures – all over the world.
During the weekend, the American president made more statements about rates that he intends to impose on the European Union and Mexico.
To date, Australia is not subject to talk about further punitive rates.
But on Strategic Front, an intervention by his Minister of Defense for Strategy, Elbridge Colby, that pressure that has been seen in NATO countries in Europe to date indicated to raise their defense expenditure, now to the Asia -Pacific.
The Financial Times reported that the Pentagon presses on Japan and Australia to make clear what role they would play if the US and China were to fight Taiwan.
Apart from the last attempt by the US government to put pressure on all his allies about the expenditure, the issue evokes a whole series of individual issues for Australia, due to the Aukus agreement.
A much sharper question
The Aukus agreement that in the shorter term the purchases of American nuclear submarines include a so-called ‘forward defense strategy’ that has a conflict in mind in the South Chinese Sea, instead of the maritime approaches of Australia close to home.
Aukus -Sceptics have long argued that the increasing mixing of Australia’s defense capacity with that of the US (even before Aukus), our intrinsic bond of the military operations that the United States could undertake in the future.
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The Aukus deal escalated that possibility and raised the question of whether the submarine would connect us to a conflict between our largest trading partner and our greatest ally about Taiwan.
The leaking of news about the pressure of the Secretary Colby on Australia and Japan makes that question about our position about a war about Taiwan – which has so far strayed as hypothetically – a much sharper.
The irony is of course that the United States has always retained a position of ‘strategic ambiguity’ about what it would do in the case of China that Taiwan invades.
Yet it has now been put under pressure Australia and Japan to say what they would do.
Moreover, the story appeared just when the Australian Prime Minister touched in Shanghai: Timing who was coincidental and possibly designed to disrupt any improvement of relations between the two countries and to dominate the coverage of the visit.
Prime Minister Albanese and his Minister of Foreign Affairs Penny Wong have significantly changed their language about the strategic approach of Australia in recent weeks and China in recent weeks, and China Hawks in Australia have warned that the change in tone in the way the Prime Minister had considered and the Anzus -alliance would be defined in Washing -alliance.
In a big speech, Mr. Albanese spoke about the decision of his predecessor John Curtin to change the United States during the Second World War, “concerned an Australian foreign policy in strategic reality, not bound by tradition”.
It was “dealing with the world as it is, not the way we would like it would be,” he said, a statement with clear resonances in the present.
Although the position of Australia between the two super powers is often seen as a binary choice of one or the other, the times force a different, more nuanced and independent approach.
After a decade discussion in Australia about China, which was largely seen by a national security lens, is understandably provoked by the increasing defense position of China, the Prime Minister’s message prior to this trip to China has been a nod to our enormous trade relationship and to contacts from people to people.
Chinese tourism to Australia, for example, was only worth $ 9 billion last year.
But the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mr Albanese, Penny Wong, has taken on the role of ‘Bad Cop’, with her counterpart on the sidelines of an ASEAN meeting in Kuala Lumpur that Australia was not happy with the live fire exercises of China off our coast, or a series of other issues.
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For the always carefully speaking, the language was stronger than in the past and came on the back of a speech in which she expressed the concern of Australia about the military structure of China, including nuclear weapons.
It seemed to point out a balanced approach to the good and bad relationship between Australia and China, just as the government also sent a clear signal that it would take a more independent approach, less afraid to insult the Americans, then it has been the case in recent years.
But just as Australia claims that his national interests differ from both China and the US, it seems that the United States can force us in a choice that we do not want to make.
Albanian was careful in his reaction to the Elbridge story and agreed that there was only irony in the US and expected Australia to outline his position about a matter that the Americans did not have done. And also insisting that the preference of Australia is that the status quo above Taiwan continues.
Five years ago it seemed that China was the big disruptor in our region. Now the United States seems determined to take that title for itself.
Laura Tingle is the ABCs Global Affairs Editor.
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