The Economist - USA (2020-11-28)

34 Asia The EconomistNovember 28th 2020

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Banyan Hurly-barley

I

t is theoldest move in the Communist

Party’s playbook: to lock a country in

the doghouse when it has offended the

cosmic order. Yet even by China’s stan-

dards, the 14 grievances presented to the

government of Australia this month are

striking in scope and animosity.

The charges include speaking out

against Chinese activities in the South

China Sea, Xinjiang and Hong Kong;

excluding Huawei from 5gtelecoms

networks; calling for an independent

inquiry into the origins of covid-19;

passing a law against foreign interfer-

ence in politics; pressing the state of

Victoria to end its involvement in Presi-

dent Xi Jinping’s flagship infrastructure

initiative; blaming cyber-attacks on

China; and accusing Chinese journalists

of being state agents. China also griped

about Australia’s hostile media and

think-tanks. Make China the enemy, a

Chinese official told an Australian broad-

caster, and “China will be the enemy”.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking. China

severely limits foreign investment,

expels foreign journalists, takes in-

nocent people hostage as a diplomatic

weapon and routinely interferes in other

countries’ politics. As Richard McGregor

of the Lowy Institute in Sydney puts it,

any provincial boss in China who tried to

run a freelance foreign policy in the

manner of the Victorian government

would never be heard of again.

Meanwhile, China has all but shed

any legal pretence for blocking Austra-

lian imports. Yet complaining gets Aus-

tralia nowhere. Coal-carriers are an-

chored off the Chinese coast, unable to

land their cargoes. Australian wine sits

stranded on the quay in Hong Kong. For

decades Chinese demand has stoked

Australian prosperity. In just weeks

China has raised obstacles to 13 products

which generate over a third of Australia’s

total exports to China. Barley, sugar, tim-

ber, lobsters and copper ore have all been

banned. Wheat is next. Two biggies, iron

ore and lng, have been spared, but pre-

sumably only because it is hard to find

alternatives quickly.

Could Australia have avoided the dog-

house? From cyber-attacks to influencing

elections, China poses a threat, and the

prime minister, Scott Morrison, insists

Australia’s sovereignty is non-negotiable.

Yet members of his own Liberal Party as

well as the opposition Labor Party think

the government’s handling of China has,

in the words of Allan Behm of the Australia

Institute, been “cack-handed and lacking

nuance”. Why, in August, block the Chi-

nese purchase of (Japanese-owned) Lion, a

big dairy and drinks company, when the

foreign-investment board had already

given the nod? And calling alone for a

covid-19 inquiry instead of with other

countries was inviting Chinese spleen.

Hawkish dynamics within his party are

one reason why Mr Morrison has, as Hugh

White of the Australian National Universi-

ty puts it, “gone out of his way to poke

China in the eye”. One group of mps,

sporting claw-mark stickers on their

office windows, calls itself the Wolver-

ines, in homage to trigger-happy Ameri-

can teenagers resisting a Soviet invasion

in a cult 1980s film. A member, Senator

Eric Abetz, says its anti-China stand is

about calling out barbarism: “That’s the

Australian ethic—we call a spade a

spade.” Yet the antics of members (who

include Labor mps) are “immature, juve-

nile and destructive”, a foreign-policy

expert, Allan Gyngell, recently warned.

At one parliamentary hearing Mr Abetz

called on Chinese-Australians to de-

nounce the Communist Party.

Still, wariness of China is no longer a

fringe activity. In two years the number

of Australians who trust China to “act

responsibly in the world” has plunged

from 52% to 23%, according to the Lowy

Institute. In this context, Mr Morrison’s

talk of sovereignty, Mr White argues, has

a primal appeal: plucky Oz standing up to

a bully. But as American power ebbs and

Chinese power is in flood, Australians,

Mr White contends, “have no conception

of how to make [their] way”.

The lack of plan, says John Hewson, a

former Liberal leader, is all too evident in

the government’s handling of China. The

prime minister needs to get out of the fix

without appearing to back down. The

small businesses suffering from China’s

boycott are his party’s natural constitu-

ency. The departure of President Donald

Trump may help: Mr Morrison got spe-

cial bile from China for hewing close to

him. But the gap he needs to close is

wide. Six years ago Mr Xi addressed

Parliament in Canberra. Today the Aus-

tralian government cannot even get a

phone call answered. Welcome, China

seems to be saying, to the new order.

Australia learns the hard way about facing China’s wrath

time in years. It also deployed guided mis-

siles, which can destroy bunkers.

“There is no trigger here,” says Moeed

Yusuf, an adviser to Imran Khan, Pakistan’s

prime minister. “I can’t see any other rea-

son for this but what is happening inter-

nally within India.” Last year India revoked

Kashmir’s special status, detained local

leaders and restricted phone and internet

access. Panchayat (village council) elec-

tions are planned on November 28th, with

tight limits on campaigning.

But General H.S. Panag, who led India’s

Northern Command in 2006-08, says that

artillery flurries—“Diwali fireworks”, as he

calls them—break out for a jumble of rea-

sons. Indian officials often accuse Pakistan

of trying to distract Indian soldiers and

thus enable militants to infiltrate. Several

alleged infiltrators have been killed in gun-

fights this month, and on November 23rd

India said it had discovered a freshly-dug

150-metre underground tunnel. But

Happymon Jacob, author of “Line on Fire”, a

book on the loc, points out that the statis-

tical relationship between infiltration and

skirmishing is weak. Shells are as likely to

alert troops as distract them, after all.

Another explanation is that cross-bor-

der fire is a form of punishment. General

D.S. Hooda, another former head of North-

ern Command, says that the locdeteriorat-

ed in 2013 after Indian troops faced a wave

of improvised bombs, sniper attacks and

even beheadings. “This led to an immedi-

ate spike in cross-border firing,” he says.

After a big terrorist attack at Pulwama in

the Indian part of Kashmir in 2019, for

which a group based in Pakistan claimed

responsibility, India grew bolder. “After

Pulwama, the general policy was to pound

them everywhere,” says General Panag. 7