The Covid-19 pandemic has reminded us that the democratic world makes many exceptions when it comes to China. This starts with the rampant poaching of wildlife, with exotic animals reportedly heaped on top of each other for sale at the Wuhan market that may have been the site of the first Covid-19 outbreak. There is also the Chinese government’s lack of transparency about exactly when the virus was identified and seen to be problematic. The Chinese government’s official stance on international relations is that it never gets involved in another country’s affairs and expects the same. As Simon Lincoln Reader sets out in his column, the reality is different. China has developed dependency on its custom around the world. In April, South Africa asked its key trading partner China for additional Covid-19 medical support in the form of doctors. Leaders of powerful countries like Britain have turned a blind eye to its many questionable activities; Australia is paying a price for poking around in forbidden terrain. SLR asks what China could do to weaker countries that challenge it on its handling of Covid-19. – Jackie CameronÂ
By Simon Lincoln Reader*Â
To see how ruthless China can be, look at Australia.
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In May last year the Australian federal elections were held. The popular view was that the Labor Party was guaranteed victory and that a radical government under Bill Shorten was imminent. In London, this was influenced by two influential left wing personalities, both Australian, whose analysis on Australian politics was widely circulated among their left wing counterparts who make up 95% of the UK Media.
One of these people was called Mark di Stefano who worked for the ragebait Buzzfeed at the time. In January this year di Stefano was promoted to the Financial Times, but not three months into the job was caught illegally spying on the paper’s competitors and jumped before he could be sacked. The other was a morbidly obese, somewhat controversial failed supply teacher called Mike Stuchbery who gapped the UK to Germany after finally exhausting the patience of his Twitter followers from whom he habitually begged for money.
The winds were behind the backs of the Liberal Party enemies. Cardinal George Pell, despised only for his sceptical views on climate change, had just been jailed for sexual abuse and the year before, then Home Minister Peter Dutton’s attempt to fast track visas for white South African farmers had resulted in protests from Australians disgusted that the government was considering welcoming “racists”. (Pell was acquitted on appeal by all 7 judges in Australia’s High Court in April this year).
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But like the rise of Donald Trump and Brexit before that, election night arrived to confirm yet again that Twitter isn’t the real world. Scott Morrison, a Liberal Party leader more Tony Abbott than Malcolm Turnbull, had accomplished a victory considered virtually impossible.
Appalled at the result, the media intensified its scrutiny of the Liberal government, particularly in January 2020, when the centuries old phenomenon of wild fires suddenly became all Morrison’s fault. But his real problem would emerge at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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The distance between Beijing and Canberra is roughly the same as the distance between Johannesburg and London, but there exists a neighbourly-spheric relationship between China and Australia. Images of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre shook then Prime Minister Bob Hawke into granting 42,000 Chinese citizens permanent residency, and, like all Western countries, the education blob in Australia was quick to prioritise tuition fees for students above common sense. This provided foil for what was to become a patient, wholesale infiltration campaign, starting with education and proceeding into politics.
Whilst Covid-19 did not impact Australia to the extent European and western nations have suffered, it did prompt an inspection of its parts – parts they knew to exist, that were intimately linked to China’s Communist Party (CCP) but were too risky or awkward to speak of.
So began revelations of just how much influence the CCP yielded in both major political parties. Chapter 4 of Clive Hamilton’s “Silent Invasion” details the main players in the sleaze of political donations, identifies respective lines to the CCP and notes the “unwritten condition of donations is perpetual loyalty.” In their reviews of Hamilton’s work, scholars have suggested that Canada be subjected to a similar forensic scope.
Unlike Turnbull, who outed himself in his recent biography as central to the Guardian establishing itself in Australia (much to the newspaper’s embarrassment), Morrison is a truer conservative and took a stronger position on China, despite it being Australia’s largest trading partner. One conservative commentator suggested this was demanded by Australia’s relationship with its partners in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance: “you can’t take Five Eyes seriously…if there’s a sixth eye in there”.
So Morrison broke the unofficial contract unto whom many in his own party had previously submitted and publicly supported an investigation into the origins of Covid-19.
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By no measure was this unreasonable, but the consequences were immediate. Domestically, Morrison faced opposition from the di Stefanos and Stuchberys – those who abhor their own government enough to side with any bad faith actor. China’s response was to slap an 80% tariff on Australian barley exports and warn its citizens about traveling to that country, citing “discrimination against Asians”. Just last Wednesday China sentenced an Australian to death.
The CCP’s logic here is brazen. Australian politics have grown fat from its generosity – to say nothing of the miners who rode the commodities bonanza in the early/mid 2000. In the way they see breaches of loyalty, their reaction was entirely appropriate, justified.
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Like South Africa, Britain has its own stories about capitulating to the CCP on the issue of the Dalai Lama. The funniest involves a group of hopeless, balding senior servants reading out aloud a grovelling apology in front of smiling Chinese officials for then Prime Minister David Cameron and his deputy meeting with Tibet’s spiritual leader.
Now, as the British government continues to perform acts of self-harm, Covid-19 has been shunted to much less of a priority – a move almost guaranteed to embolden the CCP into believing there will be no real investigation into the virus or its handling and thus, no consequences. It is here the question emerges: if the CCP can do what it has done to Australia, and get away with it, just imagine what it will do to weaker countries in the event they object to its administration or ambition?
- Simon Lincoln Reader works and lives in London. You can follow him on Medium.
