OPINION: Once Beijing understands the strategy of the US and its allies of establishing a regional balance of power a commitment to peaceful coexistence, it will work for us in the long term.
It may be that the resolve of Australia, the United States and Japan in recent years has finally led Beijing to realise that it can prosper in peace if it accepts a regional equilibrium: that is the basis of peaceful regional coexistence. Beijing has hitherto underestimated the cohesion and resolve of the liberal democratic allies. Now, maybe, it has learnt its lesson.
President Joe Biden’s meeting with Xi Jinping may have looked routine, but was particularly important.Once every three months or so, I would supplement this by spending an evening with the senior officials of the Office of National Assessment, as it was then called. Over a bottle of wine and takeaway meal, we would discuss geopolitical trends.
I thought this strategy was right at the time and I still believe it is. Establishing a peaceful equilibrium is fundamental to a medium-term strategy of peaceful coexistence. Whatever my views on communism may be, we have to accept that China will be there for the long run: it’s not going to disappear just because we don’t like its regime.We have to find a way of coexisting peacefully.
Beijing may also be beginning to realise that having a country like Russia as its closest ally is a very unhappy position to be in. China will use the change of government in Australia as a pretext for softening its diplomacy towards Australia, and it will start to put some diplomatic distance between itself and Russian President Vladimir Putin. There are already signs of that happening in UN forums in New York and elsewhere.
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