Verity Barton: Australia has shown that when western nations stand up to China, Beijing blinks | Conservative Home

Verity Barton is a former member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly and is President of the Australian Liberals Abroad in the UK. She works as a strategic communications advisor in the City.

On Tuesday, the British public woke to the news that the Ministry of Defence’s payroll contractor had been hacked. While Grant Shapps is reluctant to name the malign state actor suspected, many have publicly accused China of being responsible.

It is hard to imagine that ten years ago David Cameron, now Foreign Secretary and then Prime Minister, hosted Xi Jinping for a pint at his local pub. The shift in UK-Sino relations since then has been seismic: HM Government blocked Huawei from the 5G network; Beijing has sanctioned several senior Tory MPs, and Rishi Sunak has stared down calls from his own MPs to designate China a threat.

Following AUKUS and accession to the CPTPP, Britain has expressed a clear intent to be more involved in the Asia-Pacific region than it has been since the fall of Singapore. The challenge for the UK is how it balances China as a significant trading partner against the threat of a country that is increasingly asserting itself as an emerging economic and military superpower.

So as Britain, in a post-Brexit world, looks to grow its influence in the Asia-Pacific, what are the lessons to learn from the Australian approach?

Fundamentally, it’s about balance. Or, to borrow Kenny Rogers’ words: you’ve got to know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em.

Since Gough Whitlam normalised Australia-China relations more than 50 years ago, the relationship between the two trade behemoths has waxed and waned as the frenemies walked a tightrope between selling what the other needs and national and regional security.

Economically, politically, and culturally, the relationship between China and Australia has continued to evolve. But the reality is, for more than 50 years, the two countries have been inextricably linked.

However, in recent years in Australia both the governing Labor Party and opposition Liberal Party have become increasingly hawkish toward China. While Kevin Rudd, as prime minister, was a renowned Sinophile, military moves to acquire territory in the South China Sea, human rights abuses, trade wars, domestic battles about Chinese investment in critical and agricultural assets, and questions about Covid have radically shifted the dial.

During both the John Howard era and Rudd’s time in office, Australia very much saw the relationship with China as one of critical friends. Under no illusion about the authoritarian nature of the regime, successive governments decided, on balance, it was better to be more critical in private than in public.

Like Cameron and George Osborne, successive Australian governments saw dawning a new golden age of China in the Indo-Pacific. This culminated in a bilateral free trade agreement between Australia and China as the Abbott Government sought to balance its close alliance with the United States by building strong trade relations with Beijing.

The bubble burst, though, with increased tensions and questions about the influence China sought to exert, both directly and indirectly.

An Australian politician was forced to resign following allegations his more favourable language on China was linked to his receipt of donations from Chinese companies, and others across all parties were criticised for their willingness to accept donations and expensive gifts, including Rolexes, from billionaire Chinese developers.

It wasn’t just in the political sphere, though. Like the UK, Australian universities need to attract foreign students who pay higher fees, with China the most significant source, resulting in concerns that China was using students to spy on others and the influence the academic debate on campus.

Moreover, there was a wider concern about the national security threat posed by a Chinese company owning the Port of Darwin, and the level of Chinese investment in key agricultural land and water infrastructure; before AUKUS, Australia was a part of the revived Quad alongside India, Japan and the US.

As the number of Australians who see China as a future military threat grows (most recently around 75 per cent), Australia was shifting from being a critical friend to a frenemy. Where Sunak faces criticism his government has been lacking in its criticism and response to China, Australia wasn’t slow to react vocally on key Indo-Pacific security concerns.

Canberra also tightened its foreign influence laws – but went further than recently-instituted British laws to capture state-owned and state-funded businesses. Scott Morrison, then prime minister, also said there were questions to answer about the origin of the virus that stopped the world in its tracks: Covid.

There were consequences. China started a trade war and imposed tariffs on key Australian exports including wine, beef, lamb, cotton and coal. But then, Beijing blinked. As Australia continued to stare down China, it agreed to a WHO investigation and in 2023, the first coal shipment in two years landed in Zhanjiang.

Australia has long been live to the threat China poses, recognising it sooner and reacting with more alacrity than the British Government and officials. It banned Huawei from its 5G infrastructure around two years before Britain, and has moved to ban foreign donations, and implemented foreign influence laws that, unlike the British equivalent, recognise the unique relationship between Chinese-based businesses and the Chinese government.

The threat from Beijing is real, and it is not going anywhere anytime soon.

Conservative MP Tim Loughton – sanctioned by the Chinese Government for his public commentary on human rights abuses against the Uighurs – was recently detained in and deported form Djibouti. Not because he’d criticised the East African country, but because he has spoken honestly about China.

Now China is accused of being behind a cyberattack on private details of military personnel less than two months after the UK unveiled sweeping measures against China-backed hackers in the wake of attacks on key targets in Westminster, including MPs and the Electoral Commission.

So, how does the Government strengthen its response to Beijing? Call their bluff and be bold.

China is no longer an epoch-defining challenge, it is a clear threat to our national security. Don’t stop talking about Hong Kong and the violation of the one state, two systems principle. Show support for Taiwan. Impose harsher sanctions against malign actors and make it harder for Government-backed businesses to integrate in the UK. As Australia discovered, they might just blink first.