Perhaps it started with Sco Mo Bozo the prime minister of Australia, calling for an investigation into the origins of the Wuhan flu, known, not to offend the new Masters of the Universe, CCP China, as Covid-19. The CCP went ape crazy, immediately going to threats, then trade sanctions against Australia. As Australia is basically a hole in the ground for minerals, and a sink for migrants from non-white countries as its part of the Great White Replacement, there was not much it could do. Then there came the defence agreement between the UK, US and Australia, the AUKUS pact, and the CCP said that this made Australia a nuclear target. The positive thing here is that the West at long last started to take note, that as China’s power grows, so does its capacity to be a bully.
“The Chinese regime’s economic coercion of Australia has been a “wake-up call” to other countries, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said.
China had been Australia’s top trading partner. But after Australia called for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19 in April 2020, the Communist regime retaliated by adopting a series of measures against Australian exporters, including arbitrary border testing and inspections, the imposition of tariffs, and unwarranted delays in listing export establishments and issuing import licences.
Truss, on a visit to Australia for talks on defence and security ties, discussed the threat posed by the Chinese regime in a speech at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Jan. 21.
She said: “The situation with Australia—the economic coercion we saw—was one of the wake-up calls as to exactly what China was doing and the way it was using its economic might to try to exert control over other countries.”
Truss said “there was a belief in the past that as China got wealthier, it was headed on a path towards becoming a freer, more democratic society,” but “the reality is that hasn’t happened.”
While the Chinese economy was a tenth the size of the American economy in the 1990s, she said, “We’re now in a situation with a China with a much bigger economy, much more able to coerce other nations.”
The foreign secretary said the UK government has “looked to Australia” as it formulates its own policies on relevant issues.
Truss said the UK and Australia are determined to act together in “calling out China” when it imposes coercive trade measures on Australia and other countries such as Lithuania, which saw its exports to China blocked after it allowed Taiwan to open a de facto embassy in Vilnius using its own name.
She said Britain and Australia will help countries “avoid having their balance sheets loaded with debt.”
She said 44 low-to-middle income countries have debts to China in excess of 10 percent of their GDP, and Britain and Australia will work together to provide these countries with “honest and reliable alternative sources of investment.”
The two countries are also strengthening their supply chains by “taking our economic ties with like-minded nations to new heights,” she said.
Truss said China and Russia are “working together more and more,” asserting their dominance over the Western Pacific and in space. “They are emboldened in a way we haven’t seen since the Cold War,” she said.
“As freedom-loving democracies we must rise up to face down these threats. As well as NATO we are working with partners like Australia, India, Japan, Indonesia, and Israel to build a global network of liberty.”
Truss’s visit comes after Britain, alongside the United States, signed a landmark agreement in September to provide Australia with the technology and capability to deploy nuclear-powered submarines.
The so-called AUKUS pact is widely seen as a regional alliance against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific region.”
At least under the Liberals there is some movement to be less of an economic slave to the CCP, unlike places such as New Zealand.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/australia-weathering-china-storm-treasurer_3982880.html
“Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has given an update on Australia’s economy, saying it has weathered Beijing’s economic coercion and is encouraging businesses to continue diversifying away from the China market.
The treasurer’s comments come just days after former Prime Minister Paul Keating wrote a scathing op-ed critical of the Morrison government’s handling of bilateral ties.
Frydenberg told the Australian National University’s Crawford Leadership Forum on Sept. 6 that the current global environment was “very different” from those faced by previous Australian governments.
“Those that advocated ‘The End of History’ in the early 1990s have been proven wrong,” the treasurer said referencing political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s book, “The End of History and the Last Man (1992),” claimed that with the fall of the Soviet Union, humanity’s evolution would end with free-market capitalism and democracy being the main form of government in the world.
Frydenberg said that a “more confident and assertive China” was the differentiating factor, as well as its willingness to use its economic weight as a “source of political pressure.”
He added that while the Soviet Union was largely isolated from the rest of the world, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was heavily integrated.
“Almost 130 countries now have China as their largest trading partner. This combination of economic weight, global integration and assertiveness poses new and significant challenges for many countries around the world,” he said.
“Heightened strategic competition is the new reality we face. Now and likely into the future,” he added. “Our task is to prepare for and manage this competition.”
Since April last year, Australia has weathered an ongoing trade coercion campaign from the CCP after Foreign Minister Marise Payne called for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
The move drew a sharp rebuke from the Chinese Ambassador to Canberra Cheng Jingye, who warned of potential action against Australia’s trading relationship with China.
In the following months, the CCP implemented a series of bans, suspensions, or regulatory hurdles targeting coal, wine, beef, barley, lobster, timber, lamb, and cotton exports to the country.”