Opinion: China offers Australia friendship but expects the full kowtow | Peter Hartcher
It started the moment the Albanese government was elected. The government of China started making overtures. Premier Li Keqiang sent the new Australian prime minister a note of congratulations.
So, what’s Australia’s move? Australia is under pressure from Beijing on every front. Should Anthony Albanese take the opportunity for a reconciliation? He could claim a diplomatic coup and take the credit.But no. Three days after winning the election, Albanese made two key points about China relations. The first concerned the list of 14 demands that China’s embassy in Canberra issued to a Channel Nine reporter in November 2020.
At the same time, Beijing has been increasing the pressure it applies to Australia. Recall that two Australian writers are being held in detention in China’s system of political “justice”. Blogger Yang Hengjun was detained in 2019 and reports being daily blindfolded and shackled to a chair and interrogated for hours, among other mistreatments.
Pretending to offer the hand of friendship, they are, in fact, demanding the full kowtow. Offering public platitudes and private pressures, they are seeing whether a new Australian government will crack. It’s a try-on. The Albanese government has no intention of buckling and no conceivable political gain from doing so. It does intend taking a changed approach, nonetheless.
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