Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently said that Victoria’s controversial Belt and Road Initiative agreement with China is not beneficial to Australia and could be scrapped in a few weeks. An interview with an Australian-Chinese expert looks at the future of Australia-China relations.
Criticism of the $1.5 trillion Belt and Road agreement signed between Victoria and Beijing in 2018 led to the federal government’s determination to regulate state alignment with the Commonwealth in diplomacy through legislation called the Foreign Relations Act.
Under the Foreign Relations Act, the governors and chief ministers of Victoria and other states are required to detail all agreements with foreign countries to the Commonwealth by March 10, which will then be evaluated by the federal government.
I haven’t seen the benefit of it yet,” Morrison told the Herald Sun. What are the benefits, if any, and what is the cost of paying for them?”
Morrison stressed that the review of the agreements will continue. He also said it was important for national governments to be consistent in their dealings with other governments.
The Chinese Communist Party has accused Australia of undermining relations through its “legislative” moves, and the Foreign Relations Act has been submitted to the Australian government on a list of 14 grievances against the government. In the latest statement by the Chinese Communist Party, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian also asked Australia to make more efforts to improve relations with each other.
Feng Chongyi, a China expert at the University of Technology Sydney, told reporters that Morrison is a representative of the conservative, relatively conservative Liberal Party, and his basic platform and policies are in line with those of former U.S. President Donald Trump, so they are wary of the communist state.
He believes that the international community in general, and the United States in particular, has positioned the Chinese Communist regime in a completely different way than in the past, “It is impossible to treat the CCP as a partner as it was before, but now it is either an adversary or an opponent. This positioning is basically the same. Biden Lai will slow down or will loosen his grip, but his basic cognition and basic state policy will not go back, and can not go back, now it is just a matter of the size of the crackdown.”
Feng Chongyi analysis, Australia this “foreign relations law” law is to stop the original kind of momentum, is a change of direction, will no longer go along that direction before, is authorized to the federal government has the power to do review, the purpose is to prevent the university, state or city hall along the previous that road to continue to go on, interrupt such a process, back to the first will not be too strong.
As a long-Time scholar engaged in theoretical research at Australian universities, Feng Chongyi said, for the Confucius Institute on Australian campuses, basically is the contract expires after no further extension, not now immediately shut down. “Because universities and university leadership are so dependent on the Chinese market and so dependent on Chinese students, (the federal government) doesn’t want to do very drastic action.”
He added, “This Epidemic is affecting Chinese students, and Australian universities are losing a big chunk of their funding all of a sudden, so Australian campuses are not wanting to have a complete showdown or turn the table with China (the Chinese Communist Party) right now. And a very high-profile public closure of the Confucius Institute would amount to a table-raising, so it wouldn’t do it so obviously.”
On the Victorian governor’s argument that signing the Belt and Road agreement would provide more jobs and more trade and investment for Victorians, Feng Chongyi said, “It just shows that he puts economic interests above all else and ignores human rights and political infiltration.”
According to Feng Chongyi, “Now the entire Western society, the democratic society, recognizes the infiltration of the Chinese Communist regime, and now, starting with the United States, the Chinese Communist Party has been designated as guilty of Crimes Against Humanity and genocide. This makes it impossible to continue to hang the original basic values and basic morals aside for the sake of economic interests as before, and now public opinion no longer supports such a policy.”
Looking at the future of Australia-China relations, Feng Chongyi believes that the general direction of Australia is to treat the Chinese Communist regime as an adversary, just like the United States, and no longer as an unconditional business and economic partner as before. And Australia through legislation to reverse and oppose the Chinese Communist Party’s intervention, infiltration, restrictions on investment has been placed on legislation to do so, so this Australia-China Policy will not have a big turn, a big reversal, because it is done by way of legislation.
He said the positioning of the Chinese Communist regime, it is a regime that challenges the international order and threatens Australia’s basic values, basic institutions and the security of this country. “It’s just that because it (Australia) is not that big, it’s not openly fighting a trade war, so it’s guarding its own values, guarding its own interests by way of legislation.”
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