{"id":39085,"date":"2018-05-07T06:00:59","date_gmt":"2018-05-06T20:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=39085"},"modified":"2018-05-04T16:09:15","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T06:09:15","slug":"oz-china-chills-in-secworld-ecworld-socworld-dipworld-polworld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/oz-china-chills-in-secworld-ecworld-socworld-dipworld-polworld\/","title":{"rendered":"Oz-China chills in SecWorld, EcWorld, SocWorld, DipWorld & PolWorld"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The new Oz\u2013China icy age<\/a> blows through many Australian worlds: security, economics and trade, social, diplomatic and political.<\/p>\n

The orbits of these worlds converge, shifting political tides and disrupting social weather.<\/p>\n

Traditionally, dragon slayers worry about China as a security threat, a revisionist power eating at Australia\u2019s interests. The slayers tend to come from the security and counter-espionage realm\u2014SecWorld\u2014but other worlds feel dragon alarms.<\/p>\n

Panda huggers dominate the economic realm of EcWorld\u2014the trade numbers deserve warm embrace. Two-way trade is worth $150\u00a0billion (more than trade with the US and Japan combined). David Uren<\/a> sees Australia\u2019s most intense trading relationship since dependence on Britain faded in the early\u00a01950s: \u2018China takes a third of our exports of goods while its students and tourists provide a quarter of our services income. China also provides more than a fifth of our imports.\u2019<\/p>\n

As geostrategic<\/a> and geoeconomic concerns <\/a>grow, gravitational wobbles make EcWorld and SecWorld snarlier and snappier<\/a>, and iciness spreads to other worlds.<\/p>\n

SecWorld has upset the usual role of the diplomats from DipWorld, according to a former deputy secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and ambassador to China from 2007 to 2011, Geoff Raby<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As China adopts \u2018an increasingly muscular foreign policy stance\u2019 and challenges US\u00a0pre-eminence, Raby writes, many in Canberra have taken fright:<\/p>\n

In response, the Security Establishment (Defence, ONA, ASIO, ASIS, PM&C\u2019s International Division, and the think tanks they fund such as ASPI) some time ago concluded that the China relationship was too important to trust to DFAT. The Foreign Minister\u2019s, and hence her department\u2019s, role in managing this critical relationship has become inconsequential.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More than a Canberra turf wrestle, this is worlds converging. As Raby notes:<\/p>\n

China today permeates Australian society\u2014some form of Chinese is the second most widely spoken language in Australian homes; fee-paying Chinese students largely support Australia\u2019s higher education sector financially, while Chinese tourists have long been the biggest spenders. They are now also the most numerous. All of these trends will continue to deepen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The line about \u2018permeates Australian society\u2019 points to a notable difference between this fifth icy age<\/a> and the previous four. Much of today\u2019s action is on Australian domestic turf\u2014social and political\u2014in SocWorld and PolWorld.<\/p>\n

The chill intrudes into Australian internal interests. We\u2019re arguing about ourselves as well as China: the way we do politics, how we run and pay for universities, the life of a multicultural society.<\/p>\n

The policy issues become personal as they rage through SocWorld and PolWorld. The 2016 census<\/a> found that 2.2%\u00a0of Australia\u2019s population were born in China and 5.6%\u00a0of the population have Chinese ancestry; China ranks in the top five in Australia in such categories as languages spoken at home, country of ancestry and country of birth.<\/p>\n

Introducing the legislation to widen the reach of foreign interference and espionage law<\/a> in December, Malcolm Turnbull said the focus is on foreign states and their agents, not the loyalties of Australians from a foreign country: \u2018There is no place for racism or xenophobia in our country. Our diaspora communities are part of the solution, not the problem.\u2019<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a valiant but unsuccessful attempt to keep SecWorld separate from SocWorld.<\/p>\n

The parliamentary review of the proposed legislation<\/a>, the subsequent government amendments, and the range of public submissions<\/a> all show the impact on a range of Oz worlds.<\/p>\n

Consider the arguments in the clash of petitions<\/a> between two groups of Australian China scholars.<\/p>\n

Coming from the panda-ish side, the Concerned Scholars of China<\/a> see no evidence that China aims to compromise Australian sovereignty, and disagree with key claims about Chinese influence made in support of the national security legislation:<\/p>\n

Instead of a narrative of an Australian society in which the presence of China is being felt to a greater degree in series of disparate fields, we are witnessing the creation of a racialised narrative of a vast official Chinese conspiracy. In the eyes of some, the objective of this conspiracy is no less than to reduce Australia to the status of a \u2018tribute state\u2019 or \u2018vassal\u2019. The discourse is couched in such a way as to encourage suspicion and stigmatisation of Chinese Australians in general. The alarmist tone of this discourse impinges directly on our ability to deal with questions involving China in the calm and reasoned way they require. Already it is dissuading Chinese Australians from contributing to public debate for fear of being associated with such a conspiracy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A response letter from the dragon\u2019s direction from Scholars of China and the Chinese diaspora<\/a> said the debate isn\u2019t driven by \u2018sensationalism or racism\u2019 but responds to \u2018well-documented reports about the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s interference in Australia\u2019, offering this checklist:<\/p>\n