China | Australia | Solomon Islands | Red Lines

On the march to the Pacific?

For sure Australia has every right to be worried about a more assertive Beijing  right in our backyard. Whether it’s the right strategy to say, publicly, it’s “very likely” China will place troops in the Solomons is another thing. It may just prompt a bolshy Beijing to do just that. Better, maybe, to handle these sensitive issues out of the public glare. Diplomacy, baby…

There’s heaps of comments that I haven’t looked at yet. My guess the “50-cent army” will be out in force, as they are dispatched every time the topic is Australia-China relations. Beijing is determined to hurt Australia. Which makes a mockery of their “principled stand” against sanctions, like against Russia. 

ADDED:It’s a bit rich for China Defence spokesman, Tan Kefei, to talk of “fake news”. When the whole edifice of China media, top to bottom, is fake news. Aka fighting “historical nihilism”.

Five things You can’t criticise, discuss or make fun of:

• trending topics on the history of the party, country or military; 
• Marxism, Mao Zedong Thought and the theory of Deng Xiaoping; 
• The CCP evolutionary history and China’s economic and open-door policies; 
• party and state leaders; communist history;
• or the whitewashing of “villains” in the official version of history.

Horrid, no?