The Chinese dead cat in the ring

Politics, Top 5

Feb 22, 2022

If I were a major superpower wondering which political party of an unfriendly country I would prefer won an election, I doubt that I would choose the one most likely to be friendly or nice.

I think I would choose the party I judged to be most likely to act against its national interests. And that could well be the Liberal and National Parties, able to see Australia’s interests only through the prism of a western alliance that may be unable or unwilling to help us at critical moments.

Australia can assume that China is fairly irritated with us at the moment, particularly in our apparent eagerness to be more hostile towards them than China’s major enemy, the United States, or any number of other nations more powerful than Australia, who view the new China with deep foreboding and suspicion. Japan, say. Or South Korea. Vietnam. Indonesia. Singapore. France, and perhaps Britain if it ever, as it vaguely promises, came east of Suez again. Maybe also Russia if one discounts the idea that the interests of the two countries have suddenly reversed themselves and become aligned again.

Australia may be spoiling for the war that it does so much to predict, if so little to prepare for. But China is not going to war with Australia. Or not Australia alone. One could imagine it going out of its way to swat the Australian fly, but it is not going to cross three major waterways to attack Australia by itself. If Australia is to be engaged with China, it will be as an ally of the United States and other western powers. That might be brought on by a Chinese miscalculation — for example in taking physical control of Taiwan or crushing Hong Kong. Or by a physical and planned collision of eastern and western forces not far off the Chinese coast. It may occur if China attempts to move beyond the area it has always dominated, and seeks to extend to land and the territory it claims falls naturally under its sovereignty.

Whatever happens, it seems that the conflict which develops will involve the whole world, or at least all of the nations of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. There may be a gentleman’s agreement, for a time, that the conflict be confined to a particular space, or a particular type of war (non-nuclear, we would hope) but where parties are playing for keeps it is difficult to set the bounds, particularly if things go badly for one of the parties.

But no matter what the scenario, it seems unlikely that Australia will figure very much in the calculations. Not the calculations of China, nor, except as a base in the World War II sense, of the United States. Australia has a sophisticated navy and air-force, well able to hold its own against anyone but China and the United States. But it would be well extended operating anywhere near China, and be unable to make any decisive difference, even operating alongside western alliance ships, submarines or aircraft. Operating by itself, it would be unlikely to last more than a few hours of battle.

Australia’s army and its special forces would likewise find it very difficult to make any difference, least of all on Chinese soil. Our army has a lot of useless American equipment, such as heavy tanks, but it is unlikely that we could deploy them, or support them in operation, in any theatre likely to be involved in a conflict with China. And even if we could do both, and alongside US Cavalry, it is by no means certain our combined forces would last very long against Chinese armour, missiles, and artillery and their short lines of communication. No doubt the tanks would be of some slight use in the event that China could safely traverse our sea lines and the air to land and sustain its troops on Australian soil. The chance of that happening, at least before the total defeat of the west, is fairly remote; Australia would by then have been completely defeated and isolated. Along, probably, with Indochina, and Indonesia.

Our ill-equipped ADF wouldn’t last a week, even, or especially if they were led by the main soolers

Many observers of China, here and abroad, see a new belligerence coming from China, and an impatience about minding its manners while other nations, particularly the US, taunt them. China has experienced enormous growth in recent decades, and it has more citizens among the middle classes than America, India, France and Australia put together. It wants to take its place in the world, and to be recognised for what it is — a superpower with enormous resources and capital, an educated and technologically-oriented workforce, and a nation with the right to define and defend its own interests, including its borders. Apart from its fortification of some islands it has always claimed, it has not expanded its borders, but it now is unembarrassed about wanting a blue-water navy capable of pushing back against the US Navy, which often, provocatively, sails right past its shores so as to make some threatening point about freedom of navigation.

We can assume that China has a formidable intelligence-gathering capacity, including with satellites and active espionage agents. But it does not really need a large clandestine operation because Australia, like many of the other countries in the western alliance is an open and democratic country, which conducts a good deal of its politics, and defence and foreign affairs thinking in debates, newspapers and magazines readily accessible, even to our enemies. Our diplomatic relations have been fairly open and frank for 50 years, despite the relative freeze of recent years, and foreign Chinese have been able to study in Australia, travel its length and breadth, and buy farms and businesses here. On most of our perceptions of the world, and most of our policies, the Chinese can see where we are coming from, and the various pressures and levers that make things happen.

China has always been content that Australia see itself in the general western alliance, and recognises the neurotic Australian wish to have a great friend, once Britain, now America, able to help out if we get into particular need. China, in short, has never wooed or attempted to coerce Australia into its orbit, let alone insisted that Australia see the world through a Chinese prism. It has sufficed that we both understand each other, and that neither of us has any intention of seeking to breach the peace.

China says it is puzzled by the way that so many Australian defence and intelligence experts have tended to see all matters within their domain only through American eyes, as though their primary loyalty is to America. The US is a great and powerful friend — we hope for a long time — but it judges its interests by its own needs, rather than with any particular sense of obligation to Australia. The most we can hope for, sometimes, is that Australia be excepted if it was not the primary intended target of some measure, such as sanctions on Europe. Australia’s geography, its proximity to Asia, its history and its culture are different — and it may well be that cultural differences, particularly religious ones, are increasing. We compete with the US, and with many of our military allies, for access to Chinese markets. We cannot have failed to notice that when China has closed some of its markets to Australia, as “coercive punishment” for strong criticism of China, the US and some other allies have not hesitated to snap them up.