Some of the troubles are down to Australian own goals. We didn’t need to get so firmly on side with the US’ China preoccupations. Things like investigating the source of the virus, a call which which angered Beijing. Needless provocation? Maybe so. Beijing should certainly be pressured to allow an international investigation, but I doubt Australia’s voice added any pressure, while it provoked more Chinese ire.
Still. I’m going to call the major provocation as Beijing’s. That Winnie Bear Xi Jinping. There’s the litany of his aggressions since he took over in 2012: incursions in the South China Sea, the BAR, arresting Uygur Muslims….
In Australia there’s no doubt Beijing has pushed its influence peddlers. Maybe its Confucius Institutes are complicit, I don’t know about that, while I do know that learning Chinese culture and language is a wonderful and rewarding exercise. But I would not be flabbergasted if it ruined out they had people pushing Beijing’s line, via pressures on Australia’s media and politician. Institutes aside, there are other malign characters we know of. Universities are particular battle grounds. So it’s not surprising that Australia’s government should take the cudgel against them.
Some people, like Su-lin Tan, claim that in today’s Australia you must be critical of China or get “cancelled”. That is self-evidently nonsense. Much of the Australian media is anti the PM Scott Morrison and anti his China policies, including the campaigns to stem Chinese influence peddlers in Australia.
Tan is also obtuse, perhaps wilfully so. She complains the government has not articulated Australian “values” and so she doesn’t know what they are. Get real, Su-lin! Those values don’t need to be “articulated”, they are lived around you. They may involve some racism; every country in the world has racists. But t’s not systemic, and mostly micro level — the “where are you from” variety, usually asked well-meaningly. (I speak here as someone married to a Chinese-Australian). Moreover Australia is in the least racist category internationally. Yet, here is Tan, wilfully ignorant and bursting with victimhood:
Driving this mania is Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s July statement that – in regards to China – he will never “trade our values”. This confuses me – as an Australian of Chinese heritage – because he’s never articulated what these “values” are, nor do I feel any values are being jeopardised because Australia engages with China. No one has forced me to be a communist. [Link]
And later:
Together, politicians and some journalists team up to “other” those they don’t understand, particularly minority migrant groups. Does that truly make Australia “the most successful multicultural nation in the world”, a popular catchphrase Canberra likes to use but for which we don’t have any evidence? [Link]
It’s not true we “have no evidence”. Here is plenty out there, including multiple international comparison polls. And the Chinese-Australian community in Australia is part of that, being one of the earliest immigrant community and amongst its most successful. Phooey to Su-lin Tan’s manufactured, or deluded, victimhood.
