The foreign minister is repairing relations with China while unsentimentally hedging against its military might. Eruptions from Paul Keating and Donald Trump are simply part of that reality.
Already a subscriber?In a messy week of theatre and substance, Australia got a taste of a possible second Trump White House. Former prime minister Paul Keating and fierce AUKUS opponent indulged the visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s message that Beijing is no threat at all. And then Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles worked with their British counterparts to hedge against that very threat with nuclear-powered submarines.
Mr Wang went on to court Senator Wong’s personal arch-critic Mr Keating. The foreign minister is free to speak to whomever he likes in Australia, including the government’s opponents. Senator Wong cannot do the same in China.
But these periodic eruptions are Australia’s 21st century reality of having a natural economic partner that is not the same as our natural security partner, and the considerable differences in Australia on how this should be handled. Senator Wong has shown some skill at not just calmly wrangling situations but standing back and putting into her own intellectual framework around it as well. She sees a regional equilibrium of states large and small in which no state can dominate the other.
Australia’s dilemma with China is just a sharper version of one shared by many nations: China is a very large trading partner, sometimes a source of loans and aid, but not the one they willingly rely on to stay secure. So far, Australia has done a good job of trading while hedging, and asserting as Senator Wong did this week that it’s open for business but not intimidation.
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