I appreciate you taking the time to write this thoughtful post. I think that our perspectives on the Australia-China relationship have a great deal in common. Like you, I have found Hugh White to be one of the most thoughtful Australian commentators on the relationship, both in terms of recognising how profoundly the rise of China alters our strategic environment and challenges the cultural assumptions that underpin how we see ourselves, our nation, and its place in the world. Professor White is also to be commended for laying out the full range of future policy directions available to Australia going forward, without the usual framing of "Australia and America together forever and ever and ever" that does so much to constrict public discussion here.
The most detailed account of my own thoughts on the Australia-China relationship can be found in
this post from a couple months back. In brief, I think that the rise of China poses profound challenges for Australia, but not insurmountable ones. I believe that Australia should certainly seek to protect and promote its interests as a small nation operating in the shadow of great powers, and that multilateral institutions and a "rules-based global order" offer the best means of doing so. I think that a certain level of friction in the Australia-China relationship is to be expected and that Australia should not reflexively accede to the wishes of Beijing (or Washington), though we must always be conscious of the power relationships that exist. At the same time I am greatly troubled by the trends in the Australia-China relationship that we have seen these past several years. I believe that the Australian government has managed the relationship poorly, and in doing so has inflamed tensions to levels that are unnecessary and undesirable.
The call for an "independent investigation" into the origins of COVID was an appalling political misjudgment and I'm not sure which possible explanation for it is worse: that it came from a politically naïve Prime Minister unaware of what he was doing, or that it came from a Prime Minister who was fully aware of how that call would be received in China (amid broader controversies regarding western attitudes towards China's engagement with the established institutions of the "rules-based order", in this case the World Health Organisation) and chose to make it anyway.
I am worried about the level of cultural-political-institutional-strategic entanglement we have with the United States and the extent to which it compromises our capacity to act or even think clearly and independently about our interests and where those diverge from those of the United States. I am worried about the racial-cultural attitudes that underpin much of our anxiety about China: our combination of arrogance and anxiety that comes from our history as an Anglo outpost in Asia, established atop the wreckage the indigenous cultures we encountered. I am worried about our political system and media environment and how elements within those structures thrive off conflict and short-term domestic political gains at the expense of intelligent and sober husbandry of a critically important relationship that must endure indefinitely in the future.
So I am critical of many aspects of how we have handled our relationship with China. But I do want to outline one perspective that I believe carries weight within the Australian decision-making apparatus. That perspective explicitly views the Australia-China relationship as a long-term project, and believes that it best serves Australia to make a robust defence of its interests, and to weather the resulting diplomatic storm, now rather than later. The idea is that we can communicate to Beijing what our interests are, what we will and won't stand for, and the pressures that we will or won't accede to. In the short-term this is expected to result in choppy diplomatic waters as China tests our resolve, but it is hoped that this will be offset by a longer-term benefit of "setting the bounds" for the Australia-China relationship going forward into the future. Essentially, the idea is that it is better for Australia to weather China's displeasure now, while China's power is still relatively limited and the US still remains an effective guarantor of the prevailing international order, than to do so at some unspecified point in the future when the relevant power dynamics are decidedly less favourable for Australia. That's not to suggest that this is a sensible plan, or that it has been well carried out, but there is at least a rationale for why Australian decision-makers, conscious of the hostility they are provoking from China, are continuing to act as they do.
Unfortunately your post did not directly address my question, which was
if and
why Australia is actually seen as a noteworthy subject for discussion within China and in Chinese-language media. It is entirely to be expected that the relationship gets a lot of coverage in Australia, but from China's perspective I would've thought Australia would be well down the list of countries and relationships worthy of attention, irrespective of how well or poorly the relationship was going. Reading between the lines, you've suggested that Australia has "taken the lead" in the "western crusade" against China, functioning as Washington's "attack dog". If that perspective on Australia is indeed widely held within China then that is very regrettable and something that, I believe, we should seek to change. For as you say, there is no fundamental reason born of history or geography why Australia and China should not be able to enjoy a reasonably harmonious relationship that benefits both nations.
