Daily Times

Not many people would have heard of a man named Clive Palmer, a billionaire businessman and member of the Australian parliament. However, he certainly created quite a stir recently when he labelled the Chinese “mongrels” and “bastards” on national television. Referring to the Chinese government, he said, “They shoot their own people, they do not have a justice system and they want to take over this country. And we are not going to let them.” His apparently unscripted tirade arose out of a business dispute with a Chinese company. The Chinese government-owned CITIC Pacific has accused him, among other things, of siphoning $ 12 million out of their funds into financing his political ambitions. Palmer recently founded a new political party called the Palmer United Party (PUP). He managed to get elected to parliament, along with a bunch of his nominees to the Senate, the upper house of parliament. He has come to exercise considerable political influence through his senators who can and do frustrate the government’s political agenda.

Not surprisingly, Palmer’s remarks were condemned by all sides of the political spectrum in Australia as damaging to China-Australia relations. Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, called his comments “abusive and unnecessary” and said that China had every right to be offended, which it does. The Chinese embassy called his remarks “absurd and irresponsible, which are full of ignorance and prejudice.” The state owned Chinese media was not as restrained as the official response. The English language Global Times reportedly said, “Palmer’s rascality serves as a symbol that Australian society has an unfriendly attitude towards China.” And that “China must let these prancing provocateurs know how much of a price they pay when they deliberately rile us.”

In rushing to her leader’s defence, Senator Jaccqui Lambie only made things worse, warning that Australia risked becoming “slaves to an aggressive, anti-democratic, totalitarian foreign power.” Lambie said, “I strongly support the general point that Clive made about communist China’s military capacity and threat to Australia. If anybody thinks that we should have a national security and defence policy that ignores the threat of a Chinese communist invasion, you are delusional and [have] got rocks in your head.” The good thing is that Palmer has since apologised to China for his offensive remarks. But his colleague, Lambie, is still sticking by what she has said.

On the face of it, Clive Palmer and his PUPs might appear a bit unhinged, and they might well be, but they are not entirely out of sync with the underlying unease, if not fear, of China’s rising power. Australia’s 2009 defence white paper underlined it. The country’s deepening security relationship with the US and Japan is a pointer to this. Only recently, the same Global Times newspaper sharply rebuked Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop, calling her a “complete fool” after she said in an interview: “China does not respect weakness. We know that the optimum is deeper engagement [with China]. But we are also clear-eyed about what could go wrong. So you have to hope for the best but manage for the worst.” She pledged to stand up for Australian values. Earlier, she had strongly offended China by criticising it for seeking to change the status quo in the South China Sea and East China Sea on the question of disputed sovereignty with its South East Asian neighbours and Japan.

Even though the Australian government has done the right thing by condemning and repudiating Palmer’s anti-China remarks, he and Lambie were, in some ways, crudely expressing a general sense of unease in Australia about China. It is important to realise that this unease has a long history from the gold mining days in the mid-19th century when some Chinese migrated to Australia to partake of the country’s new fortunes. This led to the White Australia policy to keep them and other Asians out, continuing till the 1970s. The fear of ‘yellow hordes’ swamping Australia was part of a psyche that tends to find expression in different ways with the change of the times. With China becoming stronger by the day and challenging the regional status quo and to edge out the US from the region, the perceived fear is starting to appear real, though it is impolite and rude to talk about it like Palmer and Lambie did.

Beijing, however, is not happy about it, especially as China is Australia’s largest trading partner with two-way trade of around $ 150 billion, much of it in Australia’s favour. Beijing simply lost it when, during the recent official visit of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, Prime Minister Tony Abbot reportedly “admired the skill and sense of honour” of the Japanese submariners that attacked Sydney harbour in 1942. Clubbing together the remarks of Abbot and Julie Bishop, the Global Times wrote, “If Abbot’s words were meant to flatter his visiting counterpart Shinzo Abe, Bishop’s provocation [as quoted elsewhere] appeared to have come out of nowhere.”

But it is important to point out that the fear of China’s rising power is quite widespread in Asia. A region-wide survey of 48,600 people in 44 countries conducted by the US think tank Pew Research Centre reportedly found that 93 percent of Filipinos, 85 percent of Japanese, 84 percent of Vietnamese and 83 percent of South Koreans worried “that China’s territorial ambitions could lead to military conflict with its neighbours.” Viewed against this backdrop, Australia’s unease and fear of China does not appear too dramatic.

China’s reaction to Australia’s strong comments is tailored at two levels. At the official level, it is relatively restrained, even though making the point that Beijing is not amused. Beijing’s reaction, through its state-owned media, is much more robust. For instance, in reacting to Bishop’s comment about standing up for Australian values, the Global Times said cryptically, “The country used to be a place roamed by rascals and outlaws from Europe.” And added: “Australia’s history is not short of records of human rights infringement on the Aboriginal people.”

The fact that the two countries continue to operate normally in their bilateral relations, despite an occasional hiccup caused by outlandish remarks of a minor party leader or the blunt statement of its foreign minister, would suggest that they have no intention to ratchet up their differences. The Global Times, as the standard-bearer of Chinese nationalism though, provocatively asked, “Bishop calls for standing up to China, but what resources does she have to do so with?” Which is true but that is where its security alliance with the US and strategic cosying up with Japan come in. Beijing though seems confident that, sooner or later, Canberra would be forced to accept the reality of the changing balance of power in the region.

The writer is a senior journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia. He can be reached at sushilpseth@yahoo.co.au