Australia and the New Asian Century

By James O’Neill*

Forty years ago, the government of the People’s Republic of China embarked upon what amounted to a new revolution. They resolved that in order to re-establish their place as a leader in the world they needed to reform their economy. This year, that liberalization and opening up of the economy is celebrated throughout China.

Is has literally transformed China, and not only economically. China’s military and political power has not until now being commensurate with its economic role. What we are witnessing now is a growing political assertiveness, built on that economic dominance; self confidence as to its role in the world; and an overwhelmingly strong determination that never again will China be subject to the “century of humiliation” it suffered from the mid 19th to the mid 20th centuries.

Those of us raised and educated in the western system were rarely exposed to the truth of that century of humiliation. How the British, for example, fought three wars in Afghanistan in the 19th century to ensure control of the opium production that was then used as a means of subjugating China. At the turn of the last century one in seven Chinese adults was addicted to heroin.

Today, the British have been replaced by the Americans as the controllers of Afghanistan’s heroine crop (93% of the worlds supply according to the UNDA) but the policy remains unchanged: a highly lucrative cash crop that subsidizes covert operations and is used as a means of destabilizing unfriendly governments.(McCoy In the Shadows of the American Century; 2017)

That can be seen particularly today in Pakistan, the predominately Muslim nations of the former Soviet Union, and Xinjiang province in China.

The current western “concern” about alleged “re-education camps” in Xinjiang is conspicuous for its complete failure to note any element of this hybrid warfare being waged by the West, not only through heroin, but also the training and arming of terrorist proxies, the so-called Free Turkmenistan Army.

The western reaction to the re-emergence of China can also be traced back many decades. After the American puppet Chiang Kai Shek was defeated in the civil war and fled to what was then called Formosa, American warships controlled the Straits of Taiwan to prevent the Chinese army from pursuing Chiang.

Politically, the People’s Republic of China was denied its rightful place on the United Nations Security Council, many Western nations, including Australia, maintaining the fiction that Taipei was the legitimate holder of that role.

Billy McMahon, surely until the present incumbent Australia’s worst prime minister, attacked Gough Whitlam when the latter went to China with the intention of normalizing relations with the PRC after the 1972 election that Labor was likely to win.

The Americans had omitted to tell McMahon that while he was fulminating about Whitlam’s “treachery”, United States eminence grise, Henry Kissinger, was in fact in Beijing seeking the same normalization. Nixon’s China policy was a major reason for his removal two years later, not the popular mythology of Watergate.

The Korean war, the destruction of the 1954 Vietnam Geneva peace accords, the Vietnam war itself, the bombing of Laos and Cambodia, were all part of that anti-Chinese reaction following the success of the Communist Party in the Civil War. The scaremongering of that era, including the unconstitutional attempt by the Menzies government to make the Communist Party illegal, and the witch-hunts of what we call the McCarthyism era, are a vivid footnote in our recent history.

Until Whitlam, Australia was a willing participant in the anti-China campaign, both rhetorically and also by its participation in both the Korean and Vietnam wars.(Michael Pembroke Korea: Where the American Century Began 2018)

Especially ironic is the current Australian rhetoric against China’s “militarization” of the South China Sea. I have yet to see or hear a word in the Australian mainstream media about the United States’ militarization of China’s borders.  There are currently approximately 400 U.S. military bases whose primary strategic objective is the “containment” of China.

These include military bases in the Philippines, Guam, Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Australia. These bases store, inter alia, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Pine Gap is the best known of the Australian bases, but there are many others, including Harold Holt naval base at Exmouth, WA; a communications station at Geraldton WA; the Stirling naval base in Perth WA; Darwin NT and Shoalwater Bay QLD.

Offshore, Cocos Island southwest of Sumatra is an important base. In November 2018 at the APEC conference in Port Moresby, Australia and the United States announced the planned development of a naval base on Manus Island. The views of the Papua New Guinea government, whose territory it actually is, were not reported.

There is also a biennial naval exercise, operation Talisman Sabre that is conducted by United States and Australian forces. The exercise practices blockading the Straits of Malacca, through which 80% of Chinese seaborne exports and imports pass. That Strait is only 2.7km wide at its narrowest point.

The Australian media regularly refer to the Strategic importance of the South China Sea for maritime traffic purposes.  They omit to mention that the bulk of that maritime traffic is either going to or coming from China.  They are also completely silent on Operation Talisman Sabre.  It is not difficult to assume that the Chinese government sees Talisman Sabre as an unfriendly act.

If anyone has a true vested interest in “freedom of navigation”  in this region it is the Chinese. Freedom of peaceful navigation is in fact guaranteed under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, to which China is a signatory and the United States is not.

In addition to the announced intention with regard to Manus Island, Australia is also a putative member of the so-called “Quad” nations, that is, the United States, Japan, India and Australia. This is another grouping overtly aimed at “containing” China.

In practice, it will primarily be an Australian – United States configuration. The Japanese are exhibiting wariness towards the United States, especially with Trump’s trade wars and erratic foreign policy. It is more significant in my view that the Japanese Prime Minister recently made a visit to China, the first visit at such a level for several years, and signed a number of agreements reflecting an increasing degree of co-operation.

Other initiatives included initial steps towards creating a bridge and tunnel link between the Japanese and Russian mainland.  This in itself marks a significant development in cooperation between the three Asian giants.

Japan is also now engaged in serious talks with Russia to sign a treaty to formally conclude World War 2.  The status of four northern islands is a key issue.  The Russians will not agree to the United States having a military base on any of the islands.

India has a difficult relationship with China, mainly over border issues, what it perceives as Chinese encroachment upon India’s traditional sphere of influence, and China’s close relationship with Pakistan, manifested for example in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor. The CPEC in part traverses the politically sensitive Kashmir region.

India has also however, had a long history of non-alignment and has recently strengthened its historic ties to Russia, as with the purchase of Russian jet fighters and the S400 anti ballistic missile system. India continues to purchase Iranian gas.  In February of this year, India and Iran signed an agreement for India to have the operating lease for the Iranian port of Chalabar during President Rouhani’s visit to India.

President Modi specifically referred to the “centuries old bilateral relationship” between the two countries.

Presidents Putin and Modi recently signed a series of multibillion-dollar deals. Importantly, these deals were nominated in rupees and rubles, which is part of a rapidly growing development away from the United States dollar.

It is China and Russia’s leadership in this de-dollarization that is one of the main reasons for United States hostility towards both China and Russia.

The quickest and surest way to demolish the United States Empire is to remove the dollar as the main medium of international trade. It is the reserve status of the dollar that has enabled the United States to defy economic logic over the past 50 years. The transition away from the dollar is in my view likely to accelerate over the next five years.

Another very significant geopolitical development was the formation in 2001 of the Shanghai Corporation Organisation. Originally encompassing only six countries (Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) its full membership was expended to 8 in 2017 with the accession of Pakistan and India. That those two countries should both join at the same time was itself significant.

In addition to those eight, there are four observer states, including Afghanistan and Iran, and six “dialogue” States, of whom the most significant is Turkey, which this year formally applied for full membership.

Turkey clearly sees its future to the East and has effectively abandoned its application to join the EU.

The SCO is part of a growing number of Eurasian organisations that are cooperating to their mutual benefit, largely outside United States influence, and in the face of active US hostility and interference.

These organisations include the Eurasian Economic Union, the most important member of which is Russia. There is a significant overlapping membership with many of these new organisations, all of them developing outside the traditional western dominated economic and political frameworks. This independence is another source of concern for the United States.

Another hugely important instrument of international co-operation is the North South Transportation Corridor (NSTC).  This project provides a linkage between India and Russia via Iran and Azerbaijan. Note the linkages between India and two of the United States’ enemies du jour.  These links are being developed and strengthened notwithstanding the unilateral and illegal sanctions being applied to both Iran and Russia.

I note by way of an aside here that Australia participates in the sanctions against both Iran and Russia, both maintained on the basis of a false dialogue regarding the JCPOA and MH17 and Crimea respectively.

A number of other Middle Eastern states have expressed an interest in linking to the NSTC, which is a further indication of countries increasingly willing to make decisions in terms of their best interests rather than the dictates of the Americans. Dmitry Bokarev www.journal-neo.org  25 July 2017.

As if Morrison’s thought bubble about shifting Australia’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem were not bad enough, he has also wondered aloud about changing Australia’s attitude to the JCPOA, a policy shift that is only inexplicable in terms of Australia’s extraordinary support for Israel and its “me too” response to whatever idiocy emanates from the White House.

By far the most important economic and geopolitical initiative in the past five years however, is China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).  This multi trillion-dollar project now includes more than 100 countries.

Its very success has created a reaction in Washington and Canberra. The latter has rediscovered it’s own backyard, undoubtedly in the response to the growing influence of China in the southeastern Pacific. In recent days there have been multiple plans announced, quite openly described as a “counter” to Chinese influence.

Had China not announced several projects in Pacific nations it is very doubtful whether Australia would have found the inclination let alone the money to do other than continue its neglect of its near neighbours.

There has been a parallel propaganda barrage to portray the BRI in negative terms, making manifestly fake allegations as to “debt traps” and malign Chinese influence on the foreign policy of these tiny nations. Again, nowhere does one see any discussion of the consequences of IMF and World Bank imposed policies on the financial independence of the countries affected.

The real objection, I suggest, that Washington and Canberra have to the BRI is that it undermines the hegemonic role the west has long enjoyed and which is now inevitably coming to an end.

On the basis of parity purchasing power, China is now the world’s largest economy by a significant margin. There are a number of sensitive measures available for comparing the successful development of an economy.

One of those indicators is the proportion of a countries graduates who graduate in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). Between 2003 and 2013 STEM graduates in China rose from 0.5 million to 3.5 million, that is, by seven fold in a decade.

In Singapore, 50% of their graduates are STEM. In China it is 41%, South Korea 32% and Australia 16%.

Another sensitive indicator is patent applications.

In 2016 there were 3 million new patent filings. 1.2 million of those were from China, versus 300,000 from the United States. This is effectively a reverse of the ratios that applied only a decade earlier.

It is a statistic to bear in mind when one reads in the western media about alleged Chinese intellectual property theft.

The Speed Test Global Index produces a monthly report on Internet speed around the world. In September 2018 Singapore ranked number one, followed by Iceland, Hong Kong, South Korea and Romania!

New Zealand ranked 18, Japan 19 and China 20. Russia was 44 and Australia continued to slide downward to 54th position (it was number 50 in June 2017).

The final point I would make is that Australia’s foreign and defence policy is essentially to rely upon the Americans, Morrison’s protestations as to making our own foreign policy decisions in our own national interest notwithstanding.

Forgive the hollow laughter. Apart from a brief period in the 1970s that has not been true since Federation.

That foreign policy subservience has been seen essentially as an insurance premium, payments being made on a policy that assumes the United States was both willing and able to come to Australia’s aid in the unlikely event that it was ever attacked.

That policy is sold to the public as being an integral element of the ANZUS Treaty, and being able to rely on the United States’ presumed military superiority. In fact, the ANZUS Treaty is no more then an obligation to consult in accordance with each country’s constitutional procedures.

As to military superiority, that may have had some force in the past, although a failure to win a single war against other than essentially defenceless nations since 1945 would cast doubt even upon that assumption.

Even accepting that dubious proposition of military superiority in the past, it is certainly no longer true, as Andrei Martyanov brilliantly pointed out in his book Losing Military Supremacy (2018).

What Martyanov says of Russia is also equally true of China. The two nations are now close strategic allies, that fact owing more than a little to the ill-conceived anti-Russia and anti-China hysteria of recent years.  It is ironic that U.S policies have been the greatest driver of an outcome that Henry Kissinger and the late Zbigniew Brzezinski strove mightily to avoid.

In the context of military advantage I need only to mention the Dong Feng (East Wind) 41, a Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of 14 to 15,000 km and with 8 to 10 independently targetable warheads. It travels at Mach 25, that is, 30,626 kilometres per hour or 8.5 km per second.

Fired from Hainan it would reach Canberra in approximately 15 minutes. The only possible anti ballistic missile that might be effective is the Russian S400. That is not part of the Australian defence system and there is nothing in the western armoury that is remotely comparable in its effectiveness to the S400.

The Russians have equivalent missile systems to the Dong Feng. President Putin briefly outlined them in his address to the Russian Parliament on the 1st March 2018. The Avangard for example is capable of Mach 20 and it is invulnerable to any known western missile defence system.

Even the Americans acknowledge they have no defence to either the Russian or Chinese systems. (www.thenationalinterest.org 27 March 2018). The Dong Feng and the Avangard are only two of a very impressive armoury available for land, sea and intercontinental use.

If we took Morrison at his word and actually had a foreign and defence policy that reflected Australia’s national interests, it is clear that radical changes would be required.

The early 21^st century is a very different place from when the European and American empires reached their apogee. The centre of geopolitical gravity, and with it economic and military power, has shifted inexorably to the East.

We now have what is undoubtedly a multipolar world; a fact the West seems incapable of either understanding or accepting. It is resistance to the inevitable shift in the balance of power that currently poses the greatest threat to peace.

The challenge for Australia is this:  do we continue acting as a glorified colony of the American Empire, or do we respond to the challenges and opportunities our geographical position and the rapidly evolving geopolitical world provides us?

There is nothing in our present policy stances to encourage the belief that we have even begun to appreciate the scale of the challenge, let alone begun to formulate policies appropriate for the 21st century and Australia’s place in it.

* Barrister at Law and geopolitical analyst. He may be contacted at joneill@qldbar.asn.au