One commentator in Hong Kong has swallowed the anti-Howard line and used it in his comments but in today's Sunday Morning Post Lim Say Boom commented favourably on his stand. Lim is director of OCBC Investment Research in Singapore. The headline for the story is "Hairy-chested comments but logical". The point of his story is that trade wise there would be little impact even if Asean countries were to boycott Aus. 12% of Aus trade is with Asia and 41% of that 12% being with North Asia. And Singapore takes 4% of Aus trade. In other words Aus trade with our immediate neighbours is chicken feed. However, that is not the main reason for my post. I have said on another thread that Asia could not care less about Australia, are a racist bunch, and so I cannot see why we should care and pussyfoot around - they reject Australia. Mahathir is a classic example. However, in the article Lim quoted the Prime Minister of Thailand who said that Australia should be excluded from an Asian summit because the meeting was only for "yellow skin and black-haired" people. At another point in the article, and I quote:- "Certainly on the flip side of the coin Australia accounts for only a small perentage of most Asean countries' exports, hence the line in Asean about how Australia was like Asia's appendix - that "it's of no use and you only notice it when it starts being a pain."
You probably will not read such comments in Australia because "we do not want to upset our neighbours."
