Contrarian views are needed to assess the China risk. And we shouldn’t assume this century will be indisputably China’s. ~ Alan Dupont
Sam Roggeveen is absolutely right. Australia’s China debate has been dramatically transformed over the past few years. Like him, I welcome a robust discussion about our relationship with Asia’s emerging power and our major trading partner. It’s a pity China’s citizens can’t have one about us, too. Read more
Beijing’s vindictive punishment of our universities, tourist sector, farmers, coal exporters and Karm Gilespie has shattered two widely held assumptions about China’s rise: that it will continue inexorably and is overwhelmingly to our benefit.
Legions of operators in the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department have skilfully spun the narrative that the country’s return to greatness is preordained. Best to get on the train before it leaves the station. We did in our thousands, crowding on to gleaming new locomotives to discover the mysteries and beauty of China, while trade boomed and the education and tourist sectors profited from an influx of Chinese students and free-spending tourists. Read more
MITIGATING THE NEW COLD WAR: Managing US-China trade, tech and geopolitical conflict
-by Alan Dupont
Center for Independent Studies, Analysis Paper 8, May 2020
Fulltext: https://www.cis.org.au/app/uploads/2020/05/ap8.pdf
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Op-ed by Paul Kelly, Editor-at-Large for The Australian, in response to The Center for Independent Studies, Analysis Paper 8, May 2020, MITIGATING THE NEW COLD WAR: Managing US-China trade, tech and geopolitical conflict, by Alan Dupont
Four months into the COVID-19 crisis, the world and Australia confront a worse problem — the descent into a version of cold war between the US and China, many years in the making but now apparently sealed in the great-power animosity unleashed by the virus.
The virus will be conquered by scientific, rational and logical public policy. But such elements are absent on the US-China front where Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have tipped each other into a confrontation neither seems willing to abandon, with escalation the most likely result.
The coronavirus pandemic that recognises neither nationality nor ideology should have brought the leading powers into co-operation but the opposite has happened — the threat to humanity has exposed the true descent in the US-China crisis. The warning lights are flashing on emergency.
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Experts say China’s New IP ‘should frighten us all’. And then there’s the undersea cable wars…
Imagine trying to manage the impact of the coronavirus without the internet and a robust telecommunications sector. If we couldn’t communicate and transact in real time, economic activity would grind to a halt and social contact would be even more difficult. And there would be no COVIDSafe app, an important tool in the government’s recovery strategy.
Australia is already more wired than most nations, and the digital world is expanding rapidly as the coronavirus has forced business, schools, universities and government services online. Videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom are booming and the much maligned National Broadband Network finally is starting to realise its potential. But if these networks were to become untrustworthy or disrupted for any length of time it would be hard for the country to function effectively.
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Governments worldwide failed to act on pandemic dangers they identified decades ago. That cannot happen again.
By the time Kevin Rudd got to his feet to deliver the first national security statement to Parliament in December 2008, the traditional concept of national security had already passed its use-by date.
Rudd outlined a broad and growing list of security risks and pressures in the international system. Among them, he recognised that “a pandemic is bound to create real physical and social hardship and policy challenges for Australia”.
Peter Dutton’s Home Affairs Department: “a leviathan so bloated that it can’t move a muscle.” AAP
That was 12 years ago, and it now looks like an understatement.
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The biggest international crisis since World War II is increasing pressure for a rethink of national security policy that redefines sovereign risk and elevates the importance of non-military challenges. Despite its terrible toll, the pandemic provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity to unite the country around a security agenda that will reshape how we live in a post-COVID-19 world.
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When China sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold — literally, it seems. What began as a minor flu-like outbreak in Wuhan city has morphed into a full-blown international health crisis that has roiled financial markets, raised the spectre of an economic recession, disrupted global supply chains and adversely affected the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The world stands on the brink of a full-blown pandemic as the COVID-19 coronavirus moves out of China infecting more and more countries. Misplaced optimism that the disease would be contained risks being replaced by unfounded panic that could fuel, rather than arrest, its momentum. Read more
The government’s strategy for managing Australia’s turbulent security environment and building economic resilience is taking shape. Northern Australia Minister Matt Canavan’s declaration that Canberra will overhaul its northern development agenda to boost regional ties is the latest in a series of incremental changes designed to better integrate national security and development policy. Read more
China’s extraordinary growth as an economic and military power has been a defining development for Australia. But managing our future relationship with an increasingly assertive and authoritarian China will require a reassessment of our assumptions about the nature of the Chinese political system and a willingness to learn from past mistakes.
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