Of course China is punishing Australia – though they may not phrase it in those terms – and why wouldn’t they punish a two-faced nation? Indeed, why shouldn’t they?
Australia can’t have it both ways. We can’t expect to work on the basis of respect and partnership in the world of trade, for mutual benefit, and at the same time slag off on China as being a potential or actual enemy in the security arena. Things don’t and can’t work that way. Especially when a minnow attempts to put one over on a whale. Or to put it more bluntly, when a third rate economy tries to bully and coerce an economy that is easily the second largest in the world and likely will very soon – if it isn’t already – become the largest economy.
Australia’s so-called ‘friendship’ – a one-way affair at best – with the United States, is costing our nation far more than it is worth, whichever way you look at it.
On the security front, the US is an entirely unreliable ally or partner. It is absolutely certain that they would not even contemplate aiding Australia, even if they somehow found the means to do so, in any circumstance where they could not gain a clear advantage for themselves (at Australia’s cost). So, in reality, Australia is kow-towing to a vaccuum in excessively bending over to accommodate the US – which is itself a mere chimera of what it once may have been, though I surmise that most of that was always achieved by smoke and mirrors and/or carefully calculated timing. Wherever they were associated with some success, they actually were the last to turn up for the show. In other cases they surrounded themselves with a coalition of willing fools, worked from behind the scenes to create chaos, paid the lowest of the low to do the work for them, or they just didn’t show up at all. The Australian government and its establishment advisors place their trust in such an ally? Unbelievable! Are they not aware that the US is about to crash and burn, and split into a number of mutually hating and warring minor nations – bundling them all out of contention for any consideration as a global power? Of course they are unaware. They are not out of touch, they have never been ‘in touch’.
That’s the security front. What about the trade and economic front?
Ohhhhhh, Gawd luv’us, do I really need to spell that out? Does it really merit any sort of explanation? Anyone with any sense or at least two synapses to connect with a spark of life somehow, knows that you go where there is life and hope. And that exists only in one direction. And whether there is any future growth left in the economic life of humanity or not – most likely not – you go where there is potential for growth, or at least some sort of possibility of continuance and communication in trade and cooperation.
None of that applies to Australia of course, which, being an island, separated from everywhere else in every direction and having been awarded the distinction of locationally occupying the arse-end of the world, is on its Jack Lonesome. Well we can always paddle across to New Zealand for shopping I guess – if that hasn’t yet slipped beneath the waves in some Pacific Ring of Fire volcanic paroxysm. But for the Afro-EurAsian super-continent, an old-time ‘silk road’ or ‘Belt & Road Initiative’ operating all across that land would be something entirely desirable – even if it had to employ trains of mule wagons or camels. There will likely of course be some form of maritime trade – there always has been. Not with supertankers or huge container vessels, but using some form of historical technology.
You get the picture I hope. I expect that picture to leap out from the frame quite soon and transfer into the realms of reality. Now, which way would you rather be facing when that happens?
…and what brought on this little rant? This (and several other recent and not so recent articles of a similar nature)…
“China launches anti-dumping investigation into Australian wine exports” – ABC News Australia
Not Something Else 
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