China not happy with Australia’s upgraded US ties

By S.P.SETH

During his first China visit recently, Australia’s new foreign minister, Bob Carr, received an earful of Chinese reprimand over the country’s enhanced strategic ties with the United States. With President Barack Obama’s increased focus on Asia-Pacific in the US foreign and strategic priorities, Australia has become even more important in the US scheme of things. As part of this the US will have base facilities in the country’s north and west for deployment of US troops and other assets.

There are also reports that Australia’s Cocos Island in the Indian Ocean might be developed into a base for US surveillance and other activities. There is no doubt that all these developments are designed against a perceived Chinese threat, even though this is formally denied.

China obviously is not happy, believing that Australia is becoming part of the US strategy to contain China. And Bob Car was told unmistakably that China was not impressed with such an outdated throwback to the Cold War era.

Australia’s foreign minister had to do some explaining, not only to China’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, but also to Lieutenant General Wei Fenghe, deputy chief of general staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, as well as to Wang Jiarui,  director of the International Department of the Communist Party. This was a way of conveying the intensity of China’s concern at government, military and the party levels.

In Bob Carr’s words, “The most objective way of saying it is my three Chinese partners today invited me to talk about enhanced Australian defense co-operation with the United States.”

He added, “ I think their view can be expressed that the time for Cold War alliances have long since past.”

Putting forth Canberra’s viewpoint, Carr explained, “ … that an American presence in the Asia-Pacific has helped underpin stability there and created a climate in which the peaceful economic development ---including that of China, has been able to occur.”

Obviously, Bob Carr’s explanations didn’t cut much ice with his Chinese partners. Australia will now be viewed with even greater suspicion as part of a containment ring, including Japan.

Even though China is now Australia’s largest trading partner, their relationship leaves much to be desired. Ironically, the relationship started to deteriorate sharply under Australia’s then newly elected mandarin-speaking Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who described himself as “a brutal realist on China.”

He offended the Chinese leadership by publicly advising them to hold dialogue with the Dalai Lama. And it was under him, as  Prime Minister, that Australia’s 2009 White Paper on defense saw China as an increasing threat to regional stability, recommending a significant increase in Australia’s defense profile, including doubling of its submarine fleet.

The tensions increased when Australia granted a visa to the exiled Uighur leader, Rebiya Kadeer, to visit Australia in 2009.

 On top of it all, China was unhappy because its concerted efforts to invest in Australian resource companies were denied, in some cases, on grounds of national interest. The same argument has prevailed more recently against the Chinese communications giant, Huawei’s, seeking to build Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN).

In its worldwide search to secure resource materials for its economic development, Australia is for China a huge and tempting quarry, not to speak of its vast agricultural lands. China is hungry to get a hold on it for two reasons.

First, of course, is the need for uninterrupted access to needed raw materials. Australia is a stable political and social entity that makes it an attractive proposition.

Second: with its control of Australian resources China will also be able to keep a lid on price rises of these materials, such as iron ore and coal.

As an analogy, Japan’s quest, during WW11, to impose a Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere among its neighbors, comes into mind. Though the two situations are different but the goal is identical.

Which is to have access to natural resources and materials to make China into an economically and politically powerful nation. And Australia has plenty of them.

This is where economic and strategic factors converge for China, creating fears in Australia and other regional countries about its intentions.

China looks like creating its own version of the Japanese East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, kind of a new Middle Kingdom. And the regional countries are not looking forward to it.

 It is not just Australia that is seeking insurance against a Chinese threat through enhanced defense ties with the United States; other regional countries are doing it too.

The Philippines, for instance, is presently in a tense military stand off with China over the Scarborough Shoal, with China claiming the whole of South China Sea as its territorial lake. Even though some of the South China Sea Islands are closer to neighboring Southeast Asian countries, as is Scarborough Shoal to the Philippines, China claims everything by virtue of its sovereign claim of the Sea. And it is not prepared to countenance negotiations and/or mediation.

And with its presumed sovereign claim of the South China Sea, Beijing might one day interfere with or impede the freedom of navigation through one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

As Peter Hartcher, international editor of the Sydney Morning Herald wrote in a recent column, “ Its [China’s] willfulness troubles other countries. Australia is only one of many Asia-Pacific states that looks to US for reassurance in the face of doubts about China’s intentions.”

He adds, “If it angers China, it is within its power to ease those doubts…”

But don’t count on it. On the other hand, China seems intent on going its own way.