The ongoing row with China

is hitting new lows.

I don't use "WeChat" or "TikTok". I have no desire to do so. The Downunder Prime Minister did attempt to use it the other day - to send a reassuring message to the local Chinese diaspora that they are welcome and valued here. The Chinese Communist Party removed the message. 

I am not surprised. Communicating with China or about China has become increasingly difficult. I have no doubt that this blog post will be read and the CCP would like to have it deleted simply  because I have suggested something might be difficult.

Puzzled? Well let me put it this way. On another computer, outside my home network, I have been trying to help a number of students stuck in China due to the pandemic. It has been a very difficult year for them - and a number of people here. We have all been doing the best we can. A few days ago one of the students there unwisely expressed sympathy for the current situation between us. It wasn't a direct comment but enough of one to suggest less than total loyalty to the CCP. I was concerned when I read it. The next time he was due to discuss his work with me he was not on-line. He has not been on-line since then. 

This is the way the CCP works. The belief is that they need total control in order to retain control. The belief is that they need to have control outside the country as well as inside the country. "Do as we say, not as we do" is how they want the world to work.

We made a major blunder when then Prime Minister Whitlam made overtures to China and went off to visit - with much fanfare. It was announced that here was our new "best friend" and that we were "part of the Asian region". It was naive and ridiculous. China is not the "best friend" of anyone - not even North Korea. It does not see itself like that. Doing business with China has always been on the basis that it has been done on their terms - not ours.  Do as they say, pay the necessary bribes, don't criticise - the list goes on. 

And we are not "part of the Asian region" either. If Asia considers us in any way at all it would be a Pacific country. Many of my Asian acquaintances tell me that even this is unlikely to be correct. We are simply a vaguely European country in a non-European location - and a country which lacks any sort of cultural focus or national identity. Our much lauded "multicultural" approach is not something they see as praiseworthy at all. 

Of course this is not true of all individual Asians I know or many others know but it is the way we are seen in the official terms of trade and other relations.  China thinks it can exploit that - indeed it has been trying to exploit that for a very long time. Any misplaced sympathy, as they see it, has to be stamped out.

I wonder if I will hear from the student again. I doubt it. One short sentence "I know you have difficulties" has probably been enough to ruin his chances of any sort of career at this sensitive time.

We need to start on the long hard road of doing business with the rest of the world.