{"id":52271,"date":"2019-12-03T06:00:26","date_gmt":"2019-12-02T19:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=52271"},"modified":"2019-12-02T17:35:06","modified_gmt":"2019-12-02T06:35:06","slug":"a-return-to-diplomacy-could-save-china-from-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/a-return-to-diplomacy-could-save-china-from-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"A return to diplomacy could save China from itself"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Zhou Enlai, China\u2019s first premier, was arguably one of the best diplomats of the 20th century. Maintaining connections between the outside world and a revolutionary government that had thrown out the baby, the bathwater and the bath was an astonishing feat. He achieved this through intellect and diplomatic skill.<\/p>\n

Where are Zhou\u2019s successors?<\/p>\n

With its economic power and growing strategic weight, China is acquiring the kind of national power that should generate mutually favourable outcomes without recourse to subversion.<\/p>\n

But to do this, China needs to build its authority, the critical concomitant of power that gives power political and strategic effect. Having built its authority in the aftermath of World War II, the US was able to back its power, thereby acquiring the legitimacy needed for it to claim global dominance. President Donald Trump is well on the way to forfeiting that<\/a>, something that China has not been slow to exploit. But China shows no signs of having studied the consequences of using power without authority or legitimacy.<\/p>\n

China demands respect but is quite practised in dishing out disrespect. The ham-fisted shenanigans of Chinese diplomats as they forced the exclusion of Taiwan from the Kimberley Process \u2018blood for diamonds\u2019<\/a> conference in 2017, shouting down the conference convenor as he tried to introduce Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, was consistent with Chinese officials forcing their way into the office of Papua New Guinea\u2019s foreign minister during the 2018 APEC meeting in Port Moresby<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sullen and offensive behaviour by officials is one thing. It is altogether another for a diplomatic mission to interfere directly in the conduct of politics within the host nation, if that is indeed what the Chinese embassy in Canberra has done. Recently retired ASIO boss Duncan Lewis has claimed<\/a> that China\u2019s foreign interference operations, designed to \u2018take over\u2019 Australia\u2019s political system, are \u2018insidious\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

China has shot itself in both feet.<\/p>\n

Beijing\u2019s apparent efforts to plant the equivalent of a Manchurian candidate in the Australian parliament were as clumsy as they were ambitious. This maladroit attempt to play into Australia\u2019s domestic politics has been exacerbated by the emergence of a self-confessed \u2018spy\u2019 who has burst onto the scene with stories of espionage and dirty tricks<\/a> in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s domestic paranoia, and the patronage system that sustains it, have infected the way it does business globally. The Belt and Road Initiative appears to support debt-trap diplomacy<\/a>, though it is important to note that commentators are divided on whether debt is the objective of the BRI or simply a consequence of poor management<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But China\u2019s woes in Australia and along the Belt and Road are small beer given what\u2019s been happening closer to home. Months of demonstrations in Hong Kong against Chief Executive Carrie Lam\u2019s government and the extraordinary landslide in favour of the pro-democracy groups in the recent district council elections demand a major international relations rethink<\/a> in Beijing. It will take more than President Xi Jinping\u2019s inscrutable smile to get China\u2019s ship of state back on course.<\/p>\n

Given China\u2019s economic power, getting it back on course is very much in Australia\u2019s and the region\u2019s interests. As former Office of National Assessments director-general Allan Gyngell has pointed out, like it or lump it, China will remain central to Australia\u2019s future<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Scott Morrison may find the espionage reports deeply disturbing<\/a>, and Senator James Paterson may regard attempts to shoe-horn an agent of influence into federal parliament as worse than he thought<\/a>. But expressions of dismay do little more than encourage public apprehension and a return to the \u2018reds under the bed\u2019 phobia of the 1950s. Anxiety is no substitute for policy.<\/p>\n

Peter Hartcher\u2019s excellent Quarterly Essay, Red flag: waking up to China\u2019s challenge<\/em><\/a>, makes serious suggestions about the direction that Australia\u2019s China policy might take. But it doesn\u2019t tackle the basic mindset issues that colour so many aspects of our international policymaking\u2014our deep sense of insecurity and lack of confidence as an international player.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s international behaviour reflects its friendlessness: it relies on bullying and bluster, subornation and subversion rather than negotiation and persuasion. That is self-defeating.\u00a0 A return to diplomacy would serve its interests and the interests of the global community. And that\u2019s where Australia and a coalition of like-minded countries can have a positive effect. Diplomacy, in the words of the diplomatic theorist Ernest Satow<\/a>, is \u2018the application of intelligence and tact to the conduct of official relations between the governments of independent states\u2019. For an embattled China, conversation at all levels is preferable to confrontation.<\/p>\n

An adroit, engaged diplomacy is the challenge for both China and Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zhou Enlai, China\u2019s first premier, was arguably one of the best diplomats of the 20th century. 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