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| From here |
There’s heaps of Aussies working at the South China Morning Post I guess because they’re editors and journalists. Whenever there’s an Australia-China article there come the China trolls, attacking Australia. It’s a given, heaps of clicks, heaps of hate.
Most articles about Oz are negative on Oz.
Maybe because of the China trolls and maybe also because those Aussie editors and journalists are kind of leftie anti-Oz.
Whatever: mostly anti-Oz. As in the familiar tropes. Australia is a white colonialist enterprise, as if we hadn’t ditched an exclusivist White Australia policy last century. And as if we are not the most multi-cultural, multi-ethnic country in the region. Certainly China is exclusionary to Chinese; Japan to Japanese; Korea to Koreans.
Another trope: we’re not engaged enough in Asia. That’s also wrong. Australia has deep engagement economically and also militarily. We are one of the largest militaries in the region.
So the bit here:
Australia was 85% of ASEAN in 1980 but is now only 50%.
So what?
In 1980 ASEAN was only 5 countries and is now 10. Three of those were communist and communism makes nothing but barbed wire and tins of cabbage.
On a per capita basis, Australia is >TEN times that of ASEAN: Australia $US 60,517 per head; ASEAN $US 5,371.
