Stop the Asian Invasion: Chinese Takeover of Australia - Politicians 4 Sale

[Rev.Cambeul]

Video: Australia should threaten China with taking back Port of Darwin: Christensen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqOa4jJMwao

China is set to ramp up boycott of Australian exports as Beijing-controlled media warns iron ore - worth $63B to our economy - could be next amid fears of an all out trade war

* Tensions with China have escalated since PM called for a coronavirus inquiry
* China has suspended some beef imports and is mulling tariffs on Aussie barley
* China is set to boycott iron ore exports - worth $63billion to our economy
* The communist nation could turn to Brazil or other countries for commodities

Alana Mazzoni & Charlie Moore | Daily Mail (UK) | 14 May 2020

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8315937/China-set-ramp-boycott-Australian-exports-amid-coronavirus-pandemic.html

Excerpt: The Chinese government is set to slap further restrictions on Australian exports in retaliation to Scott Morrison's calls for an international inquiry into the origins of COVID-19.

China's state-controlled media and trade experts warned Beijing's boycott could extend beyond beef and barley, with iron ore - worth $63billion a year to Australia's economy - potentially next in line. 

The Global Times newspaper, a mouthpiece for the communist government, suggested China could easily turn to Brazil for iron ore and other commodities - and did not need Australian exports.

'The latest meat import suspension and the possible imposition of major tariffs on Australia's barley exports don't necessarily represent China's economic punishment for Australia, though they may serve as a wake-up call for Australia to reflect on its economic links with China,' the Global Times said on Wednesday.

'While China is the only choice for Australia's massive commodity exports, Australia is not necessarily the only option for China. There are also other countries like Brazil that can supply huge amounts of iron ore, coal or LNG to China.'

Professor Willy Lam from the Chinese University of Hong Kong told the AFR China would continue to use 'economic coercion for political ends' because it 'doesn't want an independent inquiry into Wuhan'.

'This is well orchestrated and co-ordinated [by Beijing]. I think we will see more of this. This [coronavirus] is a weak spot in the narrative,' he said.

This week China suggested it would impose an 80 per cent tariff on Australian barley - and has already suspended imports of Australian beef from four major suppliers.

Australian relations with China have been heavily strained since Mr Morrison - among other world leaders - began pushing for a global inquiry into coronavirus.

One third of Australia's exports - including iron ore, gas, coal and food - go to China, bringing in around $135billion per year.

China has so far ignored Australia's attempts to discuss trade tensions over beef and barley imports, and state governments fear they could become the meat in the sandwich as the trade tangle heats up.

Federal Trade Minister Simon Birmingham confirmed his Chinese counterpart had not responded to requests for talks to end the diplomatic row.

'We have not secured said meeting yet. I would hope that would be forthcoming,' he told parliament on Wednesday.

Recent difficulties in the bi-lateral trade relationship followed the Australian  government's call for a ban on wildlife wet markets and an inquiry into how the  coronavirus originated and spread from Wuhan.

The proposed inquiry - as well as repeated suggestions that China covered up the spread of the disease - have infuriated Beijing.

Last month the Chinese Embassy called Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton 'pitiful,' 'ignorant' and a US 'parrot' after he told China to 'answer questions' about how coronavirus started.

On April 26 Chinese Ambassador to Australia Jingye Cheng warned that Chinese consumers may stop buying Australian products in revenge.

'Maybe the ordinary people will think why they should drink Australian wine or eat Australian beef,' he told the AFR.

[Rev.Cambeul]

'Disturbed the entire world': Global reaction to China's feud with Australia over COVID-19 inquiry

The growing trade war between China and Australia has made global headlines, with international commentators saying it should "disturb the world".

https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/media/disturbed-the-entire-world-global-reaction-to-chinas-feud-with-australia-over-covid19-inquiry/news-story/efc998ee6dedabcfb3c06b820d4a52f3


Washington DC MSM: Why China Is Punishing Australia
Beijing has suspended imports from four major meat suppliers amid a dispute over the origins of the coronavirus.

James Palmer | Foreign Policy (USA) | 13 May 2020

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/13/china-punishing-australia-coroanvirus-pandemic-meat-imports-trade-diplomacy

The Asian century? The threats have emboldened Australian politicians and pundits who see the country's economic relationship with China—one of the main markets for Australian minerals and meat—as a potential threat. Australia once saw the so-called Asian century as an opportunity but is increasingly uncomfortable with China's regression into autocracy and geopolitical belligerence. The country has a long—and often racist—history of unease with its physical proximity to Asia, but today it shares close ties with many Southeast Asian and Pacific nations that feel threatened by an emboldened China.

https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/white-australia-policy
Washington MSM doesn't know whether it wants to defend
Australia against China or bitch about the old White Australia Policy

Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen said China's murky role in the spread of COVID-19 has "disturbed the entire world", adding that its "attempts to economically coerce Australia ... should disturb the world even more".
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/14/chinas-attempt-strong-arm-australia-should-disturb-world

The Wall Street Journal published an editorial backing Prime Minister Scott Morrison's push for an independent inquiry into COVID-19. It criticised the actions of the Chinese government, saying it only makes them look more guilty.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-beef-with-australia-11589325892

https://twitter.com/NikkiHaley/status/1260336046451167240

[Rev.Cambeul]

Sky News: China wants to 'cripple' Australia and 'hold our corpse up as an example'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW0QC8EQJ2A

[Br.IanVonTurpie]

China is using the coronavirus pandemic as a distraction to pursue its claims over our region with "shocking new vigour", the US ambassador to Australia has warned.

The New Daily (Australia) | 16 May 2020

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/coronavirus/2020/05/16/coronavirus-south-china-sea

Excerpt: While the world is focused on combating COVID-19, the Communist Party of China has taken advantage of the opportunity to "aggressively" advance its military presence in the South China Sea.

China Just Weaponized Its Fishermen
https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-just-weaponized-its-fishermen_825318.html

Referring to China as "bullies", Ambassador Arthur B. Culvahouse jnr issued the warning in an article published on the Defence Connect website.

It comes as Australia has reportedly secured key European support for the Prime Minister's push for an international inquiry into the origins of the pandemic.

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age report the European Union's top foreign minister is backing the inquiry, with a motion set to be amended ahead of a round of World Health Assembly meetings.

The support of Europe follows the USA and Britain already standing behind Scott Morrison's calls for a probe which has angered China enough to boycott some Australian beef exports

In his article, Mr Culvahouse accused the Chinese of covering up the origins of the pandemic "through gross negligence, obsessive secrecy, and brazen dishonesty" before "exporting it to the world".

"Sadly, in this playbook creating a global pandemic is treated as one more opportunity to advance geostrategic objectives," he wrote.

He called on other nations to publicly push back against "Beijing's heavy-handed attempts to unlawfully impose its territorial claims on the rest of the (Indo-Pacific) region".

Mr Culvahouse cited recent skirmishes around Vietnam and the Philippines as evidence of China's "aggressive intimidation and militarisation" as it tried to lay "baseless claims" to the South China Sea

"Even as I write this, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has aggressively deployed its navy, coast guard and maritime militia across the South China Sea, seeking to advance a spurious claim of sole proprietorship over this massive international waterway," he said

"Having only recently sunk a Vietnamese fishing boat and locked naval weapon systems on a Philippine ship, it is even now in the midst of another outrageous confrontation over oil and gas rights within Malaysia's exclusive economic zone."

He said the "the pandemic has only served to reinforce the importance of the alliance between our two nations".

Mr Culvahouse was formally sworn in by Vice President Mike Pence on 19 February 2019



Scott Morrison insists Australia will stand its ground amid growing tension with China over the coronavirus pandemic.

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2020/05/15/china-scott-morrison-values

The Prime Minister has declared China must respect Australia's values and national interests as the crisis places heavy strain on diplomatic relations.

Australia's calls for a global inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus have infuriated the Chinese government, which has suspended beef imports from four abattoirs and threatened to slap huge tariffs on Australian barley

Chinese media has warned that Australian exports could be next in line, including coal and iron ore.

The sectors have helped drive monthly trade surpluses and cushioned the impact of the coronavirus on the Australian economy.

Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard has also backed calls for an investigation into the origins of the pandemic but says it should not be about pointing fingers.

Mr Morrison said his push for an independent inquiry was "completely unremarkable" and Australia would stand its ground.

"We draw very clear lines about things that are very important to us, as does the Chinese government," he told reporters in Canberra on Friday.

"We respect their lines, as we expect our lines to be respected, whether it's on our foreign investment rules, or our rules around technology, our rules regarding human rights and things of that nature.

"I don't think any Australian would want us to compromise on those important things, and those things are not to be traded, ever."

Mr Morrison's remarks come amid rising tension with China, as Australia continues to push for an inquiry into the coronavirus pandemic


Ultimately us Westerners are to blame for feeding China with jobs meant to be for us!

We have had experiences over 100 years ago with Chinks working for nothing with no break only to :- drive living standards down and undermine us. We have been educating them at our institutions with our technology they use against us.

Greedy seniors have sold everything to them for a good retirement package.
Now they want to come and colonise us! There is a storm brewing!

[Br.IanVonTurpie]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8325145/Businessman-China-warns-free-trade-agreement-SCRAPPED-tensions-COVID-19.html

An leading business broker with China has warned the bilateral free-trade agreement with Beijing could be scrapped

Businessman Warwick Smith warned the relationship with Beijing must be managed with 'patience, no quick judgments, and no emotionalism' after China's investment in Australia was cut by 'well over 50 per cent', The Australian reported.

Diplomatic relations between Australia and China rapidly deteriorated after Prime Minister Scott Morrison began pushing for a global inquiry into the origins of the COVID-19 outbreak

This week China suspended imports from four Australian abattoirs in an escalation of trade tensions between the two nations.

The suspension came days after China announced plans to slap an 80 per cent tariff on Australian barley. China is Australia's number one market for beef, with exports worth more than $3 billion a year.

Mr Smith, a Howard government minister and chairman of the Business Council of Australia China Leadership Group, said it was a 'reasonable proposition' the the trade clash would get worse

'We had a free-trade agreement in 2014 but that was 10 years in the making,' Mr Smith said.

'Whether that continues to be a real support for us is yet to be tested.

'We now rely very much on education and tourism, which are discretionary spends by China, along with the long-term contracts in our merchandise trade.'

His comments come several weeks after his resignation from the government's Nat­ional­ Foundation for Australia-China Relations

[Br.IanVonTurpie]

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/us-news/trump-news/2020/05/17/coronavirus-cold-war-us-china

"Evil." "Lunacy." "Shameless." "Sick and twisted." China has hit back at U.S. criticism over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic with an outpouring of vitriol as acrid as anything seen in decades.

The bitter recriminations have plunged relations between China and the United States to a nadir, with warnings in both countries that the bad blood threatens to draw them into a new kind of Cold War.

A cycle of statements and actions is solidifying long-standing suspicions in Beijing that the United States and its allies are bent on stifling China's rise as an economic, diplomatic and military power

Hard-liners are calling on Beijing to be more defiant, emboldened by the Trump administration's efforts to blame China for the mounting death toll in the United States. Moderates are warning that Beijing's strident responses could backfire, isolating the country when it most needs export markets and diplomatic partners to revive its economy and regain international credibility.

The clash with the United States over the pandemic is fanning broader tensions on trade, technology, espionage and other fronts – disputes that could intensify as President Donald Trump makes his contest with Beijing a theme of his reelection campaign.

"We could cut off the whole relationship," Trump said in an interview on Fox Business on Thursday

While the hostility has so far been mostly confined to words, there are warning signs the relationship could worsen. The trade truce that Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, reached in January could fall apart, despite recent pledges to keep to its terms. Other tensions, including those over Taiwan and the South China Sea, are also flaring.

"After the pandemic, the international political landscape will totally change," Wu Shicun, president of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, said in a telephone interview. "The confrontation between China and the United States — in terms of trade, technology, the Taiwan issue, the South China Sea issue — will be a bigger problem."

The tensions spilled over into the United Nations on Friday when China said that the urgency of the pandemic demanded that the United States pay its delinquent U.N. assessment, which by some calculations exceeds $2 billion. The American Mission to the U.N. responded by saying that the United States customarily pays its assessments at year's end and that China was "eager to distract attention from its cover-up and mismanagement" of the coronavirus crisis.

In its first months, the outbreak delivered a political blow to Xi, after officials held back information and discouraged doctors from reporting cases. Trump appeared confident that the United States had little to fear, and he praised Xi's handling of the crisis.

Only weeks ago, Xi and Trump spoke by telephone and proclaimed their unity in the face of the coronavirus. Trump declared his "respect" for Xi, and Xi told him that countries had to "respond in unison" against a global health emergency

Their brittle unity collapsed as coronavirus deaths exploded in the United States. The White House and the Republican Party tried to shift the focus of ire, blaming China for reacting slowly and covering up crucial information.

The backlash, in turn, has reignited the battle over trade, technology, and other issues, with the United States on Friday issuing rules that would bar the Chinese telecom giant Huawei from using American machinery and software.

Public sentiment in the United States and other countries has also hardened against China, according to recent polls.

"I have a very good relationship, but I just – right now I don't want to speak to him," Trump said of Xi on Thursday. A spokesman for China's foreign ministry, Zhao Lijian, brushed aside Trump's threat to sever relations, saying Friday that the two countries should cooperate.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other officials have raised the idea that the coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which many scientists have said was possible in theory but lacked evidence.

"In Chinese eyes, the Trump administration is trying to delegitimize Communist Party rule and also stigmatize not just China but also China's top leaders," Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Nanjing University in eastern China, said in a telephone interview.

China's leaders have struck back through party-run media outlets that said the United States and other democracies had ignored warnings and disastrously mismanaged the crisis. China has repeatedly held up its response as a model that other countries should follow, not criticize.

"Such lunacy is a clear byproduct, first and foremost, of the proverbial anxiety that the U.S. has suffered from since China began its global ascension," Global Times, a nationalist Chinese newspaper, said Friday of Trump's comments. "It is also a combination of envy and panic on behalf of Washington elites."

Policymakers in Beijing will to some extent discount the loud accusations from the Trump administration as a product of domestic political maneuvering. But the recent bitter exchanges were also a symptom of a worsening in the relationship that existed even before the coronavirus outbreak.

"There is a major reassessment of U.S.-China interdependence underway," said Julian Gerwirtz, a scholar at Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. "Even if Xi might like to temporarily de-escalate the trade and technology conflicts to reduce pressure on the Chinese economy, there is now powerful momentum behind what we might call a 'security-first' future

The editor of The Global Times, Hu Xijin, has called for China to expand its nuclear arsenal in response to U.S. actions. "We are facing an increasingly irrational U.S., which only believes in strength," he wrote last week.

Other hawks have warned that China needs to be prepared to deal with clashes over Taiwan and the South China Sea, where U.S. warships have stepped up patrols this year. Some hard-liners have gone further, warning of war.

"We have to dig out those traitors who have been bought out by the United States and do its bidding," Wang Haiyun, a retired major general attached to a pro-party foundation in Beijing, wrote in a policy proposal circulated this month on Chinese nationalist websites.

The bellicose voices in Beijing have been subtly challenged by proponents of a more moderate approach, and the Chinese foreign ministry distanced itself from Hu's comments on nuclear weapons. Despite the ill will, both governments have pushed ahead with the partial deal to ease trade tensions.

Xi has not spoken to Trump since their call in March.

"The rapport we speak of between the top leaders, so they can use good personal relations, has I think totally gone," Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor at the School of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, said in an interview.

How Xi plays his hand against the United States could reverberate for years – for his political fortunes and for China's standing in the world.

While Trump will take into account the presidential election, Xi too must consider his prospects for a third term from 2022. Xi has no clear heir apparent, and in 2018 he abolished a term limit on the presidency, opening the way to an indefinite time in power as both president and Communist Party leader

Nobody trusts China and stormy seas are forecast ahead post virus. Everybody knows they are bullies, nobody wants to "rock the boat". We could have done if we didn't feed them with our jobs over the last 40 years!