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HINA’S COMMUNIST PARTY has given Australians plenty to be dismayed about, from its vituperative anger when the Dalai Lama visits, to buying off Australian politicians, to trying to influence academic research at Australia’s universities. China is not best pleased, either. In an extraordinary outpouring of bile last year, the Chinese embassy in Canberra enumerated 14 grievances against Australia. These included the passing of a law against foreign interference in politics and calling for an independent international inquiry into the murky origins of the novel coronavirus. Putting Australia firmly on the naughty step, China has blocked a raft of Australian exports to China, the unlucky country’s biggest trading partner.
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Pandemic year points to more crisis for Australia and China 21 April 2021
2020 marked a year of rolling crises for both Australia and China that have shaken the two nations and their relationship, a new book from The Australian National University (ANU) argues.
The China Story Yearbook: Crisis surveys multiple crises in both countries during the year of the metal rat, which symbolises a new day , including the COVID-19 pandemic, catastrophic floods in China and devastating bushfires in Australia.
Produced by the ANU Centre on China in the World (CIW), the book is available for free download via ANU Press - one of the world s largest open access presses.
During an event to launch the China Story Yearbook at the National Press Club in Canberra on 21 April, the Director of the Australian National University’s China in the World Centre, Professor Jane Golley, stated that she had received an anonymous “scholarly” article that “debunks much of what you have read in the Western media on this topic”. Golley has since clarified she should have perhaps used the term “challenge” rather than debunk.
My purpose here is to engage – albeit briefly – with the substance of the anonymous paper Golley referred to, in the spirit in which I hope was intended by its authors (the paper, understood to be the work of several people, is not peer reviewed or yet posted online, but has now come to be circulated among the Xinjiang and Uighur studies community and runs to 18 pages). This approach may perhaps strike some as too charitable. However, if Australians are to have any informed public debate on controversial issues such as this one,
“UK Parliament declares genocide in China’s Xinjiang” screams the headline.
In fact, the non-binding motion was put forward on April 22, 2021 as a political ploy in an almost empty chamber, but the shock value of the declaration continues to reverberate.
Something strange has happened to public discourse in the West, perhaps magnified by the dislocation and despair of the pandemic. People are not just covering up their mouths with masks to avoid viral harm, but people are covering up their mouths so as not to say things that challenge the master narrative of the moment.
The free media is itself complicit in the silencing and outright ridicule of views that don’t comport with the flavor-of-the-month trends coming out of the corridors of power, the pens of opinion leaders and think tanks that dominate political analysis today.
Australian Senate Uyghur Inquiry Crosses China’s ‘Red Line’
An Australian government inquiry into the use of Uyghur forced labour in China has been told the government’s investigation into the slave labour is crossing “a red line” for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
In a submission to the Senate inquiry, analyst Vicky Xu, who was lead author on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s 2020 report “Uyghurs for Sale,” said the CCP could not countenance any investigations into human rights or Uyghur rights.
“The Chinese Communist Party considers any form of investigation of the treatment of Uyghurs as crossing a red line, ” Xu said.