The West has largely gotten China’s social credit system wrong. But draft legislation introduced in November offers a more accurate picture of the reality.
When Xi Jinping arrives at China’s National Party Congress on October 16, he is expected to become the most powerful political figure of the 21st century. The son of a revolutionary who crushed his rivals to become the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, Xi is expected to cement a third term in office at the Congress – the first time a Chinese leader has done so since Mao Zedong’s dictatorial rule ended in 1976. In Beijing, he will be ordained by 2000 delegates as the past, present and future of the Chinese Communist Party.
Peter Hartcher has a lot to answer for, writes Paul Keating in a response to the Nine columnist that did not make it to print.
I said, first, and most obviously, “China should continually reaffirm by word and by deed its commitment to repudiate the use or threat of force to settle disputes”. I went on to say, “the work of reassurance is never done, that the stronger China becomes the more it will need to reassure its neighbours and this will depend on deeds more than words”.
Second, “China will do a great deal to help build a continuing stable order in Asia if it quite unambiguously welcomes and supports a continued strong role for the United States in Asia”.
These were tough things to say to an audience of Chinese officials, but I said them in Beijing in 2013. And I repeated those words in my National Press Club address. But Hartcher made certain Sydney Morning Herald and Age readers would hear none of those critical references to the Chinese, because my utterances then, pull the rug from under Hartcher’s principal claim that I believe “Beijing is correct and everyone else should fall back in awe”.
This submission proposes that China is not a military threat. It argues that the defence strategic review should be a multi-faceted review of our China policy, including diplomatic, cultural, and domestic affairs policies, and should aim for outcomes that will benefit the whole nation.
A genuine threat to Australia’s basic security interests would demand preparedness for war. Threats can be either military or non-military, but only a military threat will lead to war. Australia, like every other country, has problems and disputes with other countries, and economic difficulties and natural disasters that require humanitarian solutions. These non-military threats, even if defence forces are called in to help, should not be treated as military threats. I argue that there is no military threat from China.
And there’s little sign from Beijing of an approach that better tries to woo the hearts and minds of Taiwan’s 23 million people, if China is still intent on peacefully seizing control of them.
Ignoring the will of the voters and continually writing off the governments they choose as “Taiwan separatist forces” who “are doomed to fail” isn’t cutting through.
Even the head of the opposition KMT party — which Beijing still pins its hopes on as the more friendly side of Taiwan’s political spectrum — voiced support for Nancy Pelosi’s visit and chided Beijing’s militaristic response, overruling some within his party who opposed the US House Speaker’s visit.
Whatsmore it all began with Murdoch media and revenge for having been kicked out of China. While Abbott was celebrating his leapfrog over the ALP’s relationship with China and the FTA. Murdoch press was on the attack and the crescendo came with Trump.
China’s Foreign Minister told Penny Wong that inflammatory statements by the Coalition government soured diplomatic relations that led to Australia being cut off from official communications, according to a statement issued from Beijing on Sunday.
China has dumped an ambitious plan to sign a wide-ranging agreement with Pacific Island nations. The bombshell announcement came from China’s ambassador to Fiji, Zhang Ping, on Monday afternoon.
From the outset, it was a controversial arrangement: one that’s remained in the spotlight amid increasingly fraught tensions between the Australian and Chinese governments, and China’s new security pact with Solomon Islands.
Along the city’s main commuter routes, corflutes have cropped up bearing the frowning face of the Prime Minister and the words: “MORRISON & THE CLP SOLD THE PORT. VOTE HIM OUT!!”.
Let’s remind ourselves. Tony Abbott closed down Radio Australia the heartbeat and our biggest influence in the South Pacific. He had little or no ambition to be culturally part of the region and really was a catalyst in allowing China’s expansion in to fill a hole. Abbott was an Anglophile and wanted us to be more NATO than AUKUS. He was happy to cement our relationship with China and steal the ALP’s efforts. Andrew Robb quit and went to work for the Chinese. Back then it was all about shirtfronting Putin not Xi.
How quickly things change when leaders change. Morrison is quite the opposite a struggling leader in the polls and drawn in to become the Right-Wing of the L-NP’s puppet. He once claimed to be a moderate and stabbed Turnbull in the back. He’s spent 3 years politically scapegoating, dog whistling and flying false flags. Muslims are long gone and of no use as a threat, Australian Africans are like Lebanese beacause while black they’re actually Christians and amplify our racism. So it’s back to the future and drwing board. He’s now channeling Menzies and the politics of the 50s and 60s yelling “Reds are under our beds” and China’s CCP is the threat.
Oddly enough Xi isn’t doing the same and has never really attacked our Democracy or political system in the way Morrison and Dutton are doing China’s. He’s simply initially reacted to the L-NP and not our Democracy. For 9 years the L-NP have allowed News Corp and Sky News to run a Sinophobia campaign,while Abbott Morrison, and the LNP obediantly stayed shtum. Silent to Murdoch’s personal revenge campaign on China for having been thrown out of the country. He even claimed Wendy Deng his wife was a Chinese Party operative. Xi simply asked for the rhetoric to be toned down.
Morrison’s politicizing of China has resulted in destroying a successful economic relationship built over years to let News Corp, Ch9 and Stokes’s Ch7 stoke the flames of China-hate. He has now even sacrificed our sovereignty to the US and UK in the process. Welcome back to the 50s and 60s and that politicized prism through which we now view China in this election year. It’s the the same prism that allowed Indonesia to massacre 1M Chinese and left-wing unionists in Indonesia and had us go to and lose a war in Vietnam, and yes it was “all the way with the L-NP back then too. They were “keeping us safe”!
How does Labor see the world? The best guide is a landmark speech on Australia’s place in the world, delivered last year by Labor’s foreign affairs spokesperson Penny Wong at the Australian National University.
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare says the current crisis and unrest engulfing the islands is “influenced and encouraged by other powers”. He is referring, of course, to the China situation, and he said as much: countries which don’t like his country’s Belt and Road ties with Beijing were behind the current crisis. But we haven’t heard the name of that nation uttered by our own Prime Minister as to the motivations for so quickly responding to the Solomon Island PM’s request for assistance. The request came after several days of rioting in the capital of Honiara which saw protestors descend on the national parliament building and call for the prime minister’s resignation.
Australia without shame or any embarrassment of its hypocrisy is one of the loudest. While it records the existence of the most incarcerated indigenous population in the world who are 3% of the country’s population. If compared on any social metric health, education, housing, jobs Australia’s Aborigines suffer the worlds worst conditions while living in a first world nation something we don’t hear said about China’s Uighurs.
More than 40 mainly Western countries have criticised China at the United Nations over the reported torture and repression of the mostly Muslim Uighurs and other religious and ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, keeping a spotlight on a region where foreign governments and researchers say one million people or more have been confined in camps.
Beijing and Moscow hold a second series of exercises in October Japan said a group of 10 vessels from the two nations sailed through the Tsugaru Strait The patrols are maintaining “peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region”, according to the Russian defence ministry
Western Media tells us “It’s all China’s doing” Note how the “peace-makers” are defending us with nuclear warheads at the ready but not any Australian of course for politically sensitive reasons. Fuck the French we are America’s “Pillocks of the Pacific”.
this all-Anglo alliance comes perilously close to locking the world into just such a conflict that could all too easily become a hot, even potentially nuclear, war between the two wealthiest, most powerful countries on the planet. If you’re too young to have lived through the original Cold War as I did, imagine going to sleep fearing that you might not wake up in the morning, thanks to a nuclear war between the world’s two superpowers (in those days, the United States and the Soviet Union). Imagine walking past nuclear fallout shelters, doing “duck and cover” drills under your school desk, and experiencing other regular reminders that, at any moment, a great-power war could end life on Earth.
Xi’s announcement signals the end of coal-fired power plant development outside China. Developing countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines, seen until recently as sources of future demand growth for coal, are now taking part in a program in which the Asian Development Bank will buy coal-fired plants with the sole purpose of shutting them down. At least as significant and somewhat more surprising has been a renewed commitment to limit the development of coal-fired power in China itself. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the Government’s central planning agency, has released a new plan on energy consumption that includes requiring all provinces to review already permitted high-emissions projects, including those under construction. Combined with the emissions trading market launched in July, this development suggests that Xi’s stated goal of reaching a peak in China’s coal consumption by 2026 may well be reached. China pushes for a cleaner climate China pushes for a cleaner climate Despite escalating tensions between nations, China is taking positive steps towards reaching net-zero carbon emission targets. The final development of the past week has been
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” General and President Eisenhower
Australian Minerals and Resources Minister Matt Canavan has been conjuring up a boogey man China comparison cop-out in not wanting to commit to clean energy targets, without any details of what he is comparing Australia to in regards to China. If Matt is attempting to hold China up as an example of not making inroads to clean energy we really need to look at in detail what China has done in regards to moving towards clean energy.
It is early days for these entirely Chinese-designed cars to take on the establishment, and there is always the possibility that geopolitics upsets progress, but it finally seems that all the ingredients are there. The next revolution in automotive is replacing petrol and diesel vehicles with electric. With all of China’s advantages, it could yet lead this shift, and finally become the home of the best cars in the world.
Thus the CCP’s role in the private sector increasingly resembles the one it has in state-owned enterprises. Focused on its own survival,displaying pragmatism, and even an ideological vacuum, it is bringing a growing number of capitalists into its ranks, as it becomes ever more present in companies. This asymmetrical alliance is found outside national borders: The Belt and Road Initiative is accelerating the internationalization of Chinese companies, both private and public, which are creating party cells abroad to supervise their employees. While it has set aside Maoist internationalism, the CCP is now exporting its organizational mode and disciplinary tools.
Despite escalating tensions between nations, China is taking positive steps towards reaching net-zero carbon emission targets, writes Dr William Briggs.
The lie continues. Abbott didn’t set up a “Trade Deal” with China the ALP did well before Abbott came along, stole it. Our relationship with China today would be significantly better than it currently is under the LNP. Mind you, Tony Abbott was a role model and precursor for Trump teaching him how to run a democracy into the ground with a nope nope nope strategy and which the GOP still employ today. Abbott however, was a backroom Liberal Party puppet whereas Trump stole the Republican Party and leads it today.
Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has told a British audience that there is no way he would sign a trade deal with China today.
Just days before it was hit with catastrophic floods, Henan endured a major heatwave, Bloomberg noted Wednesday. “The deadly flood shows the unpredictable impacts from climate change are appearing more and more often,” Zhang Jianyu, chief representative at the Environmental Defense Fund’s Beijing office, told the news outlet. “It’s a message to us that it’s time to strengthen efforts to tackle [the] climate change crisis.”
Would Australia’s LNP ever be seen doing this? Destroying it’s own infrastructure “for the people’s sake”?
China’s military has blasted a dam to release floodwaters threatening one of its most heavily populated provinces as the death toll in widespread flooding rose to at least 25.
They call this the world’s best Intel. First, it was the Russians cyber attacking the West with Putin’s blessing. Now it’s the Chinese. It’s never the Americans alone throwing out these accusations but also a ‘coalition of allies’ a lap dog chorus doing what they are told with Putin now less important. No wonder Dutton is saber-rattling like the organ grinder’s monkey.
The United States and a coalition of allies have accused China of a global cyber hacking campaign that employed contract hackers, specifically attributing a large Microsoft attack disclosed earlier this year to actors working on the country’s behalf. Opening a new area of tensions with China, the United States is joined by NATO, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and Canada to level the allegations.
What has certainly been left astern is Deng’s advice that China should “keep a low profile” or “bide its time” — tao guang yang hui — as its power and influence grows. The use of this phrase has been variously interpreted over the years as either a warning from Deng that China should avoid throwing its weight around or a ruse in which Beijing stealthily accumulates power without making it too obvious. Under Xi’s brand of Chinese nationalism, the approach has been discarded. This may have been inevitable as China becomes more powerful, but it is at least debatable whether a shrewd Deng Xiaoping would have countenanced an approach that risked antagonising much of the rest of the world.
The current promotion of Chinese culture by the communist party-state is nothing more than a cynical move to exploit any opportunity to boost Chinese nationalism as a tool to provide legitimacy to the regime.
The China Research Group, run by Tory MPs keen to drum up fears about China, fastened on Hikvision’s role in the Hancock affair in a statement. “There are questions over whether [Hikvision cameras] are currently used in Portcullis House (where MPs have their offices) and the Palace of Westminster (where the House of Lords and the House of Commons is located).” The group feared “the potential for Chinese intelligence agencies to tap into camera feeds in sensitive locations.”
We should let science and evidence prevail while recognizing what my reporting suggested back in 2013: that science, like any other discipline, is shaped by competing interests. Lipsitch, the Harvard epidemiologist, underlined that point in a Brookings Institution event with Chan earlier this month.“I’ve come to the view that we shouldn’t trust scientists more or less than we trust other people,” Lipsitch said at the event. “We should trust science. And when scientists speak science, we should trust them, because we should recognize that they are speaking in a way that is based on evidence. When scientists express political views or policy preferences or even claims about how the world is that are not citing evidence, we should not give those scientists undue deference.”In those moments, he continued, scientists are not being scientific. “They are people. We are people.”
This argument began well after Abbott was deemed the “Pivot of the Pacific” by America and really did absolutely nothing focusing on Russia and the EU. So what came first? When all is said and done Trump did and China responded. prior to Trump, the world greeted China in a much more positive light. Australia was an easy target given it saw itself as a predominantly White Western Christian country under Morrison. Now everyone is turning to Japan to do the job Morrison couldn’t do.
In order to safeguard regional economies and security infrastructure, it is essential for governments to take a firm stance against China much like what Japan, Australia, India and the U.S. have done. As Chinese aggression threatens to undermine democratic markets, it is imperative that Asian nations follow Japan’s footsteps and take action before it is too late.
As he spoke from the sunny steps of the U.S. Capitol during his inauguration, Joe Biden acknowledged that this will be “a time of testing.” He enumerated the crises we face—“an attack on democracy and on truth, a raging virus, growing inequality, the sting of systemic racism, a climate in crisis, America’s role in the world.” He vowed to “repair our alliances and engage with the world once again.”
Health experts are urging the Morrison government to accelerate its delivery of doses to East Timor amid a deepening crisis there that has led China’s vaccine diplomacy to reach Australia’s doorstep.
Taiwan actually proposed a South China Sea Peace Initiative in 2015, which included refraining from antagonistic conduct, respect for UNCLOS, maintaining dialogue, creating a code of conduct and developing a mechanism for cooperation for non-traditional security issues like environmental protection and humanitarian assistance.
Great power competition in the Asia-Pacific region has been building for years. But COVID-19 has turbo-charged the shifts taking place and China is finishing 2020 in a significantly stronger position compared with the US than when the year started.
The Age believes, however, that there is a more sensible path. The Victorian and federal governments should work more closely together to ensure that programs such as the Jiangsu grants operate in a way that ensures Australian intellectual property can be protected and there is no military application. Australia needs to get smarter in its dealings with China. We need to work out where we can co-operate for mutual benefit and resist the urge to simply shut down programs in the face of difficulties.
When you look at its economic numbers, China’s having a good pandemic. The boom in demand for personal protective equipment and the impact of lockdowns on purchases of appliances and electronics has produced a surge in China’s exports and a record monthly trade surplus.
Imagine for a moment the view from Beijing. It looks something like this. The Chinese Communist Party has overseen an economic miracle. In three decades it has taken a country that once could not feed itself and turned it into an economic powerhouse. More than half a billion people have been lifted out of the poverty. The world has never seen anything like it.
Chinese leaders – and many of its citizens – believe the United States is in terminal decline and that President Donald Trump has hastened the inevitable. The troubling story of decay in America paints a different picture in China from that in the rest of the world: the authoritarian model of politics and economics is just as good, if not better, than the liberal democratic model of the “west”.
Tony Abbott turned his back and faced Europe changing the nature of the region. (ODT)
After riding the coattails of China’s boom for decades, Australian conservatives are now railing against China. They’re not just following a lead from Washington — the Liberal Party’s corporate backers are anxious to maintain Australian dominance in the South Pacific.
After letting its guard down in the Pacific, Australia has found that the superpower whose growth has helped to sustain the Australian economy is now staking its own claim to a region it perceives as its own. Australia’s resource giants have long enjoyed the best of both worlds: a vast Chinese export market and privileged access to resources in the South Pacific. But now both privileges are in jeopardy, and Australia is struggling to formulate a response.
After three decades of a China-fueled economic boom, the bust may have deep and dangerous consequences — especially for Pacific island peoples who find themselves, once again, caught in a game where no matter who wins, they lose.
China has complained about our media’s fanning of the negativity towards it countless times yet the government has supported the media. News Corp has been spreading anti- Chinese sentiment since Abbott. Yet nobody seems to listen. The Chinese kicked Murdoch out because they regarded his organization not just critical but toxic why is it the LNP and IPA don’t? (ODT)
“How do you think the United States would feel if somebody were to jump up and say we need an independent international inquiry into how badly President Trump has mishandled the coronavirus leading to nearly 200,000 American deaths? Everybody would think that was a very high-handed thing to do.” Despite the backlash, China ended up supporting the European Union-drafted, Australia-backed, heavily negotiated motion that sailed through the World Health Assembly the following month. But the diplomatic dispute shows no signs of abating.
Australia is waging an intensifying espionage offensive against China – sending agents to China to spy, gather intelligence and recruit assets, instigating defection among Chinese nationals, spying on Chinese students and organizations in Australia, feeding fake news to media to hype up the “China espionage theory” and even in early years attempting to install wiretaps in the Chinese Embassy in Canberra, the Global Times reported in June, citing a source with a Chinese law-enforcement agency. Multiple Australian espionage cases uncovered by Chinese law-enforcement agencies showed that Australia is a veteran in spying against other countries and precisely “the thief who is crying stop the thief” as it steps up infiltration, spying and technological theft operations against China, the source told the Global Times.
In China, as around the world, the pandemic is calling for far-reaching social and economic change. The direction this will take is subject to fierce struggles; and the outcome will also depend on our reading of how societies have dealt with the COVID-19 outbreak and the lessons we draw from it. Instead of exceptionalizing and othering China, progressives around the world have to see beyond the logic of nationalism and recognize the interconnectedness of our fights. The enemy in this pandemic is not China but inequality and the logic of profit over people.
Australia’s Defence Connect (20 May 2020) called for even greater loyalty to the US Global Alliance from Australia in this time of crisis over the spread of COVID-19:
“It is Australia’s indispensable relationship, the core of our national security and the key enabler, that has allowed Australia to freely engage and prosper within the post-Second World War order. However, in an era of mounting great power competition and disruption, the US-Australia relationship will become ever more important, explains retired Army officer Jason Thomas.”
Australia is being hurt commercially by its growing antagonism towards China, our best and most profitable trading partner. What is going on behind the scenes in the corridors of power in Canberra in the halls of the Defence and Foreign Affairs Departments to justify this wanton folly to protect US interests across the Indo-Pacific Basin?
Surely, the Trump Administration with the support of the Department of State and the Pentagon can fight their own battles with China. So, what is the real payoff for Australia in these difficult times? And if the war games in the South China Sea go astray, are Australians instantly at war with China through the chain of command in these joint patrols?
The (American) Fat Lady hasn’t sung yet: Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health, said the virus might have been spreading quietly in humans for years, or even decades, without causing a detectable outbreak.
Why would a medically competent country be investigated by a medically incompetent one? Especially since we know America’s independent investigation SOP: “Current and former staff members of the OPCW have denounced the organization’s IIT report alleging Syrian government sarin use at Ltamenah, criticizing its reliance on rumor, hearsay, “scientifically flawed” claims and the influence of unqualified, secret “experts” aligned with the Western-backed opposition. If we go by demonstrated competence in this field, shouldn’t it be the other way round?”
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