I may take up Hong Kong in another post; but relations between Australia and China have been on my mind lately since it's been in the news.
I doubt that for now China would be interested in taking over Australia using its military. Why? I think history shows us how hard it was for European countries to govern their colonies. It was costly in both money and lives. Following WWII, the trend was to grant colonies freedom (in theory) while retaining influence over them via banks and corporations.
Australia is already a colony of China to a large degree, and now China is attempting to clamp down on Australia by using its economic levers. Donald Trump has made that easier for China by withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We could debate the pros and cons of that treaty. Some would say it benefited all the countries; others would say there were winners and losers. What seems more important to me is that democracies in the Pacific Area were presentig a unified front against the growing power of China. Trump thought he could do better for the US by withdrawing and cutting his own deal with China. I disagree with that approach since it has place our allies at a disadvantage. Canada had to go up against China without the backing of the US; and now Australia is in a similar situation.
It seems mostly a waste of time to me to investigate the origin of the coronavirus, but Trump insisted on it and made a big deal about it. I think he believes he was putting pressure on China and might get a better deal by applying it. Then for some reason, PM Scott Morrison expressed agreement with Trump on this, and China reacted by threatening to put tariffs on various key products it imports from Australia. China's real goal is to increase its own influence in Australia while reducing the influence of the US and other democracies.
Australia is vulnerable the way many countries rich in resources are. They rely too much on mining and agricultural exports. Australia should have noticed long ago that they are too dependent on exporting coal to China. China can cause higher unemployment in Australia whenever it wants just by reducing its coal imports. I understand trying to save those mining jobs for now; but no one seemed willing or able to create new businesses in the coal mining areas so if the mining jobs disappear, people can still find employment.
Coal is just one example. At present, China has a meat shortage too, so why would they be threatening Australia with higher tariffs on beef products? My guess is they think they can find that beef elsewhere if Australia doesn't bow down to them; and they probably could too. There are other things Australia exports to China; and amazingly, I just discovered this week that some of those businesses are partly owned by Chinese investors. That means if China slaps tariffs on a product, it hurts not only the Australians who have the jobs and the investors who own part interest int the company, it's also hurting the Chinese investors. That won't matter that much to the Chinese government.
Note too that how money flows in and out of countries is often ignored when people tout the advantages of "foreign investment." Surely a completely undeveloped country will benefit if foreign investors show up and create businesses with jobs; but the profits from those businesses do not stay in the country -- they flow to the foreign investors. Thus Chinese investors are getting richer by investing in Australian businesses; and some percentage of the profits are leaving for China. The news article I read could not determine what that percentage is. It reported that it's known there are Chinese investors in several companies, but the extent that Chinese investors own businesses seems to be unknown. I think Morrison's government should be investigating that more than worrying about the origin of the coronavirus. How much capital is flowing out of Australia into China when Australian businesses are operating profitably? It would be good to know since Australia would benefit if that capital, if sizable, stayed in Australia for more investment in other businesses.
Which way will the Morrison government go in the current dispute with China? I predict it will cave in to China, more or less. There is little to motivate Australia to side with the US on anything when it comes to economic issues. Trump seems to care only about American interests in the short term. He is an unreliable ally when it comes to taking on either China or Russia. He fails to see the advantages of having long term alliances, even it costs a little money to keep them in place.
LoL... How do u know so much about us. Im impressed.
Just one small error, u said that China threatened to put tariffs on some of our goods which more or less right
But u didn't mention that they went ahead and put an 80% tariff on our barley and stop doing business with 4 of our biggest beef suppliers.
Still but im impressed...
Im dirty on all the world leaders cos our PM, ScoMo, went out on a limb to demand an
independent inquiry. He contacted all the world leaders. Thats when China cut our barley and beef to make an example of Australia to the rest of the world "u go against China we will cut u off like this"
And the world leaders capitulated and bowed down to China by agreeing to let the WHO lead the inquiry
Then there is this "belt and road initiative" which ScoMo said no to... So the premier of the leftist state of all, Victoria, went behind Australias back to make a deal with China. Then when ask about the economic details as in how much are u borrowing they refuse to tell us
We have politicians saying stuff like "oh we better keep quite and not disturb China cos their worth billions to our economy"
I couldn't care less about Aussie economy, i care about our peoples economy, like real estate here is criminal.
I think they should cut ties with China all together. "oh but we'll loose...." I don't care... Manufacturing would come back and heaps more jobs would be created. But like u said our government relies too much on mining, iron ore is another massive export
We used to mine the iron, manufacture the steel then sell it to China.
Now we send the iron to China, the manufacture the steel then we buy it back off them. Stupid
And don't even get me started about our military industrial complex, its almost non existent now.
"oh we dont need hardware cos the USA has our back"... Like are u guys dumb. In WW2 the yanks only just made it to the coral sea in time to intercept the Japanese who were on their way here. If the USA has their hands full in a war then we'll have to fight ourselves. And to be honest our closest neighbor, Indonesia could take over Australia with baseball bats such is the difference in numbers. We have no carriers, no subs, our airforce is obsolete, we closed down ship yards and other military based companies like BAE and Tennex, we have no missile defence and no missiles...
Absolute stupidity. And many Aussies think "they won't come for us, a huge desert with nothing"... Stupid, why then was Japan trying to invade us?
Our natural resorces is enough for any country to want to take us...
Then our real estate, they own over 25% of it. They buy land off the government and build new estates or high rise apartments. Idiots
Why not just sell the whole nation off ya greedy bastards. Makes me so angry cos iv watched the average price of a house go from under $200,000 to over $800,000 in 20 years while the wages remained flatline. Ive seen manufacturing collapse...
Bottom line is that the politicians have sold us out and they should be ashamed