For many years, Australia has been trading with China, apparently in the belief that one can do business with a country for yonks without expecting the development of some sense of obligation. The attitude has been that China needs Australian resources and the relationship needs to go no further than the transfer of sand dug out of Australia and sent to China.
Those in Beijing, obviously, haven’t seen the exchange this way. There has been an expectation that there would be some obligation for the relationship to go further than just the impersonal exchange of goods for money. Australia, in true colonial fashion, has expected China to know its place and keep its distance.
This is similar to the attitude the Americans took when they pushed for China’s admission to the World Trade Organisation: all they wanted was a means of getting rid of their manufacturing so their industries could grow richer and an understanding that China would agree to go along with the American diktat to change as needed to keep the US on top of the trading world.
But then you cannot invite a man into your house for a dinner party and insist that he eat only bread. Once inside, he is free to choose what he wants to consume. It appears that the Americans do not understand this simple rule.
Both Australia and the US have forgotten they are dealing with the oldest civilisation in the world. A culture that plays the long waiting game. The Americans read the situation completely wrong for the last 70 years, assuming initially that the Kuomintang would come out on top and that the Communists would be vanquished. In the interim, the Americans obtained most of the money used for the early development of their country by selling opium to the Chinese.
China has not forgotten that humiliation.
There was never a thought given to the very likely event that China would one day want to assert itself and ask to be treated as an equal. Which is what is happening now. Both Australia and the US are feigning surprise and acting as though they are competely innocent in this exercise.
Fast forward to 2020 when the Americans and the Australians are both on the warpath, asserting that China is acting aggressively and trying to intimidate Australia while refusing to bow to American demands that it behave as it is expected to. There are complaints about Chinese demands for technology transfers, completely ignoring the fact that a developing country can ask for such transfers under WTO rules.
There are allegations of IP theft by the Americans, completely forgetting that they stole IP from Britain in the early days of the colonies; the name Samuel Slater should ring a bell in this context. Many educated Americans have themselves written about Slater.
Racism is one trait that defines the Australian approach to China. The Asian nation has been expected to confine itself to trade and never ask for more. And Australia, in condescending fashion, has lauded its approach, never understanding that it is seen as an American lapdog and no more. China has been waiting for the day when it can level scores.
It is difficult to comprehend why Australia genuflects before the US. There has been an attitude of veneration going back to the time of Harold Holt who is well known for his “All the way with LBJ” line, referring to the fact that Australian soldiers would be sent to Vietnam to serve as cannon fodder for the Americans and would, in short, do anything as long as the US decided so. Exactly what fight Australia had with Vietnam is not clear.
At that stage, there was no seminal action by the US that had put the fear of God into Australia; this came later, in 1975, when the CIA manipulated Australian politics and influenced the sacking of prime minister Gough Whitlam by the governor-general, Sir John Kerr. There is still resistance from Australian officialdom and its toadies to this version of events, but the evidence is incontrovertible; Australian journalist Guy Rundle has written two wonderful accounts of how the toppling took place.
Whitlam’s sins? Well, he had cracked down on the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, an agency that spied on Australians and conveyed information to the CIA, when he discovered that it was keeping tabs on politicians. His attorney-general, Lionel Murphy, even ordered the Australian Federal Police to raid the ASIO, a major affront to the Americans who did not like their client being treated this way.
Whitlam also hinted that he would not renew a treaty for the Americans to continue using a base at Pine Gap as a surveillance centre. This centre was offered to the US, with the rent being one peppercorn for 99 years.
Of course, this was pure insolence coming from a country which the Americans — as they have with many other nations — treated as a vassal state and one only existing to do their bidding. So Whitlam was thrown out.
On China, too, Australia has served the role of American lapdog. In recent days, the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has made statements attacking China soon after he has been in touch with the American leadership. In other words, the Americans are using Australia to provoke China. It’s shameful to be used in this manner, but then once a bootlicker, always a bootlicker.
Australia’s subservience to the US is so great that it even co-opted an American official, former US Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, to play a role in developing a cyber security strategy. There are a large number of better qualified people in the country who could do a much better job than Nielsen, who is a politician and not a technically qualified individual. But the slave mentality has always been there and will remain.