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| China throttles Aussie wine imports. And suspend Barley |
Australia-China relations have been much in the news lately, especially here in Hong Kong but also in other MSM, like BBC and Bloomberg.
Fair to say, I think, that the main theme is that Australia is cutting off its nose, if it stands too tough on Beijing.
It’s a struggle. And one in which Australia has the “disadvantage of democracy”.
This is what I mean:
Assume that we have 20/20 vision, for now and into the future. We know exactly what is the best policy stance towards an increasingly assertive China.
That policy stance is going to be somewhere on the continuum between Compliance and Confrontation. Between kowtowing to Beijing and telling it to take a hike. (I lean the latter side of this continuum, but I’ll leave that aside for the moment).
In this assumption we have the perfect policy for now and going forward.
But what happens to this policy?
A: no matter where it is in the continuum, it’s going to hammered. In the Australian media and in parliament. This surely is going to weaken our negotiating position, for even if we stick hard by our policy stance — the perfect one! — the criticisms will show the Chinese where vulnerabilities lie and they will exploit them.
And that’s if we have somehow worked out the perfect policy. Which of course is not likely save by happy accident and only in retrospect. Anything less than perfect is going to be savaged more severely.
Meantime what about the Chinese side?
A: They will have worked out their policy stance and be hewing to it like “lips to teeth”, to adapt a phrase of Mao’s.
I recall early on doing business in China coming across what I came to know as the “we Chinese” phenomenon.— 我们中国人 Wo-men Zhong-guo ren.
I’m going back to the early 80s here, and doing early Australian joint ventures in China. Technology transfer was an issue even then and it didn’t matter whether you were in southern Yunnan, rural Fujian or central Beijing, your partners would say “wo-men zhong-guo ren”, we Chinese, need to have technology transfer in this venture, as follows…
Of course this is smart, at least in the case of tech transfer. China has done well out of it, though on the other side it’s a big part of what’s causing tensions with the US and the EU. [eg China, once partner, becomes rival]
And of course we in Australia have our own rules and laws for foreign investment, on tech transfer, national labour laws and the like. I’m not talking about these. I’m talking about the areas that would normally be in the scope of negotiation between partners, but which in the Chinese side are buttressed by the power of the state. “We Chinese”.
This is how they deal in business and it’s even stronger in foreign relations.
And so our policy stance toward China inevitably suffers the slings and arrows from our own side, while in the Chinese side, having decided their position internally, will face us with a unified voice, And one that happens to be strongly nationalist and mercantilist (we win, you lose).
That’s not to say I think we should erode our democracy to diminish our “disadvantage of democracy”. I’m rather too wedded for that corker of an idea. That power is in the hands of the demos, the people.
But it does suggest we ought try, try at least, to be more bipartisan in our foreign policy dealings. Would it be too much to ask that our political leaders on both sides meet more often, outside of parliament, out of the public glare — yes, in secret, even — to hammer out a national position? And then stick to it?
We Australians…
Otherwise we’re going to be swallowed by the Dragon.
ADDED: Australia (and US) not the only ones frustrated by China:
…in private, [German executives] say they are running out of patience with bureaucratic obstacles, forced technology transfers, subsidies and assorted protectionist barriers long seen as the price for accessing the market. Some are calling for Berlin to mimic President Trump’s tough approach to Beijing. [Link]
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