I’ve been giving myself a few uppercuts lately regarding my near total ignorance of China. Cutting myself a break, I realised I’m not alone. Of the twenty-seven million of us, only 5% have Chinese heritage – inclusive of the recent spurt in immigration. Of the other 95%, there are only four China experts and they all live in Canberra. Maybe they know why we’re spending nearly four hundred billion dollars on AUKUS to ‘contain’ a country we know almost nothing about. Beyond the stereotypes – Chairman Mao, Xi Jinping, lots of people, the Great Wall – and lately, China’s belligerence in the South China Sea, I’ve been seeking out what else was available.
Tackling my unfamiliarity with the world’s oldest continuous advanced civilisation, showed me how much I knew and how much I’d forgotten. It has crystalised and reordered my thinking. Why do we think we should curtail China’s military might – a quite hopeless task – when we could engage with the nation as a whole and simply snuff out aggression by starving the need for it?
The current Chinese government, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (which Xi Jinping has an iron grip on) is not China. The CCP is a minority trying to impose order on an incredibly diverse population of ethnicities, who are spread out over a vast inland continent of geographical extremes. From scorching deserts to cool mountainous regions. From coastal to rural, to freezing tundra to rainforests. Regions where culture and traditions thrive and people live their daily lives, largely outside the reach of government. A country where young city dwellers bob and weave their way through whatever restrictions the CCP imposes on them, regardless of how the central government thinks they should live.
But there is so much to be admired about China. From its breathtaking scenery to ancient traditions reflected in art, architecture and history, to its incredible embrace and rollout of science and new technology. Yet we are treating all of China as a threat, based on the actions of the current CCP government’s mindset. Perhaps it’s time we played the long game the Chinese themselves are noted for.
Instead of spending so much money on a few factory second submarines, from an increasingly unreliable ally in the USA, maybe we need to find ways to get the CCP to chill out a bit. There is little evidence that China intends to pursue an imperialist future of war and conquest. Throwing its weight around in the South China Sea is more an example of a testosterone filled phase which will pass. China only recently re-emerged as a world power after centuries of poverty, foreign invasions and decline. It’ll take time to outgrow its “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy. But China will eventually discover that just because you can intimidate doesn’t mean you should.
Bullies learn that short-term chest beating exercises might make you feel better but when everyone avoids you because of your behaviour, you end up isolated. Though China seeks to claim hegemony over all the South China Sea, demanding rights over everything from transit, to fishing, to gas exploration – the notion is so untenable to all its neighbours that China will never be able to effectively implement the strategy.
While China’s military build-up is impressive and images of countless soldiers marching rigidly to order makes them look scary, how many of their servicemen and women actually want to fight? Are they really committed or just content to cosplay and hope everyone else engages in anticipatory obedience? Because evidence suggests that revolutionary zeal is seriously lacking in China’s young. Ironically, the problem for the CCP is that the more successful your economy becomes and the more prosperous people feel, the harder it is to maintain the motivation to give up a comfortable lifestyle and go and fight a real hot war.
So, while Xi and the CCP seem able to whip themselves into a never-ending frenzy of revenge driven self-importance, their citizens just want a peaceful, prosperous life. This motivation to gain ‘relevance through eminence’ has – through an astonishing, self-perpetuating mindset – unleashed a massive pool of latent, innovative talent. Becoming a modern-day superpower is now a fait accompli for China. It is an economic powerhouse, with unmatched manufacturing capacity and likely to be self-sufficient in its energy needs in the not-too-distant future. So it’s time they relaxed.
This is where the ordinary people step in. When person to person, human to human contact and connectivity, lowers the temperature between nations, from the ground up. Australia has a particular advantage in this power imbalance. Our wonderful country’s ability to seduce is unmatched. Our ambient climate, our beautiful beaches, unique wildlife and landscapes, our relaxed outlook and lifestyle, our high standard of living, the tolerant, free and safe society we enjoy – these attributes “Aussiefy” our continuous inflow of immigrants. To the extent the second generation of migrant families, born here to people from all around the world, often ‘out Aussie’ the Aussies. Chinese Australians seem particularly prone to the charms of the Lucky Country. These “Chaussies” are our secret weapon.
No doubt communication of the Australian way of life between Chaussies and their extended families in China is being disseminated throughout the population even now. Along with increasing two-way tourism, with over a million people in Australia of Chinese descent, that’s a fair bit of shadow diplomacy being conducted under the radar by the interactions of ordinary people going about their lives and building bridges between peoples by osmosis.
Unhindered by governments, an understanding of each other’s cultures and increasing respect and familiarity between ordinary Aussies and Chinese will over time, lower the temperature, the suspicion, the friction and the apprehension that is generated between societies who don’t know enough about each other to get along. Then the hundreds of billions being spent on AUKUS could be better spent on making Australia an even better place to live with the added bonus of living in harmony with our giant neighbour, not in fear of it.
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