China’s unequal showdown with Australia didn't intimidate (survival in Sino sphere)

[C C]

https://www.theatlantic.com/internationa...ca/619544/

INTRO: “Chewing gum stuck on the sole of China’s shoes.” That’s how Hu Xijin, the editor of the Chinese Communist Party–run Global Times, described Australia last year. The disparaging description is typical of the disdain that China’s diplomats and propagandists have often shown toward governments that challenge Beijing—like Australia’s.

China is now the great power of Asia—or so Beijing believes—but those pesky Australians, mouthing off about human rights and coronavirus investigations, refuse to bend the knee. Beijing has turned to economic pressure to compel Australia to fall in line. “Sometimes you have to find a stone to rub it off,” Hu wrote, of the gum and of Australia. But the Australians have proved impossible to shake, and have instead caused some embarrassment for their image-obsessed tormentor.

The ongoing dispute between Australia and China may seem merely a bilateral affair, fought out in a remote corner of the planet. But it matters around the world.

Australia is a crucial American ally in Asia, so China’s actions toward the country inevitably affect both Washington’s policy and its standing in the region. Australia is representative of many countries: a midsize nation whose economic relationship with Beijing is vital for growth and jobs but, simultaneously, whose politicians and citizens are becoming more concerned about China’s repressive tactics at home and aggression abroad.

The deteriorating relationship between the two countries thus reveals a lot about how China’s leaders can and can’t employ their growing diplomatic and economic power, as well as the options, consequences, and costs for countries, such as Australia, that seek to stand up to Beijing.

Australia “really is a bit of a canary in the coal mine,” Jeffrey Wilson, the research director at the Perth USAsia Centre, a foreign-policy think tank, told me. “You should care about what is happening here, because it’s got lessons for everyone.”

The most important lesson is also the most unexpected. On paper, the outcome of a China-Australia showdown looks like a foregone conclusion. China, a rising power with 1.4 billion people and a $14.7 trillion economy, should trample a country of 26 million with an economy less than one-tenth the size. But in a world wrapped in interdependent supply chains and complex political connections, smaller countries can wield a surprising armory of weapons. The U.S.-led global order, still held together by common interests, long-standing relationships, cold strategic calculation, and deeply felt ideals, isn’t ready to crumble before the march of Chinese authoritarianism either. The story instead offers a more intriguing twist: a China that badly wants to change the world but can’t even change an uppity neighbor.

Chinese leaders “are trying to make an example of us,” Malcolm Turnbull, the former Australian prime minister, told me. “It is completely counterproductive … It is not creating greater compliance or affection.” Quite the opposite, he said: “It is confirming all the criticisms that people make about China.”

That should lift spirits in Washington. Australia is a key pillar of the network of alliances that upholds American dominance in Asia and the Pacific. If anything, Washington’s ties to Canberra are becoming even more important. Australia and the U.S. are members of the “Quad,” a loose grouping with Japan and India that largely seeks to contain China. What happens to Australia, therefore, has tremendous consequences for U.S. power in the Pacific.

“China can’t bash up on the U.S., but it can bash up on its allies,” Richard McGregor, a former Beijing bureau chief at the Financial Times who’s now a senior fellow at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute, told me. “If China can break Australia, then that’s a step to breaking U.S. power in Asia, and U.S. credibility globally.”

Australia’s importance hasn’t gone unnoticed in the White House... (MORE)

[C C]

Nobel prize winners say China tried to bully scientists into disinviting Dalai Lama & Taiwanese chemist
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/nobel...i-n1275395

INTRO: More than 100 Nobel laureates are expressing outrage over what they say was an attempt by the Chinese government to "bully the scientific community" earlier this year by seeking to censor two Nobel laureates during the Nobel Prize Summit in April held by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the Nobel Foundation.

They say the Chinese Embassy in Washington demanded that the summit disinvite two speakers, the Dalai Lama and the Taiwanese chemist Yuan T. Lee — both Nobel Prize winners who have criticized Chinese policy regarding their native lands.

After they rejected the Chinese demands, the Nobel laureates allege, a video transmission during the session was disrupted "by a presumed cyberattack," though they are not able to attribute it to China.

"We are outraged by the Chinese government's attempt to censor and bully the scientific community by attempting to prevent two of our fellow Laureates (or indeed anyone) from speaking at a meeting outside of China," the laureates said in a statement. "The future of our planet will require collaboration between all nations and all scientists across the globe. Many of us have valued scientific colleagues and long-standing friends in China, with whom we interact productively. Unfortunately, actions such as those described above only serve to hinder such essential cooperation, and if continued, will affect our willingness to participate in events in China, particularly those fully or partially sponsored or supported by the Chinese government." (MORE)

[Yazata]

INTRO: “Chewing gum stuck on the sole of China’s shoes.” That’s how Hu Xijin, the editor of the Chinese Communist Party–run Global Times, described Australia last year. The disparaging description is typical of the disdain that China’s diplomats and propagandists have often shown toward governments that challenge Beijing—like Australia’s.

It's not exactly a good way to win friends and influence people.

China is now the great power of Asia—or so Beijing believes—but those pesky Australians, mouthing off about human rights and coronavirus investigations, refuse to bend the knee.

In real life, it's hard to think of any of China's neighbors that it's really friendly with. It keeps threatening to invade Taiwan. It just threatened Japan with a nuclear strike the other day (if Japan comes to Taiwan's aid) and claims some Japanese islands. Vietnam is profoundly distrustful of China, they fought a war in the 1970's (that's since been erased from official Chinese history) and they have conflicting claims on islands in the South China sea. India and China are nuclear armed rivals and China claims lots of Indian territory on the Himalayan frontier where there are periodic armed confrontations. India is sympathetic to the Tibetans as well. The Philippines and Malaysia have South China Sea disputes with China. Mongolia fears being overrun and becoming the next Tibet. Russia is a big-power geopolitical rival.

Pakistan is perhaps China's closest friend among its neighbors, but Pakistan's instability, nuclear arms and Islamic fundamentalism can't be reassuring to Beijing. Kim Jong Un is a loose canon and more of a liability than an asset.

The most important lesson is also the most unexpected. On paper, the outcome of a China-Australia showdown looks like a foregone conclusion. China, a rising power with 1.4 billion people and a $14.7 trillion economy, should trample a country of 26 million with an economy less than one-tenth the size. But in a world wrapped in interdependent supply chains and complex political connections, smaller countries can wield a surprising armory of weapons. The U.S.-led global order, still held together by common interests, long-standing relationships, cold strategic calculation, and deeply felt ideals, isn’t ready to crumble before the march of Chinese authoritarianism either. The story instead offers a more intriguing twist: a China that badly wants to change the world but can’t even change an uppity neighbor.

Australia is an exporting country that lives off exporting things like huge quantities of iron ore. And Australians have been fixated for a generation on serving the huge Chinese market. But now the Australians are starting to perceive the downside of their own policies. Australia doesn't want to become a Chinese client state.

But China isn't the only possible market for Australian exports. There's the United States and Europe. There's Japan up to the north. And there's India, another rising power. China's trying to behave as if it's Australia's only option, and it's not.

The Trump administration tried to engineer a deemphasis on Europe (hence the demand that they pull their own weight instead of outsourcing their own defense to the US at our expense) and a new Asian emphasis anchored on alliances with Australia, Japan and India, the so-called "Quad". That's something that will likely happen regardless of administration, because it's in all of these countries' interest to ally with one another.

Ironically, China is driving it through their own heavy-handed behavior.

[confused2]

We (the UK) aren't intimidated.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58015367
Slightly worrying - I suspect China have a rather larger navy than we do.

[C C]

We (the UK) aren't intimidated.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58015367
Slightly worrying - I suspect China have a rather larger navy than we do.

"Contrary to a 2016 international court ruling, China claims much of that sea as its own and has been busy building artificial reefs and runways, some of them close to the territorial waters of neighbouring states. Both US and Royal Navy warships have recently challenged China's claims to sovereignty in the South China Sea by purposely sailing through it."

If they cease routinely doing that, then China will effectively come to own it in reality, if not officially on paper.

[Yazata]

We (the UK) aren't intimidated.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58015367
Slightly worrying - I suspect China have a rather larger navy than we do.

If China attacks Britain's carrier battle group, it might find that the Brits and their F-35's can fight back. So an attack on an aircraft carrier and its supporting ships would have to be strong enough to put the carrier out of commission and/or sink it. And that would cause thousands of British casualties and be a major act of war.

But frankly, I'm not sure what Britain could do about it short of a nuclear exchange which would be so devastating to Britain that Beijing might gamble London would never consider it. Britain has nothing like the conventional military strength necessary to fight China by itself and the Chinese know it.

So a British response would have to be part of a larger American response. And I'm not sure what a Biden administration would do in that case. I'm not convinced that today's Washington would go to war with a superpower over a sunk foreign warship. Especially when the American leadership class has so many corrupt business dealings of their own with the Chinese.

Perhaps the best that we could hope for would be that the fallout (hopefully not literal) from such an attack would sweep away all the dreamy globalist "new world order" fantasies as China continues to play by 17th century Mercantilist rules, running huge trade surpluses with those countries that it wants to target as a matter of policy (rivals like the US and Europe) draining vast sums of money from their economies while destroying the industrial capacity of those target countries. And as it allows smaller nearby countries (Australia is in this class) to run large trade surpluses with China, so that their economies become increasingly dependent on Chinese trade and good will for their prosperity.

That's the Chinese long-term strategy and if Western Civilization has any hopes of surviving, it needs to come to its senses soon.

So an easily contained military attack that the Chinese might hope would humiliate their rivals and reveal their impotence, might turn out to be severely counterproductive if it ended their rise-of-China economic strategy.

[stryder]

We (the UK) aren't intimidated.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58015367
Slightly worrying - I suspect China have a rather larger navy than we do.

If China attacks Britain's carrier battle group, it might find that the Brits and their F-35's can fight back. So an attack on an aircraft carrier and its supporting ships would have to be strong enough to put the carrier out of commission and/or sink it. And that would cause thousands of British casualties and be a major act of war.

But frankly, I'm not sure what Britain could do about it short of a nuclear exchange which would be so devastating to Britain that Beijing might gamble London would never consider it. Britain has nothing like the conventional military strength necessary to fight China by itself and the Chinese know it.

So a British response would have to be part of a larger American response. And I'm not sure what a Biden administration would do in that case. I'm not convinced that today's Washington would go to war with a superpower over a sunk foreign warship. Especially when the American leadership class has so many corrupt business dealings of their own with the Chinese.

Perhaps the best that we could hope for would be that the fallout (hopefully not literal) from such an attack would sweep away all the dreamy globalist "new world order" fantasies as China continues to play by 17th century Mercantilist rules, running huge trade surpluses with those countries that it wants to target as a matter of policy (rivals like the US and Europe) draining vast sums of money from their economies while destroying the industrial capacity of those target countries. And as it allows smaller nearby countries (Australia is in this class) to run large trade surpluses with China, so that their economies become increasingly dependent on Chinese trade and good will for their prosperity.

That's the Chinese long-term strategy and if Western Civilization has any hopes of surviving, it needs to come to its senses soon.

So an easily contained military attack that the Chinese might hope would humiliate their rivals and reveal their impotence, might turn out to be severely counterproductive if it ended their rise-of-China economic strategy.

Attacking a carrier would be a huge mistake, not just from the potential of such an act of aggression but down to what such vessels do outside of being used for warfare. When there are floods, famines, searches for survivors from downed planes etc such vessels are used, there also necessary to help reduce piracy which plagues all countries.

Bejing likes to have their military parades, think of the carrier crusing by as being a belated British one.

International waters are just tha,designating them as sovereignty can undermine free passage which in turn causes further problems. Maintaining free passage is essential otherwise it means redirecting traffic which means burning more fossil fuels (which incidentally the shipping trade is a major contributor to)

To be honest I think it's more about China's islands being built for their "super" (brain washing?) soldier program. Placing soldiers on an island, completely isolated from the mainland and having only their military to rely upon for supplies etc could lead to an elite training location where the people there don't care about the mainlands politics and aren't worried about causing collateral damage when it comes to crunch time due to their isolated conditioning.

It's right up there with staring at goats.

[Yazata]

Big news on the Australia strategic front --- and France isn't happy.

Australia, the UK and the US have just announced a strategic defense partnership called AUKUS (Australia-UK-US)

And the first item of business announced was the termination of a five year old plan for Australia to purchase 12 diesel powered French submarines. This contract had grown more and more troubled over the years, with delays and cost-overruns.

To replace them, the US and UK propose to transfer nuclear submarine technology to the Australians to enable construction of eight new Australian nuclear-powered attack subs. They say that the next 18 months will be devoted to planning how that is to be achieved. There was increasing concern in Australia whether the French conventional subs would even be sufficient to patrol the vast region of the west Pacific and Indian oceans. The answer is nuclear subs.

This technology sharing is pretty much unprecedented for the US, which keeps tight control of its nuclear submarine secrets, and has only given them to one other country, the UK. That enables British subs to be the technological equal of US subs and equally potent. So not only would the Australians be getting nuclear subs, these would be the world's most advanced nuclear subs. The US insists that this Australian assistance is a one-off and won't be repeated.

Which is an indication of American regard for Australia. Right up with the UK in "special relationship" territory.

The French are livid and are treating it almost like an act of war. Paris has ordered its ambassadors out of the US and Australia (but not the UK for some reason).

They are outraged that the Australian submarine contract is being terminated, since French state-owned shipyards stood to make $40 billion (US) on the deal. Probably the largest foreign deal that the French arms industry currently has. I'm not sure what kind of termination clauses the Australian sub contract had.

The French are also angry that they weren't included in AUKUS. They claim that they weren't even told about it beforehand and are shrieking that this isn't how allies treat one another. They even detonated the worst insult in the French vocabulary, saying that Biden was behaving just like Trump (as if that's a bad thing). Of course the French are partners to their own groupings that the US, Britain and Australia weren't consulted about France joining, not least the European Union.

But it is possible that the announcement of AUKUS was conducted in a diplomatically ham-handed way, even if it's an excellent idea that will greatly increase Australia's security and that of all of its allies (including France).

The French are hinting darkly that this will endanger French cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region. Of course French policy in that area will presumably continue to be driven by French interests. And it can only serve French interests to have a stronger Australia better able to contribute to responding to Chinese expansionism.

One thing that the French are talking about very pointedly is backing away from reliance on its US alliances and pushing instead for a European Union military. But it's not like that would hurt the United States. President Trump complained for years that our European nato allies weren't pulling their weight and have effectively outsourced their defense to the US at US expense. He wanted Europe to take a stronger military role in the world. So if France can somehow motivate the rest of Europe to do more in that regard, that's in our interest too. The European Union likes to think of itself as a leading global superpower, but in some of the most important ways it simply isn't. It would be in the American interest for there to be another friendly superpower. Good luck to you, Mr. Macron.

[Yazata]

More details have been announced about how the AUKUS arrangement will proceed:

Starting this year, Australian sailors will be embedded in some US nuclear submarine crews, to give the Australian navy first-hand experience in nuclear submarine operations. The same will happen on British nuclear submarines, though not this year.

Then starting in 2027, US and British nuclear subs with Australians in their crews will start deploying to and operating from Australian navy bases, most notably their Fleet Base West near Perth. This will give Australian shore facilities experience in supporting nuclear submarine operations.

Then in the 2030's, the US proposes to provide Australia (probably by lease with the US retaining ownership) with three to five American Virginia class nuclear subs, for the Australians to operate as part of their navy. There are lots of questions about this, such as American worry that the US won't have any subs to spare and will need those boats. But by the 2030's the oldest Virginia class subs (the first five were all commissioned before 2010) will probably already be scheduled to be paid off. They will probably all still be quite good boats, but the US navy might want to unload them to free up the operating costs to help pay for new Virginia class boats with more modern systems, armaments and features. So instead of simply scrapping the older boats, lease them to Australia to keep them in service, thus increasing the number of allied nuclear submarines in service. Win-win.

This is a temporary expedient, since the Australians propose to actually purchase as many as eight of a new class of British designed nuclear subs now being planned for the future royal navy. These should enter service in the 2040's. The first of the Australian boats are planned to be built in British yards, and the later ones built in an Australian shipyard in Adelaide that doesn't exist yet. (There will inevitably be slippage, but this is all 20 years out anyway.) This plan seems designed to give more work to British nuclear submarine yards and to give Britain a bigger role in the project than they might have had. There's also the problem that the US currently and for the forseeable future only has the capability of constructing two nuclear subs a year and half of the capacity will be devoted to constructing ten new Columbia class ballistic missile subs in coming years. That means only one new Virginia a year for ten years. So if Australia bought as many as eight new-build US boats, that would really cut into the US navy's future plans. The British can build more boats than the British navy can afford to buy. So solve that problem by keeping the British Barrow in Furness yard working on Australian boats too. Win-win.