Day by day, the US–China confrontation is heating up. The trajectory now appears irreversible. The nations of the Indo-Pacific, Japan included, are sandwiched between the United States and China. It is high time for them to consider strengthening effective regional cooperation by building on ASEAN-centred processes.
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China and Australia’s trade is interlinked in many areas but the largest value items are commodities Beijing arguably cannot readily source in sufficient supply elsewhere. This is often missed when Australia and China’s trade relationship is weighed against security ties with the US and a rapidly changing world order some view as a New Cold War.
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Australia’s strategy on engaging India has long revolved around the so-called “three Cs:” cricket, curry, and the Commonwealth. In light of the changing status of bilateral relations in 2020, let’s add a couple more Cs to the list: China, and containment of.
Australia is shocked – shocked – to discover that its main supplier of telecom equipment, Ericsson, depends on Chinese equipment from Panda Electronics, a Nanjing-based manufacturer that appears on the Pentagon’s latest list of Chinese companies linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
The era of cooperation with China may be over soon. Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand are beginning to regret saying “yes” to China’s strategic overtures. The leaders, once eager to assert a little independence from their often-overbearing superpower ally, now find themselves aligning with the United States…
China’s state-owned enterprises may be curbing investment in Australia as relations between the two countries deteriorate, but there are rising concerns that they may be stepping up community infiltration instead. Reports suggest that the Covid-19 crisis may have led to an upsurge in activity by agencies run by Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) such as the United Front, a body President Xi Jinping once referred to as his “magic weapon.”
China has drawn Australia into its security tensions with India after New Delhi and Canberra signed a defence accord that could see their two military forces sharing facilities in sea straits hotly contested by Beijing. As China and India mobilise more troops and equipment along their fractious Himalayan border, the Chinese Communist Party-backed Global Times said that Beijing could view the India-Australia accord as a direct threat.
