Kevin Rudd now has a China problem. And it is largely one of his own making.
- Article in today’s Australian by Glenn Milne - http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25769691-7583,00.html
Extracts…
In diplomatic terms this has already gone beyond Hu himself, and has become a substantive issue between the two countries and by implication between the leaders of the two countries, Kevin Rudd and Hu Jintao. As Julie Bishop, speaking for the opposition, said yesterday: this has now gone beyond a claim of industrial spying. It is now "a Beijing-to-Canberra" issue.
While much has been made over the past 48 hours about the need for Australia to tread carefully here, it is hard to get around the obvious fact that China has deliberately chosen not to. Given the circumstances, the only reasonable conclusion is that China is muscling up to Australia.
The perceived slight, be it the failed bid by the state-owned Chinalco to buy 20 per cent of Rio or the ambiguous rhetoric of the government's 2009 Defence White Paper, which nominated China as a regional arms threat without ever identifying Beijing by name, does not matter. What matters is that China has retaliated in an ugly and public fashion.
The arrest of Hu is not the act of a friend. And there is no longer any way to ignore that fact. Barring a quick resolution the future of the bilateral relationship will now have to be tempered by that realisation.
But who is to blame here? China is the aggressor, there is no doubt. But the question must be asked as to whether Kevin Rudd created the context in which Hu has become a diplomatic proxy for a sharp deterioration in bilateral relations.
If the expectations of Rudd at this moment are high it's because he has built them himself. In opposition he relentlessly used his tenure as first secretary to the Beijing embassy in the 1980s as evidence of his unique understanding of the country. He used his experiences to cast himself as a Labor leader intent on deeper engagement with the great powers of Asia, in the Whitlam/Hawke/Keating tradition.
It became part of his personal narrative as a former diplomat with keen insights, understanding, and strong connections to the power elites of Asia. It was highly effective in defining Rudd politically.
As Prime Minister he followed through by making Beijing his first stop on his first substantive visit to the region. He very obviously did not include Tokyo on that trip, an omission that prompted serious concerns in the region and elsewhere about a significant realignment of Australian foreign policy in China's favour.
This was against the ostentatious background of the key moment in his opposition leadership, when he delivered a speech in Mandarin to an APEC luncheon in honour of Hu Jintao. The alternative prime minister was signalling his special connection to the Chinese leadership.
He then took this to new heights on his trip to the US at the end of 2008, when he devoted most of his mainstream media appearances in New York and Washington to promoting the importance of bringing China into the discussions of the global financial crisis. As Turnbull noted at the time, Rudd was meant to be in the US and Europe as the Prime Minister of Australia, not a roving ambassador for China.
Then, inexplicably, the tone and temper of the Rudd Government's language on China began to shift. Counter-intuitively Rudd became highly extravagant in his rhetoric about the risk of an arms race in Asia. Then in the context of the Fitzgibbon interlude we had the excruciating spectacle of Rudd refusing to be seated next to Madam Fu Ying in a London TV studio, presumably because of growing sensitivities that his government had cuddled up too close to China.
Ahead of the release of the white paper, the Rudd government fed media speculation that China's modernisation of its military could come to represent a strategic threat to the stability and security of the region, and therefore Australia. This raised anxieties in Beijing about mixed messages from the government.
Coinciding with the denouement of the Rio/Chinalco play, the key strategic take-out from the white paper, as reported extensively by the Australian media, was received very poorly in Beijing. Why would a friendly nation, a friendly government, see China's future role as involving menace or malevolence?
What we are now witnessing is the harvest of Rudd's mismanagement of the China relationship, including the ambiguous signals he sent on the Chinalco deal. It has been a classic case of overreach and then apparent over-correction. If Rudd really knew anything about China it's that it is unsentimental in its foreign policy and business dealings. Beijing is entitled to expect that we say what we mean, and will act accordingly: consistently, coherently, and with maximum transparency.
Rudd is fond of telling us of his phone conversations with heads of state. Now is the time for just such a conversation. If not for the sake of the bilateral relationship, at least for the sake of Stern Hu.
