So this is what capitulation by a great power looks like.
After all the rants and insults, the political freeze and the trade bans, the president of China brought his intimidation campaign of Australia to a politely meek end.
Xi Jinping hosted the prime minister of Australia for a friendly chat. Three years after imposing a total ban on political contact with Australia, it was China that instituted the rapprochement.
Remember how the AUKUS security agreement was “destabilising” and a reckless act of nuclear proliferation, according to Beijing? Xi made no mention of it, according to Anthony Albanese.
And the bans on more than $20 billion worth of Australian products, a blatant act of economic coercion? Some have been quietly relaxed over the months as China discovered that it needed Australian coal and wheat to warm and feed its people more than it wanted to hurt Australia.
We can now expect the remaining boycotts to drop away over the months ahead. “I put forward Australia’s position on trade blockages,” Albanese told reporters.
He noted that it “struck me that both of us talked about how we have highly complementary economies”. We also discovered that Australia’s economy was better able to find alternative export markets than China’s was to find alternative import sources.
Remember that Australia was likened to “chewing gum stuck to the bottom of China’s shoe”, according to a regime propagandist? China was going to find a rock and rub it off, he said.
But on Tuesday Xi spoke warmly of the fact that he’d visited every state in Australia. He’s developed a renewed taste for chewing gum, it seems.
And this is what resistance by a middle power looks like.
Australia conceded nothing. “We have had our differences and Australia won’t resile from our interests or our values,” as Albanese said directly to Xi at the outset of their meeting.
True, Australia changed its government in an election. But all it’s done differently is drop some of the more bellicose rhetoric. Neither the Morrison nor Albanese governments conceded a single one of Beijing’s 14 demands.
That list, delivered with the theatrical threat that “China is angry”, is now an awkward reminder to Beijing of its hubris and arrogance.
And it should serve as a bracing lesson to Australia. In that moment – when Xi showed his true face – he sought to break Australia’s sovereign will, to force it to change its fundamental values and institutions.
As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in February, Australia has “set an incredibly powerful example” to the world in how to resist coercion by a hostile dictatorship.
It’s too much to expect Xi to be embarrassed. But the Australian apologists for China, who hysterically warned of economic armageddon unless Canberra surrendered, should be ashamed.
