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.
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 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.