Australia « Wandering China

February 17, 2012 • 3:42 am 0

Dimming of China’s ‘great red hope’ troubles offspring of the old guard [The Age]

Domestic cohesion under spotlight.

Too easy being blinded by China’s economic miracle: A clash with the old guard as they question the cost of authoritarian capitalism?

”Thirty years of opening and reform have achieved remarkable economic achievements but those brilliant achievements were followed by class polarisation, rampant corruption, a public spiritual vacuum, chaotic thinking, moral decline, prostitution, drugs, triads and so on…” Ms Hu Muying president of the Children of Yan’an Fellowship.

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Dimming of China’s ‘great red hope’ troubles offspring of the old guard
John Garnaut, Beijing
Source – The Age, published February 13, 2012

THE waning of Bo Xilai’s political star in Chongqing has left the Communist Party’s conservative elders without a potential saviour who can turn around what they see as a deepening internal crisis.

Mr Bo, the Chongqing party boss, announced the sacking of his right-hand man, police chief Wang Lijun, on February 2, leading Mr Wang to later flee the city and spectacularly take refuge in the US consulate in Chengdu.

Days before Mr Wang’s escape, 1200 children of high party cadres gathered for their biggest-ever spring festival gathering at Beijing’s Heaven and Earth Theatre. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Australia, Beijing Consensus, Bo Xilai, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Corruption, Culture, Domestic Growth, Economics, Environment, Finance, Government & Policy, Influence, International Relations, Maoism, Mapping Feelings, Modernisation, Nationalism, New Leadership, Peaceful Development, Politics, Public Diplomacy, Reform, Social, Soft Power, Strategy, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities

February 4, 2012 • 1:47 am 0

Canton route opens up: China’s biggest airline China Southern expanding Australian operations [The Age]

40% cheaper: China Southern offers up a Canton route with ‘no qualms‘ undercutting Qantas and Singapore Airlines to attract bargain hunters to draw Australian passengers to its Guangzhou hub.

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Canton route opens up
Clive Dorman
Source – The Age, published February 4, 2012

On the up ... China Southern staff on an Airbus A380. Photo: AFP

China’s biggest airline as well as key Gulf carriers are expanding their Australian operations, writes Clive Dorman.

Qantas faces new competition on its remaining services to Europe but not only from its rivals in the Arabian Gulf. While airlines such as Emirates and Etihad have been wooing corporate travellers by offering business-class fares to Europe up to 40 per cent cheaper than Qantas fares, China’s lower-cost network of carriers has economy-class fares from Sydney to Paris for about $1550 return.

Paradoxically, the Gulf carriers’ prices are often hundreds of dollars dearer than Qantas at the discount end of the plane, charging about $2000 return to London in economy, while the Australian carrier has economy fares of less than $1800. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Australia, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Environment, Infrastructure, The Age, Transport

January 21, 2012 • 12:01 am 0

Australian Security Intelligence Organisation watch on Chinese money [The Age]

On the surface, it would seem Australia is not sending coherent messages to the source of fuel to its two-track economy, China.

Arguably, if there hasn’t been enough strain between China and Australia in the aftermath of the Obama Doctrine and establishment of a marine base in Darwin when China claims it was ‘stung by the defence pact’, this strategic move might just compound the problem.

Australia’s security intelligence agency has been tasked officially to keep watch on the inflows of Chinese money.

‘Australia has been the biggest single destination for Chinese money over the past six years, with investments totalling nearly $37 billion, mainly in the resources sector.’

The spark? A decision by treasurer Wayne Swan in March 2009 to block a Chinese take over of the Prominent Hill mine in South Australia had strategic implications as it was within the boundary of the Woomera Test Range.

For more, see China-Aust relationship: defence, spying and big business (ABC News, May 4, 2009) – Here we see some evidence of incoherence, measured or not, with Defence Minister Stephen Smith reportedly saying, ”Firstly, it’s not the Defence Department’s decision, it’s the Treasurer’s decision… Secondly, the Treasurer’s made very clear in his public statement – and as a matter of law it’s his decision, not mine – he’s made clear in his public statement that within the Woomera prohibited area, any mining application, or any application for development, has to be specially considered by the Defence Department for national security reasons.”

That said, if we bear in mind China’s fundamental strategy of biding their time and concealing intentions, then we now we have a rather complex game in play here.

Visit ASIO‘s website here.

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ASIO watch on Chinese money
Philip Dorling
Source – The Age, published January 21, 2012

Australia has been the biggest single destination for Chinese money over the past six years. Source - The Age

CHINESE investment in Australia is coming under increased federal government scrutiny, with ASIO and other intelligence groups weighing up possible national security risks.

Foreign investment in critical infrastructure, especially in IT and communications, has become a focus of concern, with agencies warning that the 30-day window for Treasurer Wayne Swan to object to foreign takeovers is too short for security investigations.

Documents released to The Saturday Age under freedom of information reveal that the country’s two peak security and intelligence committees – the National Security Committee of Cabinet and the National Intelligence Co-ordination Committee – have recently focused their attention on foreign investment policy. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Australia, Beijing Consensus, Chinese Model, Communications, Culture, Domestic Growth, Economics, Environment, Government & Policy, Greater China, Influence, Mapping Feelings, Media, military, Peaceful Development, Politics, Public Diplomacy, Resources, Soft Power, Strategy, The Age, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities

January 15, 2012 • 1:33 am 0

Exploring the China syndrome: prosperity without profile [The Age]

Post White-Australia policy and Chinese Australians not having a say in the national conversation: A look into the willingess of political engagement in the overseas Chinese mind, transplanted down under.

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Exploring the China syndrome: prosperity without profile
By Tom Hyland
Source – The Age, published January 15, 2012.

Wesa Chau, a former Young Victorian of the Year, says ethnic Chinese are under-represented in public life. Photo: Craig Sillitoe

THE kids, says Hong Lim, are doing fine. They have degrees, professions, and lots are driving a Mercedes. Life’s good.

But the state Labor MP says there is something missing in this success story for a growing middle class of Chinese Australians: they don’t have a say in the national conversation.

”There is no voice, no effective body at the national level, for Chinese Australians,” says Mr Lim, the sole Asian in State Parliament. ”This is not right. Because of the sheer numbers, the sheer wealth, the sheer brain power they have, they should have something more.” Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Australia, Beijing Consensus, Chinese Model, Chinese overseas, Culture, Influence, International Relations, Mapping Feelings, Politics, Social, The Age, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Uncategorized

December 12, 2011 • 2:58 am 0

Repost and update: China’s Ghost Cities [Youtube/SBS]

Repost and update: Australia’s public service broadcaster SBS tackles the question of China’s overheated domestic economy.

Do these ghost cities hint at domestic growth or domestic waste? Do they allude to a paradigm sift in the Chinese mind? This is probably uncharacteristically ‘not’ frugal. Have they taken the ‘capitalist road’ too far and learnt to be comfortable with excess?

Professor Zhou Xiao Sheng, prominent Chinese sociologist sends a reminder in the video – ‘If it leads to polarisation, then reform has failed…’.

An honest question has to be asked here as it is now well known that China is unable to continue relying on infrastructure investments to spur its economy. It knows its previously lax approach to housing did not work. Genuine Chinese home buyers were quickly priced out of the market in a rapid property bubble upswing. With requirements of up to 50% deposits, genuine buyers sure had a lot to put at stake.

Tie that to the reality of overambitious construction forecasts and we have a strange situation.

64 million (correct as of April 2011) apartments empty while many Chinese youth can’t afford to buy a hom e (admitted here in state media), something some of them argue as a basic human right. Surely this is a sign of a growing social divide, as forewarned.

This is staggeringly, a number that easily dwarves the number of empty homes in the US (though not by ratio) at 16.8m (Reuters data in 2009 revealed 1 in 9 homes then were unoccupied).

Unguided zeal more than a veneer of a booming consumer culture? Probably. All eyes on China to learn to make things better.

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Filed under: Australia, Back to China, Beijing Consensus, Chinese Model, Culture, Domestic Growth, Economics, Finance, Government & Policy, Human Rights, Infrastructure, Lifestyle, Modernisation, Population, Property, SBS, Social, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities

November 30, 2011 • 4:20 am 2

Contain China? The Obama Doctrine is dangerous [Straits Times]

Do we really need more polarity?

Australia’s great and powerful friends dilemma in focus: The keeping of strategic peace has allowed Australia like many other middle powers, to prosper since the end of WW2.

Professor Hugh White in an earlier paper indicated two key adjustments Australia needed to make to keep this peace (see: The White Quarterly Essay: ’Power shift: Australia’s future between Washington and Beijing’). First, he established that Australia needed to reconcile that its long-term alliance with the US also witnesses Pax Americana in the Pacific coming to an end. Second, he reasoned that rising China’s challenge to American pre-eminence was ‘no longer a future possibility but a current reality’. This new reality he argued, required Australia to ‘accommodate’ rising Chinese power.

That was well and fine for the past decade. China had been filling in the U.S. vacuum in the region while American attention and its war machine centred in the Middle East. Just when the Asia-Pacific countries were getting used to this new dynamic, the US proclaims its return to the region, guns-blazing and amplifying domestic China-bashing to the international community at the APEC school-yard meeting.

The challenge here for Australia is a strategic conundrum. Does it take White’s prescription to accommodate China, and continuing reaping the economic benefits? Or does it follow the Obama Doctrine in containing China? Perhaps the question wouldn’t be so hard to answer if China wasn’t inching back to great power status at this time.

So here it is, Australia facing a new set of challenges in balancing the geo-political intricacies of the confident Chinese kid on the block looking for parity with the Beijing Consensus. At the other end of the ring we have the American cowboy back to reclaim its turf. How does Australia then avoid the pitfalls of both unnecessary confrontation or conceded appeasement?

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Contain China?
The Obama Doctrine is dangerous
by Hugh White for the Wall Street Journal
Source – Straits Times, published November 27, 2011

SINCE 2009, China’s challenge to American primacy in Asia has become too stark to ignore. Last week President Barack Obama gave his response. On his Asian journey, he enunciated what truly deserves to be called the Obama Doctrine. It is perfectly clear. The United States will resist China’s challenge to its primacy in Asia, using all the instruments of its power to strengthen and perpetuate the preeminent leadership it has exercised in the region for decades.

Mr Obama also sketched plans to implement this doctrine by reorganising Asia under new US-led regional structures which exclude China. His Trans-Pacific Partnership creates a new economic framework for the Asia-Pacific without China, while an expanded defence presence in Australia signals his aim to build armed strength in Asia and draw friends and allies into a larger and tighter strategic coalition against China’s growing military weight.

Of course, Mr Obama hopes that the resolve he has shown will persuade China to drop its challenge and accept US leadership once more. But his doctrine clearly implies that if China cannot be persuaded, it will be compelled. This is very ambitious. Indeed it is America’s most ambitious new strategic doctrine since Truman committed America to contain the Soviet Union. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: APEC, Australia, Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Communications, Economics, Influence, International Relations, Mapping Feelings, Politics, Public Diplomacy, Soft Power, Strategy, Territorial Disputes, The Age, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Trade, U.S.

November 27, 2011 • 11:28 pm 0

Australian troops to join China in disaster exercises [The Age]

Australia: Despite taking sides with the U.S. during recent rounds of China-bashing, Australia pushes the agenda to leverage both strategic partner U.S. and economic catalyst China.

In a move reminiscent for the Chinese as a strategy to contain it, this recent spate of U.S. determination for Asia-Pacific pre-eminence seems to spell trouble for the region. After agreeing to host 2500 Marines near Darwin as a U.S. hedge against Chinese muscle-flexing in the region, it could have been expected that the Chinese retaliate in kind and not just rhetoric. I am not sure if the report which states that ‘Chinese military leaders have chosen not to retaliate by cutting or downgrading military relations’ is valid.

From record it seems the Chinese do not act on impulse. They wait for the right moment – continuing what essentially is a civil defence exercise has little to do with hard power.

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Australian troops to join China in disaster exercises
John Garnaut, Beijing
Source – The Age, published November 26, 2011

Australian soldiers will soon be landing in central China for joint exercises with the People’s Liberation Army, demonstrating that relations with Australia’s dominant trading partner remain on track.

The military emergency rescue exercises are modest in scale but highly significant in timing, coming just a fortnight after Australia greatly increased military co-operation with the United States by agreeing to host 2500 US marines near Darwin.

The US-Australia collaboration was framed as part of President Barack Obama’s move to reassert the US presence in Asia as a hedge against Chinese muscle-flexing in the region. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Australia, Beijing OIympics, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Greater China, Influence, International Relations, military, Politics, Public Diplomacy, Strategy, The Age, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, U.S.

November 18, 2011 • 1:23 am 0

Pointed message to China [The Age]

Now that the ‘tide of war’ has receded in the Middle East, the US turns its attention back onto the Asia-Pacific. For the first time in a while, the US stands up to openly criticise China as President Obama continues to make ‘pointed’ messages like the one made in APEC (see Obama Puts Pressure on China as U.S. Asserts Asia Influence, Bloomberg Nov 13 2011).

This time it’s in Australia. But it’s compounded with action - especially so after the announcement of a US Marines presence in Darwin, one the Chinese sees as a growing web of links to contain China. Hence, the Chinese feelings are likely to be ‘hurt’ by this gesture as the US pledges it will use every ‘element of American power‘ to champion ‘security, prosperity and dignity’ for the region. Despite Chinese reservations, Australian foreign minister Kevin Rudd made rather clear the Aussie right to self-determinism:

”Let’s just be very blunt about it: we are not going to have our national security policy dictated by any other external power. It’s a sovereign matter for Australia. We don’t seek to dictate to the Chinese on what their national security policy should be.”

This balancing act Australia has to play is not straightforward. Through the ANZUS treaty, Australia and the US have been formal allies since 1951. Today it relies on American hard power as an important part of its long-range strategic shield. On the other hand, it has to hedge this relationship of security with the relationship of economic opportunity with China.

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Pointed message to China
Michelle Grattan, Dylan Welch and Daniel Flitton
Source – The Age, published November 18, 2011

: Close allies: Julia Gillard and Barack Obama leave the House of Representatives after the President’s address yesterday. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

BARACK Obama has used the last day of his Australian visit to deliver a pointed message to China, pledging to use ”every element of American power” to pursue security, prosperity and dignity for all in the Asia Pacific.

A day after the announcement of an increased American military presence in Australia drew a sharp response from Beijing, the President gave a sweeping outline of his vision for an expanded US role in the region.

Now that ”the tide of war” was receding elsewhere, America was enhancing its presence in the Asia Pacific and re-engaging with regional organisations, he told a joint sitting of Parliament in Canberra. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Australia, Greater China, Influence, International Relations, Politics, Public Diplomacy, Soft Power, Strategy, The Age, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Trade

October 16, 2011 • 9:58 am 0

Is the dragon running out of puff? [The Age]

Australia: Getting thicker into the intricacies of economic interdependence. Australia’s resource boom is seeing a structural shift where its mining sector is dominating its economy at the expense of others.

‘The logic goes that if Chinese exports are crunched so will be Chinese demand for the Australian resources needed to make these exports. This resource demand is driving the fast part of Australia’s two-speed economy – the other part being pretty much in neutral.’

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Is the dragon running out of puff?
by Richard Webb
Source – The Age, published October 16, 2011

A cash-strapped China would be bad economic news for the rest of the world

NEWS that the economic turmoil in Europe is severely affecting Chinese exports has set alarm bells ringing in Australia.

The logic goes that if Chinese exports are crunched so will be Chinese demand for the Australian resources needed to make these exports. This resource demand is driving the fast part of Australia’s two-speed economy – the other part being pretty much in neutral. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Australia, Chinese Model, Domestic Growth, Economics, Influence, International Relations, Politics, Public Diplomacy, Resources, Soft Power, Strategy, The Age

October 10, 2011 • 12:54 am 0

Xinhai Revolution Centenary: Chinese pendulum swings to the left [The Age]

100 years since the end of dynastic rule: Here’s a look at media coverage as this report from the Sydney Morning Herald marks the Xinhai centenary by uncovering, a new Mao-inspired epoch of socialism and nationalism. Xinhai Revolution trigger magnificent and exceptional change of Asia (Xinhua, October 10, 2011) + China’s Xinhai Revolution Celebration a Strategy to Win Taiwan (Epoch Times, October 5, 2011) + China grapples with revolutionary past, 100 years on (AFP, October 9, 2011)

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Chinese pendulum swings to the left
John Garnaut In Beijing
Source – Sydney Morning Herald, published October 9, 2011

CHINA is heading into a new Mao-inspired epoch of socialism and nationalism, says the founder of China’s most powerful leftist internet platform.

Han Deqiang, who founded and retains behind-the-scenes control over the Utopia website, says most observers have failed to notice a profound shift in China’s ideological and political trajectory.

He recited an old saying about the Yellow River dramatically changing its course every generation to describe China’s swing from Chairman Mao to Deng Xiaoping and back again. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Australia, Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Culture, Domestic Growth, Economics, History, Influence, International Relations, Media, Modernisation, Nationalism, Politics, Public Diplomacy, Reform, Social, Soft Power, Strategy, The Age, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Xinhai

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Wandering China

Canton route opens up: China’s biggest airline China Southern expanding Australian operations [The Age]

Australian Security Intelligence Organisation watch on Chinese money [The Age]

Contain China? The Obama Doctrine is dangerous [Straits Times]

Australian troops to join China in disaster exercises [The Age]

Pointed message to China [The Age]

Is the dragon running out of puff? [The Age]

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