{"id":59059,"date":"2020-09-15T06:00:26","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T20:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=59059"},"modified":"2020-09-15T11:43:13","modified_gmt":"2020-09-15T01:43:13","slug":"a-belt-and-road-by-any-other-name-government-must-review-darwin-port-lease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/a-belt-and-road-by-any-other-name-government-must-review-darwin-port-lease\/","title":{"rendered":"A belt and road by any other name: Government must review Darwin Port lease"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The Australian government says its new foreign relations bill is about one thing: ensuring foreign policy consistency by reviewing state and territory deals that could undercut Canberra.<\/p>\n

Fair enough. Foreign policy is a federal\u2014and constitutionally enshrined\u2014responsibility. State and territory governments have been increasingly active in international engagements in recent decades. That\u2019s\u00a0a\u00a0perfectly normal feature of globalisation that\u2019s here to stay.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s good reason to keep foreign policy\u00a0powers concentrated\u00a0in federal hands.<\/p>\n

Thanks to\u00a0its expertise,\u00a0real-time\u00a0reporting from the\u00a0overseas\u00a0diplomatic\u00a0network\u00a0and intelligence\u00a0collection and\u00a0assessments\u00a0from all sources,\u00a0the federal\u00a0government\u00a0will always be the\u00a0best informed\u00a0about the world\u00a0and the\u00a0custodian\u00a0of\u00a0Australia\u2019s\u00a0strategic policy.<\/p>\n

A state like Queensland or New South Wales cannot be expected to have anywhere near the same situational awareness when making commercial deals with foreign powers.\u00a0And in a dangerous world,\u00a0hostile\u00a0actors will seek to divide us.\u00a0So,\u00a0let\u2019s not help them.<\/p>\n

If\u00a0this\u00a0bill helps reverse the\u00a0hollowing out of our\u00a0capacity\u00a0to prosecute Australia\u2019s\u00a0national\u00a0interests, I\u2019m\u00a0all\u00a0in.\u00a0That would need to include a\u00a0serious\u00a0discussion\u00a0about\u00a0the chronic\u00a0cuts\u00a0to\u00a0our frontline\u00a0diplomatic network\u00a0and\u00a0aid program. But what\u00a0concerns me\u00a0is the clear political\u00a0slant in this\u00a0bill.<\/p>\n

From the get-go, the government\u00a0framed\u00a0Victoria\u2019s 2018\u00a0memorandum of understanding with China<\/a> on the Belt and Road Initiative\u00a0as\u00a0the\u00a0main\u00a0problem\u00a0that needed fixing.\u00a0To be clear, the\u00a0federal Labor\u00a0leader, Anthony Albanese, has said that we\u00a0would not\u00a0have signed up to the BRI.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s curious, though,\u00a0that the government is waving the Victorian\u00a0deal\u00a0like a red rag while ignoring other BRI-related deals that are\u00a0in plain sight. Like the lease of the Port of Darwin.\u00a0To avoid blatant double standards, Darwin\u00a0should be in\u00a0the same\u00a0conversation\u00a0as Victoria.<\/p>\n

\u2018No, it\u00a0shouldn\u2019t!\u2019 the government is\u00a0now\u00a0saying.\u00a0The\u00a0foreign minister\u00a0has explicitly denied that Darwin Port would be reviewed as part of this bill.\u00a0Marise Payne\u00a0has claimed that this is\u00a0because\u00a0the 99-year lease of\u00a0the port\u00a0by\u00a0the NT government\u00a0was\u00a0to\u00a0a\u00a0privately owned\u00a0Chinese company, Landbridge Group, not a government entity. The\u00a0bill excludes<\/a>\u00a0\u2018a corporation that operates on a commercial basis\u2019.<\/p>\n

Yet it\u00a0doesn\u2019t take a\u00a0degree\u00a0in Sinology to understand that Western\u00a0and Chinese private companies differ in important ways. In the Chinese system, outbound investors must\u00a0register deals\u00a0for approval with three government bodies, including the trade ministry. A private company that owns critical infrastructure abroad is still accountable to Beijing.<\/p>\n

This is confirmed by\u00a0private companies\u2019\u00a0mandatory reporting requirements under China\u2019s national intelligence law.\u00a0Just last year,\u00a0a Foreign Investment Review Board source<\/a>\u00a0suggested that the Chinese law had\u00a0effectively\u00a0\u2018done away with the distinction between private and state-owned companies\u2019.<\/p>\n

Even if\u00a0the government dismisses\u00a0any questions around\u00a0the lease of a critical infrastructure asset\u00a0like Darwin Port\u00a0to a foreign power,\u00a0be it\u00a0China or Canada,\u00a0there\u2019s a bigger issue. You\u00a0won\u2019t hear the government say this openly for obvious reasons\u2014it oversaw the sale\u2014but\u00a0the\u00a02015\u00a0lease of\u00a0Darwin\u00a0Port\u00a0was\u00a0part of the\u00a0Belt and Road\u00a0Initiative.<\/p>\n

Officially, the\u00a0Darwin\u00a0Port\u00a0sale\u00a0wasn\u2019t badged as a BRI project. But it was undoubtedly part of it from Beijing\u2019s point of view, even if not from ours.\u00a0For more than a decade,\u00a0China has been buying up critical infrastructure such as ports around\u00a0the world. But\u00a0this strategic buy-up was given\u00a0an authoritative\u00a0policy\u00a0rationale when Chinese President Xi\u00a0Jinping launched his\u00a0flagship\u00a0Belt and Road Initiative in 2013.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when\u00a0China\u2019s ports buy-up officially became part of the seagoing\u00a0aspect\u00a0of the BRI, dubbed the\u00a0Maritime\u00a0Silk\u00a0Road. Confusingly, the\u00a0\u2018road\u2019\u00a0part of\u00a0the initiative\u00a0is\u00a0actually maritime. Through\u00a0this BRI-propelled strategy,\u00a0Chinese private or state-owned companies\u00a0quickly\u00a0acquired significant or controlling stakes in\u00a0more than\u00a076 ports in 35 countries, including Darwin\u00a0and\u00a0Melbourne.<\/p>\n

So it\u00a0should not\u00a0have\u00a0come as\u00a0a shock to the government when, a month after the Darwin Port lease, Landbridge owner Ye Cheng openly spoke in the media<\/a> about Beijing\u00a0being\u00a0interested in\u00a0Darwin\u00a0primarily\u00a0in the context of the\u00a0BRI.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0government has said\u00a0that\u00a0it considers\u00a0Victoria\u2019s\u00a0BRI\u00a0deal to\u00a0be\u00a0inconsistent with\u00a0its\u00a0foreign policy.\u00a0But when it comes to\u00a0our\u00a0strategic\u00a0northern\u00a0port,\u00a0that concern vanishes into thin air.\u00a0For some reason, the\u00a0BRI is against the national interest in one jurisdiction but\u00a0fine\u00a0in another.<\/p>\n

China is an important partner\u00a0for Australia. But who owns our critical infrastructure\u00a0is not\u00a0a question about\u00a0our relationship with\u00a0China.\u00a0It\u2019s about\u00a0our sovereignty. Of China\u2019s 34 ports,\u00a0none are\u00a0foreign-owned\u00a0and\u00a0you can bet\u00a0none\u00a0will\u00a0ever\u00a0be.\u00a0That seems consistent to me.<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s worried about policy consistency, the government should start by reviewing the Darwin Port deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Australian government says its new foreign relations bill is about one thing: ensuring foreign policy consistency by reviewing state and territory deals that could undercut Canberra. Fair enough. Foreign policy is a federal\u2014and constitutionally …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1030,"featured_media":59061,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2212,1920,1006,1182],"class_list":["post-59059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australia-china-relations","tag-belt-and-road-initiative","tag-darwin","tag-foreign-investment","dinkus-north-of-26-south"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA belt and road by any other name: Government must review Darwin Port lease | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/a-belt-and-road-by-any-other-name-government-must-review-darwin-port-lease\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A belt and road by any other name: Government must review Darwin Port lease | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Australian government says its new foreign relations bill is about one thing: ensuring foreign policy consistency by reviewing state and territory deals that could undercut Canberra. 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