In the name of all the good and honourable politicians who have gone before them in crafting a relationship with our giant and, yes, challenging neighbour and partner, I ask Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong to call out this rubbish, repudiate it, and forcefully assert that it is wrong.
The shrieking warmongering of the SMH and The Age in today’s papers debauches the memory of the once-fine investigative journalism of two once-responsible newspapers. The illustration, with aircraft streaming out of a red-coloured China towards Australia, is worse than anything I’ve seen since the 1950s and 60s, and recalls the cartoon from the 60s of a white Australian ex-serviceman pulling a rickshaw in which is seated an evil-looking Chinese, his face in a distorted grimace, showing both triumph, and hatred. And we all know what the wellsprings of that idea were!
Some colleagues have asked, where did this spray in today’s papers come from, and why now? How can they justify these claims? Oh, of course, they must be privy to the deliberations of the Standing Committee of the Chinese Politburo, or the military heads, or Xi Jinping and his inner, inner circle of most influential advisers. But that patently is not true, nor could it be.
Given that this blanket coverage of the so-called war risk offers no evidence or substantiation for its claims, and that not one of the so-called experts is a China specialist, we can but speculate. The least frightening possibility is that, like the Head of ASIO and his ‘hives of spies’ a few weeks ago, this is an exercise in ‘softening up’ Cabinet, in the scramble for more funding in the forthcoming budget.
More frightening is the possibility that the people behind this and their performing bears who dance to their tune actually want war, court it, welcome the whole idea of having a war with China.
But why would that be? Which leads to the most frightening possibility, for me at least, which is that these people are back drinking at the wellsprings of that 1960s cartoon, nourishing the ‘race memory’, of anti-Chinese White Australia, channelling Menzies, and B.A. Santamaria, and the terror of “the downward thrust of China (both red and yellow) between the Indian and Pacific Oceans” (this time by air and missiles), which now, as then, is without foundation. If they want war, it’s because they feel threatened by “the heathen Chinee”
In the name of all the good and honourable politicians who have gone before them in crafting a relationship with our giant and, yes, challenging neighbour and partner, I ask Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong to call out this rubbish, repudiate it, and forcefully assert that it is wrong. In the meantime, I’d like to apologise to all Chinese Australians who will be hurt and damaged by the race nastiness that always accompanies such anti-China tirades, and, if I may, to the PRC Ambassador and the many other Chinese diplomats here who I know to be dedicated to trying to keep this relationship on an even keel.
Stephen FitzGerald AO is a Board Member of China Matters, Distinguished Fellow of the Whitlam Institute, Associate Professor, Australia China Institute for Arts and Culture at Western Sydney University. He was the first Ambassador of Australia to the PRC.
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