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| ANU Australian Centre On China In The World, 15 October 2019 |
From the moment Donald Trump was elected US president Scott Morrison has aped his caps, lapel pin, hand gestures, clumsy megaphone diplomacy and verbal aggression towards China.
Who will Morrison ape now that Trump is a spent force awaiting an ignoble departure from the White House in January 2021 and how will an incoming Biden Government see Australia?
This is a snapshot of current American opinion of Scott Morrison and his government.....
New York Times, 1 December 2020:
At a time when Australia’s favored nation status with the Trump White House is about to expire, there is widespread concern that a Biden administration will focus less on America’s Pacific partners and more on rebuilding ties in Europe. That has pushed Australia deeper into a position of pleading for help in corralling China even as it beats its chest for sovereignty.
“On one level, the prime minister’s reaction was completely reasonable. On another, it’s at the upper limit of what’s acceptable without making things worse,” said John Blaxland, a professor of international security at the Australian National University. “He’s got to tread a very fine line because Australia’s leverage is limited.”
David Brophy, a senior lecturer in modern Chinese history at the University of Sydney, said it had created a counterintuitive dynamic. China often condemns Australia for doing America’s bidding, when, in fact, Australia is trying desperately to cajole the United States into deeper engagement.
“The American presence in Asia is more important for Australia than it is for America,” Brophy said. “When Australia sees any hint of withdrawal, as we saw at the beginning of the Trump administration, it stirs up this sense of panic. It’s not enough to wait for the U.S. to get back in the game; Australia has to show it can do more and will do more.”
Increasingly, that has meant tolerating economic pain and abandoning the approach that Australia has long followed with China — say little and do what must be done. Morrison’s government and China’s propaganda machine have instead been trading blows and turns at the microphone.
Geoff Raby, a former Australian ambassador to China, described it as a self-perpetuating cycle of paranoid provocation.
“They are each confirming the other’s worst suspicions,” he said.
Whispered complaints are out, replaced by competing news conferences and laundry lists of grievances. Australia has launched two foreign interference investigations with high-profile raids. It now plans to file a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization over China’s blocking of barley imports — one of many products that China has rejected as tensions have soared.
University Wire, 1 December 2020:
While China and Australia have always been close trading partners, Australia has also been the key United States ally in the region - accommodating a significant American military presence and hosting an intelligence facility at Pine Gap. A senator even demanded that Chinese-Australian politicians denounce the CPC to prove their allegiance to the country.
The relationship between Canberra and Beijing has deteriorated after Australia pushed for an worldwide inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus in April without consulting Beijing, widening cracks in the relationship that had been growing since Canberra banned China's Huawei Technologies Co. from helping build its 5G telecommunications network two years ago.
In September two senior Australian reporters, the last in China working for Australian news outlets, left the country abruptly after being questioned by Chinese officials. This economic recovery development strategy could allow China to buy considerable amounts of Australian goods.
But it does feel a *little* bit rich to be demanding an apology over the post when, as far as I can see, Scott Morrison hasn't issued an apology to the families of those who were allegedly killed.
"As a warhound of the US, Australia should restrain its arrogance. Its politics, military and culture should stay far away from China - let's assume the two countries are not on the same planet", the paper argued. "Particularly, its warships must not come to China's coastal areas to flex muscles, or else it will swallow the bitter pills". No matter what harsh words people use on them for the murder, the Australian government should have accepted it.
Earlier this month, China outlined a list of grievances about Australia's foreign investment, national security and human rights policy, saying Canberra needed to correct its actions to restore the bilateral relationship with its largest trading partner.
New York Times, 2 December 2020:
For the past few years, Australia has positioned itself at the front of a global effort to stand up to China. It was the first country to ban Huawei's 5G technology, to pass foreign interference laws aimed at curbing Chinese influence, and to call for an international inquiry into the source of the coronavirus.
Now, Australia is sounding an even louder alarm. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, already vexed by China's blockade of Australian imports -- wine, coal, barley and cotton -- demanded on Monday that the Chinese government apologize for a lurid tweet showing an Australian soldier with a knife at the neck of an Afghan child. The world, he warned, was watching.
But even as he elevated a Twitter post to a four-alarm diplomatic fire, he also called for a reset with Beijing, reiterating that Australia's end game was still "the happy coexistence of two partners." In that somersault, Mr. Morrison inadvertently let the world hear Australia's internal dialogue of doubt -- one that echoes around the globe as China increasingly asserts its might.
The prime minister gave voice to the insecurities and anxieties that come with being caught between two superpowers. Those jitters are partly about the limited options in the face of China's tightening vise. But they are also about an America in flux.
At a time when Australia's favored nation status with the Trump White House is about to expire, there is widespread concern that a Biden administration will focus less on America's Pacific partners and more on rebuilding ties in Europe. That has pushed Australia deeper into a position of pleading for help in corralling China even as it beats its chest for sovereignty.
"On one level, the prime minister's reaction was completely reasonable. On another, it's at the upper limit of what's acceptable without making things worse," said John Blaxland, a professor of international security at the Australian National University. "He's got to tread a very fine line because Australia's leverage is limited."
The country's entire history since settlement has been shaped by unquestioned dependence on an alliance with a distant and dominant power, first England, then the United States. The prospect of an end to that stability, with American decline or indifference and Chinese dominance, fills most Australians with dread.
Voice of America News, 2 December 2020:
On November 17 Tokyo and Canberra agreed to negotiate the Japan-Australia Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA), the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on its website. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was visiting Tokyo then to meet his counterpart Yoshihide Suga. Japan has no similar deals with any country besides the United States.
The two leaders issued a joint statement that omitted China by name but condemned its activities in the South China Sea, where Beijing took the upper hand in a six-way sovereignty dispute after landfilling islets for military use through 2017.
"The [leaders] had serious concerns about the recent negative developments and serious incidents in the South China Sea, including continuing militarization of disputed features, dangerous and coercive use of coast guard vessels and 'maritime militia', launches of ballistic missiles, and efforts to disrupt other countries' resource exploitation activities," the statement said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian slammed the statement as "a gross interference to China's internal matters."
But Beijing cannot cast the Australia-Japan pact as explicitly anti-China, said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. "China would of course not like it, but China could not argue that it is targeting China," Oh said. "Any two countries could sign this kind of thing. A third country could not say 'it is targeting me.'"
U.S. officials, conversely, will probably smile on the Australia-Japan deal because Washington wants its allies to help with pro-American causes in Asia, said Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor of politics and international studies at International Christian University in Tokyo.
The U.S. government periodically sends navy ships to the South China Sea, upsetting Beijing, and offers weapons to Asian countries for their defense against China. Beijing maintains the world's third strongest arms forces. U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has taken on China as well over trade, technology access and consular issues.
"The fact that Australian troops can come and base here and engage in more frequent and probably deeper bilateral training with Japan and of course with the United States, because the United States is already based here, this creates more interoperability," Nagy said. "It creates a more cohesive bilateral and multilateral partnership to push back against China."
The reciprocal access agreement will mainly smooth drills and training between countries that already work together militarily, scholars say. Japanese already visit Australia for military training, for example a long-range howitzer firing exercise last year.
The two sides can learn more from each other on amphibious operations and explore areas for joint development such as long-range strike capability, Davis said.
"The significance of the RAA cannot be understated," Morrison said in a statement in November on the prime minister's website. "It will form a key plank of Australia's and Japan's response to an increasingly challenging security environment in our region amid more uncertain strategic circumstances."
CNN Wire Services, 2 December 2020:
Canberra's tensions with Beijing may also cast a shadow on the recovery. Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Frydenberg called the dispute with China a "very serious situation."
"China is our number one trading partner. Many Australian jobs rely on trade," he said, adding that Australia is looking for free trade agreements with other partners around the world — including the European Union — in an effort to reduce the risk.
"I'm very optimistic about the opportunities for our exporters around the world," Frydenberg said.
Economists, meanwhile, say the ongoing trade spat hasn't yet escalated to the point at which it poses a real threat to Australia's economy.
Relations have been deteriorating since Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic in April, a move that Beijing called "political manipulation."…..
Politico, 3 December 2020:
The wolves come home to roost. On Sunday, Chinese diplomat (or is that “diplomat”?) Zhao Lijian managed to turn hostilities between Beijing and Canberra up yet another notch when he shared a graphic illustration on Twitter depicting an Australian servicemember gleefully cutting the throat of a small Afghan child. Australia’s defense minister had released a report on Nov. 19 recommending 19 Australian soldiers be investigated for what it called the “murder” of 39 civilians and prisoners in Afghanistan. Australian PM Scott Morrison promptly demanded an apology for the image, but he got the opposite. “Do they think that their merciless killing of Afghan civilians is justified but the condemnation of such ruthless brutality is not?” spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a Monday presser.
— Nationalistic Chinese netizens were excited by the row, lauding Zhao for “standing up and speaking up against the enemy,” reports China Watcher’s Shen Lu. Many raved about Zhao’s “agenda-setting capability” on the international stage. The creator of the image Zhao posted, who calls himself a “wolf warrior illustrator,” quickly followed up with another creation:
This one, which appears to depict a press corps more interested in a violent painting than a battlefield, has received over 546,000 likes and counting. But in posts that censors later deleted, Chinese critics said they believe Zhao does owe Australia a mea culpa, and delivered a reminder that Zhao used to go by Muhammad Lijian Zhao on Twitter while he was a diplomat in Pakistan.
— Meanwhile, incoming Natsec adviser Sullivan sure seemed to subtweet Zhao when he wrote Wednesday on Twitter that America will “stand shoulder to shoulder” with Australia, “as we have for a century.” It’s another important signal that Beijing won’t get a reset on its terms.
Univesity Wire, 3 December 2020:
The Australian government was among a number of Western countries that have called for an investigation into the origin of the Coronavirus in Wuhan. Two days later, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the World Health Organization needed the powers of "weapons inspectors" to get to the bottom of what happened in Wuhan.
What followed led to a diplomatic row and a souring of relations between the two countries not seen before - a row that reached a crescendo this week when Mr Morrison demanded an official apology after a graphic slur about Australia's alleged war crimes by a Chinese official on Twitter.
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