Australia contradicts itself with its ties with China

(MENAFN) Recent developments in China have had a striking and revealing impact on Australian politics and invite parallels with recent political turmoil in the UK and France.

Australia’s so-called “China crisis” partly arose when two prominent former Labor politicians—former foreign minister and NSW premier Bob Carr and former Victoria premier Dan Andrews—attended recent Victory Day celebrations in Beijing.

Their attendance at the events should not have been unexpected. China has long been Australia’s principal trading partner, a relationship that has significantly contributed to the nation’s current economic success. Australia’s prosperity today is largely rooted in these enduring and mutually beneficial economic connections with China.

Carr has consistently championed an independent Australian foreign policy and stronger ties with China for more than ten years. Meanwhile, Andrews, during his tenure as Victoria’s premier, negotiated Belt and Road agreements with China and continues to maintain business interests there.

Despite these facts, Murdoch-owned media outlets recently labeled China as an “evil tyranny” and harshly criticized both former Labor leaders as “shameful” for engaging with “Xi Jinping and the world’s nastiest dictators.”

An Australian newspaper, positioned as Murdoch’s “quality” broadsheet, ran headlines such as “Echoes of Adolf: Beijing or Nuremberg as Xi sends grim message”; “To control the future Xi manipulates the past”; and “Xi’s China unleashed”—a series of pieces that essentially sum up how recent events in China have been portrayed in the media.

Yet this approach falls short of genuine journalism. It is one thing to acknowledge that China is not a liberal democracy; it is quite another to indulge in ideologically extreme demonization of a major global power with which Australia, logically, must sustain constructive diplomatic and economic relations.

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