China's government has announced it is indefinitely suspending all activities under the China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue – the first formal freeze of a diplomatic mechanism since relations between the two countries soured.
China's main planning body, the National Reform and Development Commission, announced the move in response to actions by the Australian government.
Beijing accused Australia of carrying out a "series of measures to disrupt normal exchanges and cooperation" and said the Commonwealth government had a "Cold War mindset" and practised "ideological discrimination".
High-level ministerial communication had already been frozen by China's government and this latest move comes after the Morrison government last month cancelled a Belt and Road agreement between China and the state of Victoria.
"Recently, some Australian Commonwealth Government officials launched a series of measures to disrupt the normal exchanges and cooperation between China and Australia out of Cold War mindset and ideological discrimination," the National Development and Reform Commission said in a statement explaining the decision.
Relations between China and Australia deteriorated last year after Canberra called for an international inquiry into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting trade reprisals from Beijing.
Love to be so scared of any form of socialism that you manage to re-close China. Nixon is malding somewhere in hell.
China won't re-close, but Australia's pro-US barking has really been the stupidest one to date. Like the US economy cannot exist without China at this point, they understand that, but Australia is just yoloing it with these mindless attacks, losing a huge export market: wine, coal, now this.
It’s honestly the opposite I thought would happen, I think under a Labor or perhaps even Turnbull-style Lib government we’d pivot towards China and leave the US to rot. But the insane true believers like Scomo and Dutton are in charge now and they’re more than willing to go down with the ship.
Oh most def, if Turnbull had somehow survived long enough to make it to a choice between US led foreign policy or Chinese led, he would’ve been knifed by the psychos in that party.
Rudd I always saw as a mining tax thing, but I’m sure it was multifaceted.
this, if a 5 Eyes nation actually elected someone who wouldn't side with the US over China they'd be gone within a month
5-Eyes has been staring cross-eyed for the last four years. Tony Blinken's trying to straighten everyone out. But he's also juggling the demands of a post-Reagan "Business Friendly" political landscape.
You can't be business friendly while picking a fight with your largest trading partner. So we try to pivot to alternatives - India, Brazil, Nigeria - only for these country to go up in flames in the face of COVID.
We're already alienated large chunks of Western Europe. Japan's decades of stagnation relative to China suggest that maybe we're not the best allies to have. Our endless saber-rattling with N. Korea is not playing well in S. Korea. And the Huawei fight is showing the limits of what even a coordinated action by Settler Colonial Western Governments can achieve.
At some point, westerners are going to have to abandon even the flimsiest pretext of neoliberal economic models or just give up and do business with the Chinese normally. Australia can't exist as an industrial export economy if it's decoupled from the nearest superpower and its multi-continent spanning trade regime.
i agree, good analysis, i'd add that there is a further option some 5 eyes countries refuse to ever give in to China and just disolve into full fascism but I imagine that will be closer to the imperial core
The winds can still change imo, now that China is actually fighting back, i think/hope even the staunchest idiots will see where things are going for them financially or if they don't someone else will come to replace them. The US has no allies and are more than happy to take over the markets they made their "partners" abandon. This has been the case with European natural gas, for example, as well as the Czech Republic where a dubious accusation about something that happened in 2014 made them reject the Russian vaccine as well as the tender Russians won to build a nuclear plant there (in favor of the US based Westinghouse in all likelihood, and much more expensive ofc). It's not a lot of fun to be a suzerain: you get a lot of support from US politicians on twitter and not a lot of else, while your infrastructure is deteriorating.
The winds can still change imo, now that China is actually fighting back, i think/hope even the staunchest idiots will see where things are going for them financially or if they don’t someone else will come to replace them.
The pessimist in me says that if Ozzies are willing to let their whole continent burn to defend coal profits, they'd do just about anything to defend white supremacy.
Yeah under different leadership maybe aus does the smart thing and does a balancing act of trying to not piss off either side but they've dove head first into being a running dog so maybe they aren't the most rational long term policymakers.
Everyone keeps talking about "Chinese Invasion" while forgetting they already own monumental amounts of capital, control trillions of dollars in cash flow, and have become the de facto market-maker for raw materials.
Beijing will eventually realize they can do to Australia what the Americans did to Chile. Just kinda lean back and wait until the domestic economy screams, then whisper sweet nothings in the ear of a power-mad wanna-be military dictator.
Australia thought they had a friend in Modi and could shift their manufacturing and exports there.
Guess what? India is slightly more corrupt than China.
So that plan is not working out too well.
India just doesn't have the infrastructure to compete with Chinese manufacturing. Even if you spend thd money building a state-of-the-art factory, that thing is useless in the face of rolling brownouts, or if there's not enough port capacity and rail cars to get your finished goods overseas.
Also kinda have their hands full at the minute, not sure how much manufacturing you can do when everyone in the factory has COVID.
Cool can't wait for our Aussie media to shit out some more red scare propaganda about this
Australia literally passed a law for transparency in think tank funding because they were afraid China was influencing thought, and the law uncovered massive funding and support from the CIA and US State Department for several think tanks instead. Australia is too dumb to function as a nation and they only prove everyday they should be under the control of the CCP even though they aren't.
Chuds once again proving to be the Leftist's most unlikely ally. Reminds me of the UK Tories effectively spearheading Defund The Police through their draconian budget cuts in England.
L O L
O
LAll Xi has to do now is turn back the iron ore ships and this country is fucking dead ahahaha.
Collapsing our entire economy to own the chicoms....fucking Liberals. You'd think the Mining and Farming industry would be fucking murdering them.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-06/austal-nears-deal-strategic-philippines-port-china-operations/100115672
The harbour, once known as Naval Base Subic Bay, was home to thousands of American sailors and their families before the US Navy left in 1992.
Australian and American warships still regularly make port calls, and US marines practice beach landings nearby in Zambales province.
"There's a massive difference between how Australian business operates or American business operates and how China operates, and the difference is this thing called the Chinese Communist Party," Mr Jennings told the ABC.
Subic's importance has grown in recent years with China's military expansion in the nearby South China Sea, where it has rapidly built-up artificial islands in the contested waters.
How dare China put their bases in the... [checks notes] South China Sea so close to US/Australian bases in the Philippines!!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-04/port-of-darwin-chinese-lease-us-army-peter-dutton/100112788
“The lease of the commercial Port of Darwin was then discussed by the Secretary of the Department of Defence, Mr Richardson, and the US Deputy Secretary of Defense in a meeting in Washington, face-to-face”.
Invisible hands of the free market are the devils playthings
