As expected, the so called olive branch is just empty slogan.
Australia Says It Won’t Give Ground on China’s Grievances
(Bloomberg) -- Australia said it won’t give ground on a list of Chinese grievances against the government as a growing diplomatic row hurts trade between the two countries.
A Chinese diplomat in Canberra last month handed media outlets a document outlining 14 grievances, from Australia meddling in domestic affairs in Hong Kong to calling for a probe into the coronavirus outbreak. Relations have been souring for months, with a string of commodities targeted with tariffs or bans in what Canberra says amounts to “economic coercion.”
Referring to the list of grievances, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told Sky News on Thursday that Australia is “not going to give way on those.”
“They go to the heart of who we are,” he said. “Our national identity, a free press, a democratically elected parliament and obviously upholding our national interest when it comes to things like foreign investment.”
Relations hit a new low this week after a diplomat in Beijing tweeted a fake image purporting to show an Australian soldier holding a knife to the throat of an Afghan child -- a reference to an ongoing war crimes probe. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the post was “repugnant” and demanded an apology. He also took to WeChat, defending Australia as a “free, democratic, liberal country” and explaining that an official probe is underway to investigate allegations of atrocities committed by Australian special forces soldiers in Afghanistan.
China’s Wolf Warrior Diplomats Slam Australia, Win Fans at Home
That post has been deleted by WeChat, for the use of “misleading words” to “distort historical events and deceive the public.”
Frydenberg said the removal was unnecessary.
Ties between the major trading partners have been strained since 2018 when Canberra barred Huawei Technologies Co. from building its 5G network and introducing anti-foreign interference laws aimed at halting Beijing’s “meddling” in domestic affairs. Relations have been in a deep freeze since April, when Morrison’s government called for independent investigators to enter Wuhan to probe the origins of the coronavirus.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
