I'm no fan of our PM Scott Morrison (ScMo), but he's spot on, in saying Australia cannot apologise for its values.
China has said it bears "no responsibility" for the poor state of Australia-China relations. Got that? No responsibility; none, nada, zip. That's not a position we can begin to deal with.
And just recently the oleaginous Zhao Lijian (I'm sorry for the ad hominem but he is oleaginous), spokesman and pack leader of the "wolf warriors" presented a list of "14 grievances" to Australian media. That's post-Opium-War-100 years-humiliation-driven grievances. [By the way, I'm fully on board with China's grievances over the horrors of opium inflicted on them by Victorian England, and of British failure to fully acknowledge its damages].
Many of the "grievances” enumerated by the oleaginous Zhao, are legitimate comments and criticisms by Australia of foreign policy issues, better handled at the United Nations if they even need taking out of the normal bilateral hurly-burly.
I'd expected that the comments at the site would be staunchly anti-Australia and anti-ScoMo, but they're not. Perhaps it's just that the WuMao ("fifty cent army") haven't got there yet.
I'm still to find out if China's anti-Australia trade restrictions are legal under WTO rules. I suspect not. Many are said to be "informal", which suggests — to me at least — that they are not; otherwise why not announce them as WTO compliant?
In China, for importers, an "informal" suggestion by Beijing that you stop buying Aussie wine and meat and coal, is pretty much an offer you can't refuse.
Here in Hong Kong, yesterday at the Wellcome Supermarket, I saw they no longer had an Aussie wine section. This is truly troubling for Hong Kong. Are Wellcome bosses being presented with an offer — an "informal" suggestion —they can't refuse? If so, that a real worry, an erosion of a key freedom, that of Free Port.
I mean, they can rein in the unruly pan-Dems all they want. But mess with my wine supply?!
