March 12, 2022
London: The chair of federal Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee says China wants Australia to be a vassal state like Belarus is to Russia.
Warning that “any of us could be on the receiving end of very traditional forms of hard power as we were in the 20th century,” Liberal Senator James Paterson said that if Putin does overthrow Ukraine’s government, it could inspire similar expansionism in Australia’s backyard.
Senator Paterson made his remarks in a speech to the Henry Jackson Society think tank in London following a two-week visit to meet intelligence figures in the United States and Britain.
He urged British MPs to follow Australia’s example in combatting foreign interference and pushing back in the so-called “grey zone” areas where foreign powers use a range of non-military methods to try to undermine another country.
He said that Australia had been pressured by its biggest trade partner, China, which in late 2020 delivered its list of 14 grievances with Canberra via a Chinese official to this masthead.
The list of disputes was reported at the time as a threat to Australia’s foreign policy settings and an escalation of tensions between the two countries.
But Paterson said it was much more.
“The 14 demands was really an invitation from China to Australia to become a vassal state - it’s an invitation we have politely but firmly rejected,” he told a London audience, in a speech titled Standing up to bullies: The lessons from Ukraine.
He said it put a lie to the claim that China was not seeking to export its ideology, something of which he said that Uighurs, Taiwanese and Hongkongers were already keenly aware.
“It also exposes the intellectual weakness of those who argued that economic engagement with China was the best protection we had against finding ourselves on the wrong side of their rise,” he said.
“For China, their economic power is just another tool of statecraft to be deployed against anyone they have leverage over, just like Russia uses energy dependence to weaken Europe’s resolve in confronting its malign activities.”
Paterson said that the way to confront this was not “endlessly more engagement” but by diversifying Australia’s international trade and supply chains away from authoritarian states.
Paterson said Taiwan needed to learn the lessons that the Ukrainians had in 2014 after Putin’s swift and relatively unpunished illegal annexation of Crimea.
The Ukrainians modernised and equipped their military, enabling their current resistance which has frustrated Putin’s attempts so far to take back the former Soviet territory.
“The fear I have for all of us is that we will not have a warning as stark as 2014 and we certainly do not have eight years to get ready,” he said. “None of us have a moment to waste.”
Paterson’s warnings follow the alarm sounded by Taiwanese politician Wang Ting-Yu, who leads the committee responsible for assessing the island’s defence policies and declarations of war, who told this masthead that the bombing of Ukraine “may cause a chain reaction” and that it was time to let “Beijing know there is a red line”.
Wang, the first senior Taiwanese official to call for the end of “strategic ambiguity”, said the tactic of working with but not officially recognising Taiwan as a separate nation, was now outdated following Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine.
“The most dangerous thing today is a misjudgement,” he said in an interview from Taipei. “Ambiguity may cause misjudgments, ambiguity can lead to catastrophe. Strategic ambiguity was useful once, but it is dangerous now.”
But in his speech, Paterson argued that strategic ambiguity did not rule out the possibility of a military response and could serve as a deterrent to China.
“My hope is that China will learn the right lessons from Ukraine in relation to its ambitions in the Indo-Pacific [and] that China has noticed the world’s incredible resolve and its extraordinary determination to enact a very high cost against Russia for what it has done,” he said.
This week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a $38 billion boost to Australia’s defence capability, including a promise to increase the number of military personnel to 80,000.
