China, Dutton and the Common Destiny of Mankind
ex Quadrant Online [ 22 May 2022 ]
Keith Windschuttle
Editor-in-chief
Editor, Quadrant Magazine
keithwindschuttle@quadrant.org.au
The federal election result is a bad outcome at the worst of times. Quadrant has been pointing out for more than two years now that China under Xi Jinping has morphed into a predatory imperial power with designs on our region. Yet even though a week before election day a Chinese PLA naval warship with intelligence gathering capability was detected tracking the Western Australian coastline, the issue was only of minor interest to the contenders for Prime Minister. It was of even less concern to our news media. Indeed, if this provocative venture had not been publicised by Defence Minister Peter Dutton it probably would have gone unnoticed in the campaign.
The vessel was detected near Exmouth, off the coast where the joint Australian and United States naval intelligence station, Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt, is based. The Chinese came into Australia’s Economic Exclusive Zone but ignored international protocols to advise Australian authorities of their presence. After the vessel was detected, it tracked north up the coast towards Darwin.
Dutton called a press conference to reveal its presence, which he called “an aggressive act” and “very concerning”. He said: “It is obviously very strange that it has come this far south and it is hugging the coastline as it goes north. Its intention will be to collect as much electronic intelligence as it can, and, as I say, that is unusual. We are monitoring it very closely. We have a number of aircraft surveilling this particular warship.”
Fortunately for Australia, Dutton survived the election with his seat of Dickson intact. He is by far the most mature and reliable guardian of Australia’s defence and security in the parliament and a direct contrast to the Labor Party’s former Shadow Defence Minister Richard Marles, whose political response to China’s previous provocations was appeasement. It will be the nation’s dire misfortune if the remnants of Dutton’s party do not elect him Leader of the Opposition in the coming days.
What follows is my column in the forthcoming June edition of Quadrant magazine outlining the environment of international affairs in our region that the new government will have to face.
In 1974, Mao Tse-Tung set out his vision of global inequalities of wealth and power in the “Three Worlds Theory”. His category of the First World was occupied entirely by the USA and the USSR, both of them, in his definition, predatory imperial states. Mao placed Australia among the countries of the Second World, along with Canada, Japan and most of Europe. Second World countries, he argued, were not poor but were dependent for their livelihood and security on one or the other of the First World goliaths.
Mao defined his own country as a member of the Third World. This comprised the great majority of the world’s countries then languishing in dire poverty throughout Africa, Asia, South America and Oceania.
Mao’s political prescription for resolving this global oppression was anti-imperialist nationalist struggle through warfare and revolution. His goal was to create a movement to unite the whole world under his leadership in a combined force against the two superpowers.
Fortunately for China and the rest of the world, his death in 1976 saw his grand vision discarded. Instead, the strategy initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, and followed by his successors for almost four decades, gave China a state-driven capitalist economy. As a result, Deng turned the Chinese economy completely around. It went from being one of the poorest countries in the world to the second-richest. Although Deng preserved the Chinese political model of a one-party state that would tolerate no dissent, he discarded Mao’s Marxist ambition to be the great liberator of the wretched of the Earth.
However, since Xi Jinping became General Secretary in 2012, he has steadily revived the imperial yearnings of the Maoist era. Xi, like Mao, envisages a time when he or his successors will be the leaders of the world.
Quadrant published a definitive analysis of Xi’s ambitions in April 2020. Written by Michael Evans of the Australian Defence College in Canberra, it showed the influence on Xi of a group of Chinese intellectuals, including a former People’s Liberation Army officer, Liu Mingfu, and the Dean of International Relations at Tsinghua University, Yan Xuetong.
Liu’s book The China Dream Great Power Thinking and Strategic Posture in the Post-American Era (2010, translated 2015) prescribes a national strategy for China to take the place of the United States as the world’s dominant superpower. In the field of international relations it has been widely recommended as the definitive work on China’s strategic goals for the twenty-first century. Yan’s more recent book, Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers (2019, translated 2019) is an analysis of the transformation of power away from the world’s liberal democracies towards other structures whose time, he says, has come.
Yan, who describes himself as a “neo-communist”, argues that the West is suffering a crisis caused by a loss of civilisational confidence in its social infrastructure. By 2030, Yan predicts the American-dominated unipolar world of the post-Cold War era from 1989 to 2019, the Pax Americana, will break down in a contest between China and America for superiority:
China and the United States have more strategic interests in East Asia than in any other region, including Europe. China cannot achieve the goal of national rejuvenation unless it becomes the dominant power in East Asia. Likewise, the United States cannot maintain its world-leading status if it loses its dominant influence in this region.
Ultimately, Yan argues, this contest will encompass not only East Asia but the whole world. It will be decided not just by warfare but by which of the two powers can exercise the most effective form of governance in the twenty-first century. Michael Evans summarises Yan’s ultimate vision of a global polity dominated by Chinese one-party governance:
A new Chinese order, a “China model” of vertical meritocracy with superior leadership and based on what Yan calls “humane authority, sovereign state equality, and non-hegemony” will increasingly outperform Western democracy as the world’s most attractive political system. From Beijing’s perspective, as a new global configuration of “one world, two systems” evolves in the 2020s and 2030s, the “Yalta hegemonic world order” is likely to stagnate and die and to be replaced in mid-century by a new Chinese-led global system with the Orwellian name “The Community of Common Destiny for Mankind”.
Now, it is not hard to see in Yan’s vision an updated version of the utopian Marxism that dominated Chinese thinking under the rule of Mao. The Deng model confined to national development has now been replaced in the mentality of the Chinese Communist Party by ambitions to control the whole of humanity.
Anyone who thinks that this left-wing fantasy is most likely to be contained within China itself and its closer subjugated states, as it was during the Cold War, should read the intellectual literature now that it is readily available in English translations. China is not just ambitious for control of East Asia. It expects its influence will soon extend to the whole of Oceania, that is, the island nations of the North and South Pacific.
In particular, China regards the Pacific Islands within Australia’s sphere of influence as strategic stepping-stones for its overall plans. The agreement signed in April with the Solomon Islands is only the first of many that China plans to make.
The logic of this projected move is laid out in several papers and reports produced by the National Centre for Oceanic Studies at the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou. The head of the centre, Yu Chang Sen, produces reports on developments that concern China’s interests in the region and gives papers on issues of Chinese strategy that should concern all Australians.
For Australians, Yu’s most dramatic claim is that, because these islands are located in the sea routes between China and South America, Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica (where China now has four “scientific” bases), the maritime security of Chinese fleets are at risk. This is allegedly because the US has defined a “second island chain” in the region that restrains the freedom of manoeuvre by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy.
In a paper to a conference in Samoa, Yu summarised Chinese maritime strategic priorities as: safeguarding national sovereignty, protecting marine rights and interests, maintaining the security of sea lanes, establishing a stable relationship of great powers and marine order. For these purposes, he said, China was dedicated to building a powerful blue-water navy. As a big country on the Pacific Rim, he says China has naturally oriented its naval policy to the Pacific Ocean. However, in doing so, it has found its strategic activity stymied by the “invisible hands” of the alliance between the United States, Japan and Australia.
Yu complained that during the Cold War the US constructed three types of Pacific island chain networks against the Soviet Union and China, which are still in place today. The second of these island chains was called the Southwest Pacific Network, which extends from Guam across Micronesia to New Zealand and Australia.
As a result, he said, an “arc base” had come into being, in which the Tasman Sea, the Coral Sea, the Arafura Sea and other waters remained under tight control by the US-led alliance. This arc base played a crucial role in enabling the US to maintain a strategy of containment and deterrence against the Soviet Union and China. Although the Soviet Union has now been “sidelined by history”, this type of defensive network remains active since China is still considered a potential threat to regional security.
However, Yu argued, China’s modernisation of the People’s Liberation Army Navy and its ambitious strategic objective of building a real blue-water navy for “offshore active defence” now required it to “achieve substantial breaking-through in undermining” the US second island chain. Yu said this was now a crucial imperative for China: “Its maritime great power dream will not come true if the second island chain remains intact.”
Now, Professor Yu is an academic and, although he must be a loyal party member to hold his position, he is not part of the Chinese government itself. So it is quite reasonable to ask how much of what he says here is a reliable guide to Xi Jinping’s actual policies.
Well, there is one thing about the Chinese Communist Party you can rely upon. If someone makes a statement that its government does not want publicised, its censors will go to work straight away. The fact that policy analyses and recommendations by Yu and the other authors mentioned above are still on the internet for all the world to see is itself testimony that what they say is in accord with party intentions.
In short, for Xi Jinping to fulfil his ambitions to give the world a common destiny, he expects Australia and our Pacific neighbours to abandon our existing security alliances and become tribute states of a new Imperial China.
How China Abuses Pacts with International Agencies ex Quadrant Online
Do they play straight? It seems not.
Defanging China Before It’s Too Late ex Quadrant/
QUOTE
Writing in The Australian this week, former defence intelligence
head
Paul Dibb is right to say that the Cold War US intelligence community
did not grasp how weak the Soviet economy was. But Reagan didn’t miss it and
the rest, as they say, is history. Forty years on, the crux of the issue
with another strategic adversary—and largely of our own making—is again
economics.
The economically deterministic hope that was the strategic basis of US economic engagement with China—which may have underestimated the weight of other forces—has been that trade and market liberalisation would also liberalise China politically. China is undoubtedly more liberal than it was under Mao, and the long-run prospect of a more democratic China remains a worthy aspiration. But while free trade agreements are all very well and good, they’re never free of danger with countries that are not free.
For Australia, trade with China has created billions of dollars in export earnings and thousands of jobs (at the cost of other jobs, admittedly). But China has become, in part due to its admission to the WTO and other trade pacts, an economic Frankenstein’s monster. As the just-published US-China Economic and Security Review Commission report to the US Congress notes,
The (Chinese Communist Party) envisions itself atop a new hierarchical global order in which the world acquiesces to China’s worldview while supplying it with markets, capital, resources, and talent.
In the short-term, at least, Xi Jinping’s China has retreated from
political liberalisation while becoming more powerful militarily and more
aggressive diplomatically. The Middle Kingdom’s economic growth has been
translated into military power posing a direct threat: Australian iron ore
is making a powerful blue-water PLA navy. China’s mercantilism weakens its
trading partners’ economies and social fabric through cheap capital, energy
and labour, much of it illegitimate — for example, hidden and undeclared
subsidies, stealing or forcing intellectual property transfers, or even via
massive smuggling and market manipulation.
UNQUOTE
It would be difficult if not impossible. Being dependent on Chinese
manufacturing is a weakness. It seems they have their own serious research
workers. Stealing intellectual property might help.
China Setting Up A Forward Operating Base In The Solomon Islands
QUOTE
China’s new security agreement with the Solomon
Islands has sparked controversy and garnered attention far
beyond the relatively remote Southwest Pacific. Dr Euan
Graham examines the drivers and implications for the major
actors in this strategically sensitive location.
In April, China’s foreign ministry confirmed that Beijing had signed a minimum five-year security agreement with the Solomon Islands. The deal, which Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare described as a ‘treaty’ to the Solomon Islands Parliament, has not been made public. But it is thought to be close to a version leaked from within the Solomon Islands government in late March. The implications of the agreement are far-reaching, most importantly for China, the Solomon Islands, Australia and the United States.
China
The primary driver behind the agreement is China’s long-term strategy of displacing the United States as the predominant power in the Western Pacific. It includes a clear ambition to break out of the maritime encirclement posed by the ‘first island chain’, which is composed mostly of ‘offshore’ Asian US allies and partners, to gain a foothold somewhere in the scattered archipelagos beyond. This also serves Beijing’s immediate objective of taking over Taiwan, by applying diplomatic and military pressure from within the ‘second island chain’.
The Solomon Islands offer a prime location from which to exert control over surrounding sea and air space, potentially threatening longitudinal and latitudinal lines of communication between and among the US and its Pacific allies, including Australia. A Chinese naval base in the Solomon Islands could be used to interdict military reinforcement for Taiwan. Even an isolated People’s Liberation Army (PLA) facility in the Solomons used for intelligence gathering and presence patrols would complicate defence planning for Australia and, to some extent, the United States.
Beijing is already a dominant economic player, aid and infrastructure provider across Oceania. Since 2015, the media has reported widely on plans by Chinese private companies and state-owned enterprises to acquire and develop ports and airfields, allegedly as a pretext to gain access for the PLA. Multiple locations have been identified in Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Kiribati and the Solomon Islands, among others. But the outlandish nature of some proposed projects and a lack of firm evidence tying these back to the Chinese state has fed widespread scepticism about the seriousness of Beijing’s strategic intentions towards the region.
China continues to deny any intention to establish military bases in the Solomon Islands or elsewhere in the region. But official confirmation that it has concluded a government-to-government security agreement with the Solomon Islands suggests greater willingness – and confidence – openly to pursue a security role in the Southwest Pacific. The PLA-Navy is deploying there on a more regular basis, including in the Coral Sea.
The leaked draft states that ‘China may, according to its own needs and with the consent of the Solomon Islands, make ship visits to, carry out logistics replenishment in, and have stopover and transition in the Solomon Islands.’ It is easy to see in this the potential for ‘mission creep’, including the establishment of support facilities that can be disavowed as bases, just as the US Navy studiously avoids the ‘b’-word in some host countries. Beijing could move to lock in gains swiftly under the new agreement while there is a friendly and pliable administration in power in Honiara, and present a fait accompli to a new Australian political administration before it can find its feet following elections due on 21 May – if there is a change of government.
Solomon Islands
Honiara’s motivations for pursuing closer security cooperation with China are complex, fitting more or less within the broad definition of ‘regime security’. This primarily means protection against internal threats to Sogavare’s rule, against a background of simmering inter-island tensions and political opposition towards the polarising prime minister. Sogavare could also see his security relationship with China as a deterrent against Western invention, even though he welcomed the return of Australian police and military to the streets of Honiara as recently as November last year, following riots. The Solomon Islands has a police force, but unlike Fiji, PNG and Tonga it does not have armed forces.
Sogavare has dismissed concerns that China will establish a military base and said the Solomon Islands will avoid militarisation. He has stressed the internal security functions of the new agreement, which in draft form says that ‘the relevant forces can be used to protect the safety of Chinese personnel and major projects in the Solomon Islands’. Chinese police have been training their local counterparts in anti-riot techniques for several months, following a separate agreement struck in December 2021. If they take on frontline duties, it will fan fears that Sogavare’s political opponents could be targeted for surveillance or arrest. There are further concerns that China’s police contingent, or PLA regular forces in future, will see the protection of ethnic Chinese Solomon Islanders as falling within an extra-territorial remit.
At one level, Sogavare is playing a familiar small-state game, exploiting geopolitical rivalry between external powers in order to ‘bid up’ material benefits. Shortly after the draft agreement with China was leaked, Australia announced a new aid package and plans to station a second, gifted patrol boat for fisheries protection, in Temotu Province. Honiara would not be hosting a succession of high-powered delegations from Australia, Japan and the White House if it were not for the ‘China card’. Meanwhile, China’s involvement in money politics in the Solomon Islands has mushroomed since Honiara switched its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China, in 2019. Local media have alleged that payments were made from a Chinese development fund to Solomon Islander politicians who voted down a recent no-confidence motion against the prime minister.
Pacific experts like to stress that small-island nations are not powerless pawns but wield sovereign agency in the conduct of their foreign policy and approach to security. The region is no stranger to geopolitics. But China’s deep financial resources and propensity to focus on influence via ‘elite capture’ render small states especially susceptible to money politics in targeted service of the interests of China’s ruling Communist Party. The signing of this deal increasingly resembles a case of elite capture, though this bears a corresponding risk of Beijing becoming ensnared in the country’s domestic divisions, including tensions in Malaita Province, where popular sentiments are strongly pro-Taiwan and anti-Sogavare. His deal with China may have ironically shortened the odds on a reignition of civil war.
Australia
After several years of sustained bilateral tensions with China, the security agreement with the Solomons can only confirm Beijing as a hostile actor in Canberra’s view. The deal is being treated as a massive setback to Australia’s strategic position, as well as to its self-perception as the predominant security provider in the Southwest Pacific. Preventing a hostile military presence from lodging in its maritime approaches is akin to Australia’s version of a ‘core’ national interest.
Clearly, this was not an Australian intelligence failure. However, the fact that China’s strategic intentions have become clearer is cold comfort for Australian policymakers, who are confronting their inability to dissuade Honiara from pressing ahead. Canberra drew the lesson from Beijing’s fait accompli in the South China Sea that it could not tolerate a Chinese military facility in the Southwest Pacific. Yet Beijing has now out-manoeuvred Australia’s de facto policy of strategic denial in the Solomon Islands, one of the most strategically sensitive locations in the Southwest Pacific.
The strong feelings this has stirred in Australia can be explained to some degree because the country is used to exceptionally high levels of security. The Solomon Islands are over a thousand miles away from Queensland’s coast. Temporal proximity to a general election in which the incumbent government is campaigning on national security has raised the political temperature, though both major parties are committed to strengthening relations with Southwest Pacific countries after decades of perceived neglect.
Australia has found it impossible to prevent China from making deep in-roads across the Southwest Pacific in terms of influence. The main regional multilateral grouping, the Pacific Island Forum, is split, providing China with further opportunities to ‘divide and conquer’. The outlook is not all grim. It was significant that Fiji and PNG weighed in diplomatically against the deal. Any move by China to establish a base in the Solomons will be viewed by Honiara’s neighbours with distrust and should be seen as a breach of regional security norms. Australia’s former intelligence chief believes nonetheless that China will continue its search for basing sites beyond the Solomon Islands. Kiribati could be next.
United States
This is also a setback for US interests and regional influence, reflected in the fact that a delegation led by Kurt Campbell, Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs, was equally unable to dissuade Sogavare from his conviction that he is on the ‘right side of history’ in concluding the new security deal with China. Washington has traditionally delegated the Southwest Pacific as an Australian ‘lead’ within the bilateral military alliance.
Now the US, too, is belatedly attempting to rectify a
legacy of neglect across Oceania, reopening an embassy
in Honiara and promising a new high-level bilateral
dialogue with the Solomon Islands. In an admission
that things could get worse, Washington has signalled
that it would ‘respond accordingly’ if ‘steps are taken
to establish a de facto permanent military presence,
power-projection capabilities or a military
installation’. It may already be too late to prevent
that, short of force.
UNQUOTE
This comes from the
International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank in London.
The Guardian does not approve of them; a point in its favour. Taking
a £25 million bung from the
Bahraini royal family" might influence
their output. The Wiki does not mention that the Graun takes bungs from
Bill Gates. That's different, isn't it?
China Gets Richer As America Gets Poorer
[ 6 November 2022 ]
QUOTE
Look at the chart above. The chart
explains everything.
It explains why Washington is so worried about China’s explosive growth. It explains why the US continues to hector China on the issues of Taiwan and the South China Sea. It explains why Washington sends congressional delegations to Taiwan in defiance of Beijing’s explicit requests. It explains why the Pentagon continues to send US warships through the Taiwan Strait and ship massive amounts of lethal weaponry to Taipei. It explains why Washington is creating anti-China coalitions in Asia that are aimed at encircling and provoking Beijing. It explains why the Biden administration is stepping up its trade war on China, imposing onerous economic sanctions on its businesses, and banning critical high-tech semi-conductors that are “are essential not just… for virtually every aspect of modern society, from electronic products and transport to the design and production of all manner of goods.” It explains why China has been singled-out in the US National Security Strategy (NSS) as “the only competitor with both the intent and, increasingly, the capability to reshape the international order.” It explains why Washington now regards China as its biggest and most formidable strategic adversary that must be isolated, demonized and defeated...............
Once again, look at the chart. What does it tell you?
The first thing it tells you is that the hostilities we see in Ukraine (and eventually Taiwan), can be traced back to a fundamental shift in the global economy. China is growing stronger. It’s on a path to overtake the United States economy within the decade. And with growth, come certain benefits. As the world’s biggest economy, China will naturally become Asia’s regional hegemon. And, as Asia’s regional hegemon it will be able “to settle regional disputes in its own favor and to de-legitimize U.S. regional and global leadership.”..............
We think it is extremely unlikely that
Washington’s ambitious plan will succeed, but we have no doubt
that it will be implemented all the same. Tens of millions of
people are likely to die in a desperate attempt to turn-back the
clock to the fleeting ‘unipolar moment’ and the equally
short-lived American Century. It is a tragedy beyond
comprehension.
UNQUOTE
TPTB [ The Powers That Be ] in Washington are trying to
create a New World Order, just
like Joe Stalin. Provoking
China and Russia
at the same time is their approach. If they start
World War III it will all be
someone else's fault. They would have a better chance of
succeeding if they were not ruining America at the same time.
Using Diversity as an excuse to
lower standards in the Education
Industry because blacks have not got the brains is one
reality. Using Illegal
Immigration to cause
Ethnic Fouling In America and the West is another.