The Chinese connection

does need to be acknowledged. 

I didn't ever believe I would find myself disagreeing with the boss of national security. He knows an awful lot more about national security than I do.

But, I have to disagree on the Chinese connection. Talking to so many Chinese students over the years I have become aware that there is far more to our relationship with China than anyone in government or the security services really wants to acknowledge.

It was Whitlam, our PM from 1972-4, who went off to China and told us we were going to do business with China. China was big. China was going to boom - and we could take advantage of that. Whitlam was naive in that he had no idea how powerful and industrialised China already was. He had no idea how business was done in Asia - although he clearly believed otherwise. We didn't have the resources we needed to concentrate so much of our efforts on business with China but Whitlam thought otherwise. It was to be part of the strategy to become "part of the Asian region". That focus has continued over the years but it is doomed to failure. We are not "part of the Asian region". We never will be. They may treat us as neighbours but we will never be "family" - even with all the Asian migrants we now have. Asia doesn't work that way.

I know people who have spent some years living in Japan but they have eventually returned "home" because, however much they have enjoyed living in Japan it will never be home. They cannot get permanent residency there. They can never become Japanese citizens. The Japanese are happy to do business with us but they don't want non-Japanese living there for more than a few years. The longest I know of is eleven years - and they were exceptional circumstances. The Japanese don't take in refugees. Even within Japan there are people who are considered to be less Japanese than others.

I know people who have developed businesses in China. All seems to go well, sometimes for some years. There always seems to reach a point where they fall foul of the Chinese authorities, bribes are not paid, an official feels insulted, another official is looking to impress someone above them and so on. One person I know spent years building up a business there. He did everything that was asked of him and put millions into the business. Four and a half years ago he was here when he received a phone call warning him not to return to China. Returning to China would mean prison, perhaps with years waiting for a "trial". He has done nothing wrong - unless failing to pay a bribe to someone he had never met is wrong. He simply failed to understand the way China works.

Other Asian countries have other problems. There coups, wars, corruption and much more. It may all seem perfectly normal to those who live there but it doesn't allow business to be done in the same way as business is done here - and even we have a level of corruption and bribery that needs to be constantly hauled in. 

But China is the big one. China wields a massive amount of economic power. We are a mere minnow in the scheme of things. Like it or not we have to do business their way - whatever our complaints to the World Trade Organisation might be. We underestimated China. We underestimated how powerful China is.

"If you want to do business with us you will..." China told us. They dictate the terms. It may not look like that on the surface but this is what happens. 

Whitlam was perhaps lazy as well as naive. He went for what seemed to be the "easy" option. He thought it would mean the whole Asian market would open up to us. It didn't of course. China controls that too - even though it may not appear that way.

The result has been that we have not developed other trade relations in the way we could have been. We don't really do much business with countries in Africa or South America or the Middle East - not nearly as much as we could. Our relationship with Europe leaves much to be desired. We are partly responsible for the UK leaving EU. If we had been more interested in the EU market we would have had been in a better position to speak out about Brexit.

We really do need to think hard and long about our relationship with China. It is going to be even harder to build and rebuild our trading relations with the rest of the world.  

ASIO may be correct when they say there is no direct attempt to place their preferred candidates on the ballot paper at the coming election. They don't need to do that because they can already influence the outcome. They have leased one of the most strategically important ports in the country - something which should never have been allowed. They almost managed to "loan" a substantial amount of money to a neighbouring state government for transport infrastructure. That is a deal which was knocked back by the federal authorities - and for good reasons - but it may come back in other ways if we vote in a change of government.

If the Chinese are offering us a "good deal" then yes we can be certain it will be good - for them. We need to work hard to work our way out of all this.