In recent months, Australian public opinion on Sino-Australian relations reached another climax. This climax is closely related to the recent "defrosting" of Sino-Australian relations and the evolution of Sino-US relations.
Vice President Pence`s speech on China policy on October 4 was interpreted in Australia as an epoch-making event.
Australian strategic analyst Alan DuPont said the speech was more important than President Nixon`s thawing of Sino-US relations and President Bush`s launching of a global war on terror. It marks the shift from a half-enclosed, half-cooperative stance towards a full-fledged confrontation, opening the Cold War 2.0 edition.
Michael Wesley, a professor at the Australian National University, believes that the growing confrontation between China and the United States, and China`s progress in the South China Sea and the South Pacific Ocean, change Australia`s international strategic environment. Australia is facing the most serious national security challenge since 1942.
At that time, Japan pushed forward of the Pacific War to Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, pointing to Australia`s mainland.
From these points of view, it is believed that the Sino-US confrontation and China`s expanded influence in East Asia and the Western Pacific have outlined the international environment that Australia faces in the 21st century, and that it has become a consensus in Australian politics, academia and the media.
"however, how to deal with the United States, China and Australia this crucial triangle relations in Australia are divided into three groups, specifically, can be divided into three groups: pro-American hardliners, strengthening cooperation with China moderate and centrist."
A hardline attitude
Hardliners in China believe that China is committed to weakening the alliance between the United States and Asia-Pacific in an effort to squeeze American power out of East Asia and the Western Pacific. Southeast Asia is becoming the focus of China`s increased sphere of influence, and China is rapidly expanding into the South Pacific island countries.
The group believes that as a South Pacific power and a staunch ally of the United States in the region, Australia faces the possibility of a high-intensity conflict with China for the first time since World War II.
China`s military forces have set out to limit Australia`s maritime operations. Australia needs to strengthen its military strike capability. Australia should withdraw from Afghanistan and the Middle East, redirecting resources to Australia`s main strategic regions, Southeast Asia, the Eastern Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. Australia wants to strengthen diplomatic mediation and military presence in these areas.
Australia`s military strength is currently quite limited, with only more than 70 F-18 fighter bombers, 12 old submarines and some old missile frigates. Australia`s government has been increasing military spending over the past decade, but it will take a long time for the next generation of main arms to be formed.
Australia, for example, has asked France to build 12 high-performance submarines that will not be fully delivered until 2050. Seventy-two F x {5ee5} 35 stealth fighters will be delivered in full by 2025 (12 are estimated to be capable of becoming combat by 2020).
In order to overtake China in terms of overall strength, Australia has actively called for and actively participated in the formation of the United States, Japan, India, Australia, and the Alliance of four countries against China.
Hardliners have called on the United States and Australia to set the bottom line for China`s strategy and to send a more determined signal to China about what is unacceptable. They oppose moderates` dominance of relations with China, arguing that mere appeasement will only make China bolder.
They argue that Australia should join the United States, Japan and other countries in the South China Sea free navigation.
A moderate attitude
Against the hardliners are moderate relations with China, or activism in relations with China. This faction in politics, academic circles have certain influence, especially in the business sector has the market.
The logic of the co-operative school is that China will become the world`s largest power in the 21st century. They believe that China`s political system is conducive to the government to host long-term strategic planning, China in the near future is likely to occupy the global dominance of many advanced industries, and win the commanding heights of economic competition in the 21st century. These strategic industries include robotics, biotechnology and artificial intelligence.
This group believes that China`s expansion of its sphere of influence in East Asia and the Western Pacific is a natural process of the rise of the great powers, a position Australia would like to recognize as China. Given that China is already Australia`s largest exporter, the largest international student and source of international tourism, it is Australia`s national interest to have a good relationship with China in order to gain greater benefits in the rise of China.
There are two most prominent aspects of Australia`s recent moderation towards China:
First, under the leadership of the Trade minister, Australia sent a large delegation, including 150 companies, to participate in Shanghai Import Expo, signed a $15 billion export contract to China.
Second, the Victorian Labour Party government, Australia`s second-largest continent, signed a memorandum with the Chinese Embassy in Australia on Oct. 25 in support of China`s "Belt and Road Initiative" initiative. It was the first and only Australian government to reach an agreement with China`s government on the Belt and Road Initiative initiative. The contents of the memo were not made public, but the governor of Victoria state said he had passed "Belt and Road Initiative" with China`s government.
The partnership will bring more trade, employment and investment opportunities to the state.
Infrastructure and new energy construction are at the forefront of the government election in November, and the memo between government and China is likely to be related to the state`s infrastructure projects.
These include urban Melbourne rail to the airport, a number of tunnel-highway projects, and solar and wind power stations.
These projects, which follow Australia`s current approach, are bound to cost a long time. If linked to China`s "Belt and Road Initiative" project, Victoria could be supported by concessionary loans from China and efficient infrastructure capabilities.
And China`s display of infrastructure projects in Victoria is likely to have a herding effect, pushing other Australian states and the federal government to strengthen cooperation with the Chinese side of the "Belt and Road Initiative" project. To create conditions for Chinese enterprises to further enter the Australian infrastructure market.
According to the Australian newspaper, investment in rail infrastructure (refurbishment and new construction) in the next decade will reach A $100 billion, compared with a shortfall of 70,000 employees.
The signing of a memorandum between Victoria`s government and the Chinese embassy has sparked waves in Australia, as well as opposition from the Liberal Party`s government and hardliners in China, and the Federal Labour Party has asked the state`s government to make the memo public.
Criticism of the Victorian government focused on its ultra vires, that is to say, it was inappropriate to sign a direct agreement with the foreign government around the federal government, but in essence it was believed that the Victorian government and the Chinese government were too close to each other.
But the government of the Victorian Labour Party was unmoved, and federal Labour leader Gordon Shorton said the engagement between government and China`s government was within its purview. In Australia, where election politics prevails, the government of Victoria dares to forge a close relationship with China. It is by no means an impulse. It must be a well-thought-out layout with a "gamble" component.
To analyze the logic of this gamble, one must have a basic judgment of Australia`s sociopolitical form.
3. Australia`s sociopolitical form
Away from Europe and America mainland, Australia`s conservative self-proclaimed outposts in the west are more conservative than Europe and America mainland conservatives.
In the 1990s, Samuel Huntington, an American scholar, put forward the "civilized conflict theory". He believed that after the cold war, the western Christian civilization did not grow as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union. On the contrary, East Asian Confucian civilization and Islam civilization may join forces to weaken Christian civilization.
Conservatives in Australia, many of whom are Anglo-Saxon ethnic groups, have determined from their bloodlines that Western civilization and the international order established primarily by the United States are the fundamental and protective umbrella for Australia`s establishment of the country, and that there is no such umbrella. Western civilization in Australia will inevitably fall. To this end, Australia has put the Australian-New Zealand-United States Treaty on Security (Australia,New) in place
Zealand and the United States Pacific Security Treaty) is the foundation of national security and foreign policy.
In the face of the decline of the West since globalization, Australian conservatives have identified China as the culprit.
They accused "China`s state capitalism of crushing the western free market economy in an unfair way, leading to the continued massive flow of capital and technology to China, resulting in social polarization in Western countries, a decline in state capacity and an increase in debt," Military capacity decreased ".
"China`s strategy of building islands in the South China Sea and Belt and Road Initiative`s was put forward as an expansion to the outside world, to modify the international order and to compete for world hegemony."
When Trump government identified China as a strategic competitor and launched a trade war with China, Australian conservatives were exuberant. They regard Trump as a hero, much better than the "talk-and-not-do" Obama, praising his counterattack against China and preserving Christian civilization and Western-dominated international order.
The biggest headache in Australia`s relations with China is the high dependence of the Australian economy on China. For this reason, hardliners have been calling for the change to rely too much on China economically, even if it bears some losses, to diversify its sources of trade, investment, tourism and international students. "
But Australia has never been dominated by conservatism. The symbiosis with conservatism in Australia is progressive. It is the Liberal Party that embodies conservatism and the Labour Party and the Green Party that embody progressionism.
The ideological basis of Australian progressionism is the combination of civil rights, democracy, anti-autocracy and social democracy formed by the great revolution of France and the United States during the period of independence. Progressionism agrees with Christian civilization and market economy, but emphasizes social equity, supports multiculturalism and accepts refugee, demands environmental protection and supports homosexual love marriage more strongly.
Australia`s Labour Party and the Green Party and the Conservative Liberal Party have both in common and different on China policy.
Labour also accused China`s national system of undermining the principles of market competition. But Labour, including some of the Liberal Party, also opposes Trump`s first policy and a trade war. Labour and the Greens left oppose the current western capitalist market economy, arguing that it has caused social injustice and dramatic damage to the environment.
Labour Party (including some forces of the Liberal Party) agreed that the Australian-New Zealand-US alliance was the foundation of Australia`s founding, but stressed that Trump`s policy was not entirely in Australia`s interest. An alliance with the United States does not mean Australia is consistent with the United States on every issue. This "centrist" position of the Labour Party, including some of the Liberal Party`s forces, provides room for cooperation with China.
In Australian society, there are some conservative forces in especially business and education, which are not consistent with conservatism in China.
After all, Australia-China relations are too important for Australia`s economy, and no Australian political force can afford to completely undermine China-Australia relations. The China co-operative camp, despite being accused by conservatives of betraying Australia and bowing to the communism totalitarian system, can still benefit from co-operation between the two countries.
The Labor Party victory in the state elections in November showed that conservative accusations against the Labour Party`s government over China did not make any difference.
"to sum up, Australia-China relations cannot be one-size-fits-all and one-sided.
Australia`s mainstream community will not relinquish the Australian-American treaty, and the determination of the Anglo-Saxons, Australia`s mainstream ethnic group, to uphold Christian civilization and Western-dominated international order should not be disdained. However, Australia has a practical interest base and social group to establish good relations with China, and the development of Sino-Australian economy and trade can benefit the people of both countries to a certain extent. This twinning explains the logic of a series of recent bilateral and multilateral interactions between China and Australia. "
On the one hand, Australia`s diplomatic minister said during his recent visit to China that Australia will further develop relations between the two countries and will not choose the sides of the dispute between China and the United States.
But it also rejected Hong Kong`s Li Jiacheng Group`s investment in Australia`s gas supply infrastructure on the grounds of national security. In the eyes of conservatives, Li Jiacheng is also subject to China`s central government.
Since 2006, China has been providing concessionary loan aid to Pacific island countries. To balance and offset China`s influence in the region, Australia worked with the United States and Japan to establish an infrastructure investment program, known as the US, Japan, Australia, and Belt and Road Initiative program, which aims to "foster a free, open-ended," Inclusive and prosperous Indo-Pacific region. "
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In response, the United States, Australia and Pakistan agreed to rebuild the Navy base on Manus Island, which the United States and Australia have bluntly described in the news as a defense against China`s expansion in the South Pacific. Obviously, China and the United States and Australia compete fiercely in the South Pacific.
It is no longer possible for China to keep a low profile in its size and speed of development, but China as a whole is still in a weak position and must win the international market and the supply of raw materials with mutually beneficial cooperation. And there must be others bully on the head and defend their rights and interests of the military ability and will.
In relation to Sino-Australian relations, China`s government may be afraid that the threat trade will undermine the foundation of co-operation and public opinion between the two countries. China`s government may pay more attention to strengthening economic relations between the two countries so that their meridians are linked to each other in order to prevent Australia from turning to the United States on one side.
