Tag Archive for: Asia

Singing from the CCP’s songsheet

The role of foreign influencers in China’s propaganda system

Disclaimer: Please note that because of a website upload issue, an earlier version of this page and report contained errors including incorrect author names & acknowledgement text from a previous report. We have rectified these issues.

Executive summary

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has always viewed contact with foreigners and the outside world as a double-edged sword, presenting both threats and opportunities. While the CCP and its nationalist supporters harbour fears of foreigners infiltrating China’s information space and subtly ‘setting the tempo’ (带节奏) of discussions, the CCP also actively cultivates a rising group of foreign influencers with millions of fans, which endorses pro-CCP narratives on Chinese and global social-media platforms.

In the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the information ecosystem is geared towards eliminating rival narratives and promoting the party’s ‘main melody’ (主旋律)—the party’s term for themes or narratives that promote its values, policies and ideology.1 Foreign influencers who are amenable to being ‘guided’ towards voicing that main melody are increasingly considered to be valuable assets. They’re seen as building the CCP’s legitimacy for audiences at home, as well as supporting propaganda efforts abroad.

This report examines how a growing subset of foreign influencers, aware of the highly nationalistic online environment and strict censorship rules in China, is increasingly choosing to create content that aligns more explicitly with the CCP’s ‘main melody’.2 In addition to highlighting the country’s achievements in a positive light, these influencers are promoting or defending China’s position on sensitive political issues, such as territorial disputes or human rights concerns.

As we outline in this report, foreign influencers are involved in a wave of experimentation and innovation in domestic (and external) propaganda production that’s taking place at different levels around the PRC as officials heed Xi Jinping’s call to actively participate in ‘international communication’. That experimentation includes their use in the Propaganda Department’s efforts to control global narratives about Covid-19 in China and the cultivation of Russian influencers in China to counter Western narratives.3 This research also reveals that the CCP is effectively co-opting a widespread network of international students at Chinese universities, cultivating them as a talent pool of young, multilingual, social-media-friendly influencers.

Foreign influencers are guided via rules, regulations and laws, as well as via platforms that direct traffic towards user-generated propaganda. Video competitions organised by propaganda organs and the amplification of party-state media and government spokespeople further encourage this trend. The resulting party-aligned content foreign influencers produce, coupled with that of party-state media workers masquerading as influencers and state-approved ethnic-minority influencers4 are part of a coordinated tactic referred to as ‘polyphonous communication’ (复调传播).5

By coordinating foreign influencers and other communicators, Beijing aspires to create a unified choir of voices capable of promoting party narratives more effectively than traditional official PRC media. The ultimate goal is to shield CCP-controlled culture, discourse and ideology from the dangers of foreign and free political speech, thereby safeguarding the party’s legitimacy.

As this report outlines, that strategy reveals the CCP’s determination to defend itself against foreign influence and shape global narratives in its favour, including through covert means. As one party-state media worker put it, the aim is to ‘help cultivate a group of “foreign mouths”, “foreign pens”, and “foreign brains” who can stand up and speak for China at critical moments’.6

The CCP’s growing use of foreign influencers reinforces China’s internal and external narratives in ways that make it increasingly difficult for social-media platforms, foreign governments and individuals to distinguish between genuine and/or factual content and propaganda. It further complicates efforts to counter disinformation and protect the integrity of public discourse and blurs the line between independent voices and those influenced by the party’s narratives.

This report makes key recommendations for media and social-media platforms, governments and civil society aimed at building awareness and accountability. They include broadening social-media platforms’ content labelling practices to include state-linked, PRC-based influencers; preventing PRC-based creators from monetising their content on platforms outside China to diminish the commercial incentives to produce party-aligned content; and, in countries with established foreign interference taskforces, such as Australia, developing appropriate briefing materials for students planning to travel overseas.

Key Findings

  • Foreign influencers are reaching increasingly larger and more international audiences. Some of them have tens of millions of followers in China and millions more on overseas platforms (see Appendix 1 on page 65), particularly on TikTok, YouTube and X (formerly Twitter).
  • The CCP is creating competitions that offer significant prize money and other incentives as part of an expanding toolkit to co-opt influencers in the production of pro-CCP and party-state-aligned content (see Section 2.3: ‘State-sponsored competitions’ on page 20).
  • Beijing is establishing multilingual influencer studios to incubate both domestic and foreign influencers in order to reach younger media consumers globally (see Section 2.5: ‘The influencer studio system’ on page 33).
  • The CCP is effectively using a widespread network of international students at Chinese universities, cultivating them as a latent talent pool of young, multilingual, social-media-friendly influencers (see breakout box: ‘PRC universities’ propaganda activities’ on page 32).
  • Russian influencers in China are cultivated as part of the CCP’s strategic goal of strengthening bilateral relations with Russia to counter Western countries (see Section 3.4: ‘Russian influencers’ on page 53).
  • The CCP is using foreign influencers to enable its propaganda to surreptitiously penetrate mainstream overseas media, including into major US cable TV outlets (see Section 3.3: ‘Rachele Longhi’ on page 44). Chinese authorities use vlogger, influencer and journalist identities interchangeably, in keeping with efforts aimed at influencing audiences, rather than offering professional or objective news coverage.
  • CCP-aligned influencer content has helped boost the prevalence of party-approved narratives on YouTube, outperforming more credible sources on issues such as Xinjiang due to search-engine algorithms that prioritise fresh content and regular posting (see Section 2.2 ‘Turning a foreign threat into a propaganda opportunity’ on page 15).
  • Foreign influencers played a key part in the Propaganda Department’s drive to control international narratives about Covid-19 in China and have, in some instances, attempted to push the CCP’s narrative overseas as well (see Section 1.1: ‘Case study’ on page 7).
  • Efforts to deal with CCP propaganda have taken a step backwards on X, which under Elon Musk has dispensed with state-affiliation labels and is allowing verification for party-state media workers, including foreigners (see Section 2.5 ‘The influencer studio system’ on page 33).

  1. Stella Chen, ‘Main melody’, China Media Project, 18 February 2022. ↩︎
  2. Chen, ‘Main melody’. ↩︎
  3. The term ‘Propaganda Department’ is used here for the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of
    the CCP. Subordinate CCP organisations in many cases have their own propaganda departments. ↩︎
  4. Fergus Ryan, Daria Impiombato, Hsi-Ting Pai, Frontier influencers: the new face of China’s propaganda, ASPI,
    Canberra, 20 October 2022. ↩︎
  5. Devin Thorne, ‘1 key for 1 lock: the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy for targeted propaganda’, Recorded
    Future    , September 2022. ↩︎
  6. Du Guodong [杜国东], ‘A tentative analysis of how to leverage the role of foreign internet celebrities
    in China’s international communication’ [试析如何发挥洋网红在中国国际传播中的作用], FX361, 10
    September 2019. ↩︎

Surveillance, privacy and agency

Executive summary

ASPI and a non-government research partner1 conducted a year-long project designed to share detailed and accurate information on state surveillance in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and engage residents of the PRC on the issue of surveillance technology. A wide range of topics was covered, including how the party-state communicates on issues related to surveillance, as well as people’s views on state surveillance, data privacy, facial recognition, DNA collection and data-management technologies.

The project’s goals were to:

  • improve our understanding of state surveillance in China and how it’s communicated by the Chinese party-state
  • develop a nuanced understanding of PRC residents’ perceptions of surveillance technology and personal privacy, the concerns some have in regard to surveillance, and how those perceptions relate to trust in government
  • explore the reach and potential of an interactive digital platform as an alternative educational and awareness-raising tool.

This unique project combined extensive preliminary research—including media analysis and an online survey of PRC residents—with data collected from an interactive online research platform deployed in mainland China. Media analysis drew on PRC state media to understand the ways in which the party-state communicates on issues of surveillance. The online survey collected opinions from 4,038 people living in mainland China, including about their trust in government and views on surveillance technologies. The interactive research platform offered PRC residents information on the types and capabilities of different surveillance technologies in use in five municipalities and regions in China. Presenting an analysis of more than 1,700 PRC Government procurement documents, it encouraged participants to engage with, critically evaluate and share their views on that information. The research platform engaged more than 55,000 PRC residents.

Data collection was led and conducted by the non-government research partner, and the data was then provided to ASPI for a joint analysis. The project details, including methodology, can be found on page 6.

Key findings

The results of this research project indicate the following:

  • Project participants’ views on surveillance and trust in the government vary markedly.
    • Segmentation analysis of survey responses suggests that respondents fall into seven distinct groups, which we have categorised as dissenters, disaffected, critics, possible sceptics, stability seekers, pragmatists and endorsers (the segmentation analysis is on page 12).
  • In general, PRC state narratives about government surveillance and technology implementation appear to be at least partly effective.
    • Our analysis of PRC state media identified four main narratives to support the use of government surveillance:
      1. Surveillance helps to fight crime.
      2. The PRC’s surveillance systems are some of the best in the world.
      3. Surveillance is commonplace internationally.
      4. Surveillance is a ‘double-edged sword’, and people should be concerned for their personal privacy when surveillance is handled by private companies.
    • Public opinion often aligns with state messaging that ties surveillance technologies to personal safety and security. For example, when presented with information about the number of surveillance cameras in their community today, a larger portion of Research Platform participants said they would prefer the same number (39%) or more cameras (38.4%).
    • PRC state narratives make a clear distinction between private and government surveillance, which suggests party-state efforts to ‘manage’ privacy concerns within acceptable political parameters.
  • Project participants value privacy but hold mixed views on surveillance.
    • Participants expressed a preference for consent and active engagement on the issue of surveillance. For example, over 65% agreed that DNA samples should be collected from the general population only on a voluntary basis.
    • Participants are generally comfortable with the widespread use of certain types of surveillance, such as surveillance cameras; they’re less comfortable with other forms of surveillance, such as DNA collection.
  1. ASPI supported this project with an undisclosed research partner. That institution remains undisclosed to preserve its
    access to specific research techniques and data and to protect its staff. ↩︎

Gaming Public Opinion

The CCP’s increasingly sophisticated cyber-enabled influence operations

What’s the problem?

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) embrace of large-scale online influence operations and spreading of disinformation on Western social-media platforms has escalated since the first major attribution from Silicon Valley companies in 2019. While Chinese public diplomacy may have shifted to a softer tone in 2023 after many years of wolf-warrior online rhetoric, the Chinese Government continues to conduct global covert cyber-enabled influence operations. Those operations are now more frequent, increasingly sophisticated and increasingly effective in supporting the CCP’s strategic goals. They focus on disrupting the domestic, foreign, security and defence policies of foreign countries, and most of all they target democracies.

Currently—in targeted democracies—most political leaders, policymakers, businesses, civil society groups and publics have little understanding of how the CCP currently engages in clandestine activities online in their countries, even though this activity is escalating and evolving quickly. The stakes are high for democracies, given the indispensability of the internet and their reliance on open online spaces, free from interference. Despite years of monitoring covert CCP cyber-enabled influence operations by social-media platforms, governments, and research institutes such as ASPI, definitive public attribution of the actors driving these activities is rare. Covert online operations, by design, are difficult to detect and attribute to state actors. 

Social-media platforms and governments struggle to devote adequate resources to identifying, preventing and deterring increasing levels of malicious activity, and sometimes they don’t want to name and shame the Chinese Government for political, economic and/or commercial reasons. 

But when possible, public attribution can play a larger role in deterring malicious actors. Understanding which Chinese Government entities are conducting such operations, and their underlying doctrine, is essential to constructing adequate counter-interference and deterrence strategies. The value of public attribution also goes beyond deterrence. For example, public attribution helps civil society and businesses, which are often the intended targets of online influence operations, to understand the threat landscape and build resilience against malicious activities. It’s also important that general publics are given basic information so that they’re informed about the contemporary security challenges a country is facing, and public attribution helps to provide that information.

ASPI research in this report—which included specialised data collection spanning Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Sina Weibo and ByteDance products—reveals a previously unreported CCP cyber-enabled influence operation linked to the Spamouflage network, which is using inauthentic accounts to spread claims that the US is irresponsibly conducting cyber-espionage operations against China and other countries. As a part of this research, we geolocated some of the operators of that network to Yancheng in Jiangsu Province, and we show it’s possible that at least some of the operators behind Spamouflage are part of the Yancheng Public Security Bureau.

The CCP’s clandestine efforts to influence international public opinion rely on a very different toolkit today compared to its previous tactics of just a few years ago. CCP cyber-enabled influence operations remain part of a broader strategy to shape global public opinion and enhance China’s ‘international discourse power’. Those efforts have evolved to nudge public opinion towards positions more favourable to the CCP and to interfere in the political decision-making processes of other countries. A greater focus on covert social-media accounts allows the CCP to pursue its interests while providing a plausibly deniable cover. 

Emerging technologies and China’s indigenous cybersecurity industry are also creating new capabilities for the CCP to continue operating clandestinely on Western social platforms.

Left unaddressed, the CCP’s increasing investment in cyber-enabled influence operations threatens to successfully influence the economic decision-making of political elites, destabilise social cohesion during times of crisis, sow distrust of leaders or democratic institutions and processes, fracture alliances and partnerships, and deter journalists, researchers and activists from sharing accurate information about China.

What’s the solution?

This report provides the first public empirical review of the CCP’s clandestine online networks on social-media platforms.

We outline seven key policy recommendations for governments and social-media platforms (further details are on page 39):

  1. Social-media platforms should take advantage of the digital infrastructure, which they control, to more effectively deter cyber-enabled influence operations. To disrupt future influence operations, social-media platforms could remove access to those analytics for suspicious accounts breaching platform policies, making it difficult for identified malicious actors to measure the effectiveness of influence operations.
  2. Social-media platforms should pursue more innovative information-sharing to combat cyber-enabled influence operations. For example, social-media platforms could share more information about the digital infrastructure involved in influence operations, without revealing personally identifiable information.
  3. Governments should change their language in speeches and policy documents to describe social-media platforms as critical infrastructure. This would acknowledge the existing importance of those platforms in democracies and would communicate signals to malicious actors that, like cyber operations on the power grid, efforts to interfere in the information ecosystem will be met with proportionate responses.
  4. Governments should review foreign interference legislation and consider mandating that social-media platforms disclose state-backed influence operations and other transparency reporting to increase the public’s threat awareness.
  5. Public diplomacy should be a pillar of any counter-malign-influence strategy. Government leaders and diplomats should name and shame attributable malign cyber-enabled influence operations, and those entities involved in their operation (state and non-state) to deter those activities.
  6. Partners and allies should strengthen intelligence diplomacy on this emerging security challenge and seek to share more intelligence with one another on such influence operations. Strong open-source intelligence skills and collection capabilities are a crucial part of investigating and attributing these operations, the low classification of which, should making intelligence sharing easier.
  7. Governments should support further research on influence operations and other hybrid threats. To build broader situational awareness of hybrid threats across the region, including malign influence operations, democracies should establish an Indo-Pacific hybrid threats centre.

Key findings

The CCP has developed a sophisticated, persistent capability to sustain coordinated networks of personas on social-media platforms to spread disinformation, wage public-opinion warfare and support its own diplomatic messaging, economic coercion and other levers of state power.

That capability is evolving and has expanded to push a wider range of narratives to a growing international audience with the Indo-Pacific a key target.

The CCP has used these cyber-enabled influence operations to seek to interfere in US politics, Australian politics and national security decisions, undermine the Quad and Japanese defence policies and impose costs on Australian and North American rare-earth mining companies.

  • CCP cyber-enabled influence operations are probably conducted, in parallel if not collectively, by multiple Chinese party-state agencies. Those agencies appear at times to collaborate with private Chinese companies. The most notable actors that are likely to be conducting such operations include the People’s Liberation Army’s Strategic Support Force (PLASSF), which conducts cyber operations as part of the PLA’s political warfare; the Ministry of State Security (MSS), which conducts covert operations for state security; the Central Propaganda Department, which oversees China’s domestic and foreign propaganda efforts; the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), which enforces China’s internet laws; and the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), which regulates China’s internet ecosystem. Chinese state media outlets and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) officials are also running clandestine operations that seek to amplify their own overt propaganda and influence activities.
  • Starting in 2021, a previously unreported CCP cyber-enabled influence operation has been disseminating narratives that the CIA and National Security Agency are ‘irresponsibly conducting cyber-espionage operations against China and other countries’. ASPI isn’t in a position to verify US intelligence agency activities. However, the means used to disseminate the counter-US narrative— this campaign appears to be partly driven by the pro-CCP coordinated inauthentic network known as Spamouflage—strongly suggests an influence operation. ASPI’s research suggests that at least some operators behind the campaign are affiliated with the MPS, or are ‘internet commentators’ hired by the CAC, which may have named this campaign ‘Operation Honey Badger’. The evidence indicates that the Chinese Government probably intended to influence Southeast Asian markets and other countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative to support the expansion of Chinese cybersecurity companies in those regions.
  • Chinese cybersecurity company Qi An Xin (奇安信) appears at times it may be supporting the influence operation. The company has the capacity to seed disinformation about advanced persistent threats to its clients in Southeast Asia and other countries. It’s deeply connected with Chinese intelligence, military and security services and plays an important role in China’s cybersecurity and state security strategies.

Tag Archive for: Asia

Trump could make Asia more united

US President Donald Trump has raised the spectre of economic and geopolitical turmoil in Asia. While individual countries have few options for pushing back against Trump’s transactional diplomacy, protectionist trade policies and erratic decision-making, a unified region has a fighting chance.

The challenges are formidable. Trump’s crude, bullying approach to long-term allies is casting serious doubt on the viability of the United States’ decades-old security commitments, on which many Asian countries depend. Worse, the US’s treaty allies (Japan, South Korea and the Philippines) and its strategic partner (Taiwan) fear that Trump could actively undermine their security, such as by offering concessions to China or North Korea.

Meanwhile, Trump’s aggressive efforts to reshape the global trading system, including by pressuring foreign firms to move their manufacturing to the US, have disrupted world markets and generated considerable policy uncertainty. This threatens to undermine growth and financial stability in Asian economies, particularly those running large trade surpluses with the US—such as China, India, Japan, South Korea and countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Currency depreciation may offset some of the tariffs’ impact. But if the Trump administration follows through with its apparent plans to weaken the US dollar, surplus countries will lose even this partial respite, and their trade balances will deteriorate. While some might be tempted to implement retaliatory tariffs, this would only compound the harm to their export-driven industries.

Acting individually, Asian countries have limited leverage not only in trade negotiations with the US, but also in broader economic or diplomatic disputes. But by strengthening strategic and security cooperation—using platforms such as ASEAN, ASEAN+3 (with China, Japan and South Korea), and the East Asia Summit—they can build a buffer against US policy uncertainty and rising geopolitical tensions. And by deepening trade and financial integration, they can reduce their dependence on the US market and improve their economies’ resilience.

One priority should be to diversify trade partnerships through multilateral free-trade agreements. This means, for starters, strengthening the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership—which includes Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Britain and Vietnam—such as by expanding its ranks. China and South Korea have expressed interest in joining.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership—comprising the 10 ASEAN economies, plus Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea—should also be enhanced, through stronger trade and investment rules and, potentially, the addition of India. Given the Asia-Pacific’s tremendous economic dynamism, more robust regional trade arrangements could serve as a powerful counterbalance to US protectionism.

Asia has other options to bolster intra-regional trade. China, Japan and South Korea should resume negotiations for their own free-trade agreement. Japan and South Korea are a natural fit, given their geographic proximity and shared democratic values. The inclusion of China raises some challenges—owing not least to its increasingly aggressive military posture in the region— but they are worth confronting, given China’s massive market and advanced technological capabilities. With the US putting economic self-interest ahead of democratic principles, Asian countries cannot afford to eschew pragmatism for ideology.

Beyond trade, Asia must build on the cooperation that began after the 2008 global financial crisis. The Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralisation, which provides liquidity support to its member countries (the ASEAN+3) during crises, should be strengthened. Moreover, Asian central banks and finance ministries should work together to build more effective financial-stability frameworks—robust crisis-management arrangements, coordinated policy responses and clear communication—to stabilise currency markets and financial systems during episodes of external volatility.

Trump is not the only reason why Asia should deepen cooperation. The escalating trade and technology war between the US and China is threatening to divide the world into rival economic blocs, which would severely disrupt global trade and investment. But there is still time to avoid this outcome, by building a multipolar system comprising multiple economic blocs with overlapping memberships. By fostering economic integration, within the region and beyond, Asian countries would be laying the groundwork for such an order.

In an age of geoeconomic fragmentation, Asian countries could easily fall victim to the whims of great powers. But by strengthening trade partnerships, reinforcing financial cooperation, enhancing strategic collaboration and building economic resilience, they can take control over their futures and position Asia as a leading architect of a reconfigured global economy.

The climate fight is Asia’s leadership opportunity

A year ago, following US President Joe Biden’s election, multilateralism once again became the beating heart of global climate action. G20 leaders agreed to more ambitious near-term climate targets en route to achieving net-zero emissions by mid-century and they committed to ending inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies and cooperating on clean energy deployment to phase out coal more quickly. The willingness of China and India to address fossil fuels reflected a growing awareness of the macroeconomic risks of resisting the clean-energy transition.

These outcomes were crucial for delivering a litany of new initiatives at last year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26) that were dedicated to ‘keeping 1.5 alive’, in line with the Paris climate agreement’s goal for limiting the increase in global temperature to 1.5° Celsius, relative to the preindustrial average. They also helped set the stage for the historic Glasgow Climate Pact, which commits every country to phase down unabated coal use, even if India and China were able to block calls to phase out coal entirely.

Unfortunately, the stage for this week’s G20 summit in Bali could not be more different. Geopolitical and economic conditions are much less favourable, owing largely to Russia’s appalling war of aggression in Ukraine, with G7 countries backtracking on their commitments to end fossil-fuel investment as a result. Heightened US–China tensions will, one hopes, be eased somewhat by the bilateral meeting between Biden and President Xi Jinping in Bali. But forging a strong outcome in Bali will be hard.

Given that G20 countries account for around 80% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, the summit will set the tone for the final outcome of this year’s UN climate conference (COP27), which will conclude in Egypt after the G20 wraps up in Indonesia. The proceedings in Sharm El-Sheikh have already been dominated by the world’s most vulnerable countries calling for climate justice and demanding that big emitters pay up to support their transitions and livelihoods.

This is why the fight against climate change might be the unifying moment the G20 requires. And the G20’s Asian members have a vital role to play in that.

Rather than backtracking on climate action during the ongoing and compounding crises of the past year, Asian economies have deepened their resolve. Major Asian emitters headline the small list of countries that actually responded to the Glasgow Climate Pact’s call to increase their climate ambitions in 2022: India, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam and Australia have all enhanced their targets. While greater ambition is needed for commitments to align with the Paris agreement’s 1.5°C target, regional momentum is moving in the right direction.

Asia is acting because it makes good policy sense. Research commissioned by our High-Level Policy Commission on Getting Asia to Net Zero shows that more ambitious climate action is a boon for the region’s economic development. If the region fully implements the climate targets it set at COP26, it will boost GDP growth by as much as 5.4% by 2030, while also creating more new jobs, reducing energy costs and strengthening energy security. This is a big deal for governments looking to escape the inflation trap and rising energy prices.

Developing economies are also aware that embracing the green transformation can help mobilise the massive amounts of investment needed to turn rhetoric into reality. For example, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are among those publishing ‘climate prosperity plans’ that, if funded, could enhance resilience, reduce poverty and spearhead economic growth.

Likewise, Indonesia and Vietnam are expected to announce new ‘just energy transition partnerships,’ replicating a model whereby developed countries committed US$8.5 billion to South Africa last year to enable a faster exit from coal while protecting fossil-fuel workers’ livelihoods. Political will and policy certainty are powerful tools for unleashing capital flows from rich donor countries, de-risking private finance and unlocking new domestic resources.

Asia finds itself in the multilateral hot seat at a critical time. India will take on the G20 presidency from Indonesia following this week’s summit, Japan will host next year’s G7 summit and the UAE, as part of the Asia–Pacific group, will host the COP28 climate conference next year. Simply put, climate action can be the common thread that helps rebuild a consensus in favour of multilateralism.

The G20 could start by seeking a unified commitment among member countries to climate action as a driver of economic recovery and growth. After India, the G20 presidency will rotate to Brazil, implying a unique opportunity to define what this looks like from the perspective of major emerging economies. Countries like Indonesia, India and Brazil could emphasise the win-win benefits of deepening cooperation.

Another way the G20 could lead is by elevating the ‘Bridgetown agenda’ championed by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley to provide emergency liquidity, expand multilateral lending and mobilise the private sector, in part by seeking a new issuance of US$650 billion in special drawing rights (the International Monetary Fund’s reserve asset). Advancing the ‘Bridgetown agenda’ will require political will from the world’s most powerful lenders and shareholders.

Under India’s leadership next year, the G20 should seek to achieve tangible outcomes. This could include devising a blueprint for modern, resilient energy systems; outlining a supportive policy infrastructure for critical climate technologies, like green hydrogen and battery storage; and getting climate finance to work for all developing countries. India could also use the G77 bloc of developing economies as a bellwether to ensure that the G20 is meeting the needs of the world’s most vulnerable countries.

Multilateralism is on life support at a moment when it is critical for humanity’s survival. By putting climate action at the heart of their efforts to rebuild consensus and reinvigorate multilateralism, Asian countries will prop open the world’s window of opportunity to prevent climate disaster. They will also catalyse their own ability to benefit from the massive economic and social opportunities created by the green transition.

Reducing Asia’s climate vulnerability

Many parts of Asia seem to be emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic relatively well. But overcoming the public health crisis is only one challenge the region faces. Where climate change is concerned, Asia may be far more vulnerable than other parts of the world.

Building on global research published at the start of 2020, the McKinsey Global Institute recently estimated the probable impact of the physical climate risks facing Asia today and over the next three decades. Our analysis involved micro cases that illustrate exposure to climate-change extremes and proximity to physical thresholds, as well as assessments of the potential socioeconomic impact in 16 countries (Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and South Korea).

Although climate scientists use scenarios ranging from lower (representative concentration pathway 2.6) to higher (RCP 8.5) concentrations of carbon dioxide, we focused on RCP 8.5 in order to assess the full inherent physical risk of climate change in the absence of further decarbonisation. We found that Asia was more vulnerable than other regions to climate risk in three key respects.

First, by 2050, up to 1.2 billion people globally—the vast majority of them in Asia—could be living in areas with a non-zero annual probability of lethal heat waves. Second, Asia accounts for more than two-thirds of the global GDP that is at risk due to the loss of outdoor working hours resulting from the increase in heat and humidity by 2050. Third, by 2050, Asia could account for more than three-quarters of the global capital stock damaged by riverine flooding.

In two other areas, however, we found that Asia’s vulnerability was on a par with or slightly below the global average: disruption to food systems, and destruction of natural ecosystems for local flora and fauna.

Moreover, McKinsey Global Institute’s ‘Four Asias’ framework—consisting of Frontier Asia, Emerging Asia, Advanced Asia and China—reveals noticeable differences within the region. In particular, countries with lower levels of GDP per capita in Frontier and Emerging Asia are most at risk from climate change.

Frontier Asia, comprising Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, could experience extreme increases in heat and humidity that may significantly affect work and liveability. Emerging Asia, including major Southeast Asian economies like Thailand and the Philippines, will experience a similar (though potentially less extreme) trend, along with growing exposure to extreme precipitation events. Under RCP 8.5, the share of working hours lost to rising heat and humidity in climate-exposed regions in Frontier and Emerging Asia could increase by 7–12 percentage points by 2050, compared with a 2–5 percentage point increase in Advanced Asia and China.

Advanced Asia, including Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, is expected to be a net agricultural beneficiary of climate change over the near term. But for some countries in the region, drought and water scarcity will pose major challenges.

Although China has a heterogeneous climate, the country is predicted to become hotter. As a result, the average share of effective outdoor working hours lost each year in exposed areas could increase from 4.5% in 2020 to as much as 6% in 2030 and 8.5% in 2050.

The socioeconomic impact of climate change will increase across Asia as thresholds of physical systems are breached and knock-on effects materialise. For example, almost one-third of Australia could have more than 20 additional high-fire-risk days per year, increasing the share of the country’s capital stock exposed to at least five such days from 44% today to 60% in 2050. Likewise, without additional climate adaptation, the cost of real estate and infrastructure damage from a 100-year flood in Tokyo could more than double to US$14.2 billion by 2050.

Although Asia faces significant climate challenges, it can overcome them through effective adaptation and mitigation—and seems well positioned to do so. For starters, the massive infrastructure investment planned throughout the region, amounting to US$1.7 trillion annually through 2030, provides a unique opportunity to embed climate risk management in infrastructure design.

Nonetheless, developing a comprehensive regional adaptation plan is essential. It should include diagnosing climate risks and enabling a response, protecting people and assets, building resilience, reducing exposure, and providing finance and insurance. Adaptation is likely to entail tough choices about what to protect and what to relocate, as well as how to safeguard the most vulnerable populations.

Asia also plays a critical role in global mitigation measures. Key emissions-reduction efforts include shifting from coal—which accounts for 90% of emissions by the region’s power sector—to renewables. Asia also needs to decarbonise industrial operations such as steel and cement; the region currently generates about 80% of global CO2 emissions in these industries. In addition, Asia must transform agriculture and forestry, which account for 10% of the region’s CO2 emissions and over 40% of its methane emissions, and decarbonise road transportation and buildings.

A critical part of enabling this transition will be managing the risks that may arise, such as rising costs, labour displacement and impacts on specific communities. In India, for example, there’s a significant risk of electricity price increases caused by the capital expenditure needed to install renewables, and of job losses as the country’s power mix shifts away from coal.

In China, finding ways to scale up decarbonisation technologies in steel production will be key to preventing disruption of the industry’s massive output. In Indonesia, it will be essential to support people whose livelihoods depend on agriculture as the sector decarbonises. And in Japan, policymakers could facilitate the transition to battery electric vehicles by providing incentives and policies to help overcome the higher up-front cost.

Much of Asia is already responding to the adaptation and mitigation challenges of climate change. By building on these efforts, sharing best practices and galvanising support, the region can emerge as a leader in tackling one of the world’s biggest threats while also promoting sustainable growth and prosperity.

Security woes will continue to haunt the Philippines in 2020

Three years, or halfway, into Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s term, both internal and external security concerns remain prominent in the consciousness of the country’s officials and security experts.

Anxiety is particularly acute in the immediate maritime areas: the disputed land features and waters of the South China Sea to the west, and the Sulu and Celebes (Sulawesi) Seas to the south and southwest of the country. In the South China Sea, the main concern has been China’s expansive claim, and developments over the past year point to more trouble ahead over this longstanding issue.

On the positive side, Manila and Beijing have regularly convened a bilateral consultative mechanism that’s exclusively intended for discussion of issues arising from the South China Sea disputes. ASEAN and China continued to work towards a regional code of conduct, making incremental progress on a single draft negotiating text.

However, the incontrovertible facts remain: China has permanently altered the geophysical and security environments in Southeast Asia through its construction and militarisation of artificial islands in the South China Sea since 2014.

China maintains a constant presence near areas occupied by other claimant states, mobilising both civilian and military vessels in assertions of sovereignty and effectively preventing some countries (not only the Philippines but also Vietnam and Malaysia) from undertaking resource exploitation in the disputed areas.

China has also continued to reject the 2016 arbitration ruling that determined many of its actions to be illegal infringements of Philippine maritime rights.

Not only were Chinese actions not restrained by diplomacy or international legal decisions, but it appeared that in the spiralling power competition with the United States (fuelled by trade and technology wars) and domestic power politics in China (where Xi Jinping is driving a deepening of centralised control of his party-state), the Chinese were becoming increasingly nationalistic, ambitious and assertive.

The Philippines–China consultations and ASEAN–China negotiations were intended to be proactive agenda-setters in shaping new directions for relations with China. Yet they may achieve little more than legitimising a new status quo that allows China’s behaviour to go uncontested.

Meanwhile, Duterte remained vocal and resentful of America’s and other countries’ criticism of his human rights record in the war on drugs. However, during a visit to Russia he called the United States ‘a close friend of the Philippines’. He also affirmed that the Philippines continued to uphold the values of freedom and liberalism, signalling that visiting Russia did not signify a break from the West. This was in sharp contrast to his first visit to China in 2016 when he signalled the ‘pivot to China’ by announcing a ‘separation’ from the United States.

On the trade war between China and the US, Duterte explained at the recent ASEAN Summit in Thailand that the Philippines wasn’t taking sides. The independent foreign policy stance was becoming less about a pivot to China and more about diversification of partnerships while strengthening defence capabilities in anticipation of continuing maritime security threats and challenges.

The Philippines’ other major regional security concern is the spread of terrorism and violent extremism. Domestically, peace with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Muslim Mindanao seems to have been brought within reach through the establishment of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region. Of course, immense governance challenges have to be faced to achieve sustainable development and dependable security for this conflict-torn region.

One lesson the Philippines can draw is that failure to contain conflict within one’s own borders creates spill-over tensions and vulnerabilities in relations with neighbouring states.

The defeat of Islamic State in the Middle East resulted in a spike in extremist influence and activity in Southeast Asia. Some fighters are feared to have returned to Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, while others sought to continue their jihadist struggle for a caliphate in places where governance has been traditionally weak, including in Muslim Mindanao.

The five-month siege of the city of Marawi in 2017, led by the local IS-affiliated Maute group, demonstrated the fragile conditions in the southern Philippines, as well as the capacity of extremists to wage urban warfare.

Long steeped in counterinsurgency strategies waged in the Philippine countryside, the Armed Forces of the Philippines now faces the challenge of building the capacity to cope with armed conflict in major population centres, and working with like-minded states to break up the regional and transnational criminal networks that feed violent extremism.

Counterterrorism cooperation between the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia acquired a strong maritime dimension with the implementation of the Trilateral Cooperative Arrangement in 2016. The three countries conduct intelligence-sharing, coordinated maritime patrols, and joint air missions over an area of common interest in the Sulu and Celebes (Sulawesi) Seas.

The signing of the agreement was followed by a drastic decline in Abu Sayyaf kidnappings . The drop was attributable not to the agreement per se, but to more effective control and prevention of border movements unilaterally imposed by Philippine and Malaysian authorities in their areas of jurisdiction. Nonetheless, the scourge of terrorism can be defeated only through cooperation with neighbouring countries and with others who share this major global concern.

The Duterte government’s promotion of a more diversified and omni-directional foreign policy—including preservation of traditional alliances—may be exactly what is needed to foster the agility that huge uncertainties in the external environment demand.

Ultimately, however, the only reliable guarantee—whether of foreign policy autonomy, territorial integrity, or security against external armed threats and internal destabilising forces—is a government that takes the development of its defence and security capabilities seriously.

Afghanistan’s next chapter

The recent geopolitical history of Afghanistan can be divided into five phases. But now it is at the cusp of another transition and the defining features of the new phase remain to be seen.

During the first phase, from 1974 to 1979, Pakistan began to give refuge and training to Islamists who could be deployed against Mohammed Daoud Khan’s government. Then, from 1979 to 1989, Pakistan, the United States, and Saudi Arabia financed, trained and equipped the mujahidin who fought against Soviet troops. From 1989 to 1996, Afghanistan was in transition as regional warlords gained power, closed in on Kabul and overthrew President Mohammad Najibullah. From 1996 to 2001, the Taliban government ushered in a period of wanton savagery and—with the exceptions of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—diplomatic isolation.

The fifth phase began in 2001, following the 9/11 attacks. Since then, the US has been embroiled in a war supporting a patchwork Afghan government against a resurgent Pakistan-backed Taliban. The sixth phase raises two questions: did the US lose the war in Afghanistan and, if so, why?

The answer to the first question is both yes and no. The US has failed to eliminate the Taliban from Afghanistan and entirely rule out the possibility of the country again becoming a haven for terrorists. The ongoing peace talks with the Taliban and the impending reduction of the US military presence in the country are a clear recognition of this. The American public is war-weary and President Donald Trump is keen to declare an end to the longest international conflict in US history before the 2020 presidential election.

At the same time, the US achieved many of its initial core objectives. The Taliban was expelled from Kabul and, despite the current peace talks, its uncontested return remains doubtful. Osama bin Laden was killed in neighbouring Pakistan, Taliban leader Mullah Omar died in hiding, and his successor, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, was killed by a US drone strike in Pakistan in 2016. A semblance of a functioning state—including a national government and a military—is now a reality, however flawed. And Pakistan remains under pressure to clean up its act.

But, overall, things did not go according to plan for the US, for four main reasons. First, and most obviously, it made political mistakes, born largely of ignorance and hubris, although often apparent only in hindsight. After 2001, the US imposed on Afghanistan a presidential-style government with inadequate checks and balances. After 2003, policymakers became distracted by the initially more intense conflict in Iraq and withdrew resources and attention from Afghanistan. Moreover, they paid insufficient attention in the early years to building up the Afghan National Security Forces. In addition, democratisation efforts were mostly top-down rather than bottom-up, and elections often were scheduled before the appropriate political institutions were in place.

The second set of mistakes were military in nature. After 2008, US war planners believed that a counter-insurgency approach would work. But a ‘surge’ of the kind that initially reduced violence in Iraq failed in Afghanistan for a number of reasons.

For starters, the US was unable to co-opt key adversaries, as it had done with Sunni militias in Iraq following the ‘Anbar awakening’. Moreover, it had no solution to cross-border havens in Pakistan, from which Taliban forces could plot and launch continued attacks, and it underestimated the governance challenges in Afghanistan, which had much deeper roots than in Iraq and made development and state-building more difficult. And when US President Barack Obama announced the surge in Afghanistan, he undermined the effort by also setting out a withdrawal timeframe. That was a mistake that even Trump was wise enough to avoid.

The US also failed to learn from its mistakes. Comprehensive reviews of its Afghan policy that produced unpalatable or ineffective recommendations gave way to comprehensive reviews that produced equally unpalatable or ineffective outcomes. In particular, successive US administrations, military commanders and diplomats believed that buying Pakistan’s tactical cooperation through threats, aid or military support could prove sustainable. The unwillingness to address Pakistan’s support for terrorism head-on was driven by US concerns—real or inflated—about that country’s nuclear-weapons program. As a result, for years, many US policymakers persuaded themselves that the key to peace in Afghanistan lay in pressuring India to resolve the Jammu and Kashmir dispute and thereby somehow allay Pakistani insecurities.

Finally, the US fell victim to its own propaganda. Consider, for example, the notion of Afghanistan as the ‘graveyard of empires’, which reflected Britain’s effort in the late 1800s to explain its failures in the First Anglo-Afghan War and the emergence of Afghanistan as a buffer zone between the British and Russian empires. It was later propagated by the US, Pakistan and others in the 1980s and the notion went hand in hand with support for the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahidin. But the reality is that Afghanistan (or parts of it) had at various points been part of the Kushan, Hellenistic, Persian, Mughal and Sikh empires, and was at the centre of the Ghaznavid and Durrani empires.

Given its location at the crossroads of Asia, Afghanistan will remain of interest to Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan and India. And as long as terrorist groups can train and operate internationally from Afghanistan and Pakistan, the US and Europe will also have a continued interest in the country’s future. In assessing that future, it will be important to reflect upon the recent past, in order to break the cycle of unlearned lessons that has brought Afghanistan and its interlocutors to this point.

Australia’s Plan B: time for some tough realism

In October 2016, before the US presidential election, I suggested that Australia was entering a foreign-policy crisis period—given the relative decline of American power in the Asian region, the likely withdrawal of the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency. We’ve had these crises before, especially in the late 1940s, before the US alliance replaced the British Empire as our protective umbrella. After seven decades of that alliance, it was clear that we needed to work creatively on a Plan B, and I thought that some Turnbull government initiatives on Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines were signs of new thinking.

My focus was on diplomatic and political strategy. Over the past year, the prime minister’s ASEAN summit in March helped position Australia in the region, and we continue to cooperate with South Korea in ASEAN-led organisations and the MIKTA partnership (which includes Indonesia).

Security cooperation with our long-term economic partner Japan develops incrementally, with talk early this year of a reciprocal access agreement. In the case of India, Peter Varghese—former DFAT secretary—has just completed a massive report on how to foster closer security and economic bonds. The signing of the TPP—without the US, but including Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam—appears shrewd, as does our caution about confronting China in the South China Sea. The continued wooing of President Trump may be less productive in regional terms.

As the Trump administration has become increasingly unreliable and bizarre, discussion of a Plan B is concentrating more sharply on defence capacity. Strategic analyst Paul Dibb says we must ‘focus more on our region of primary strategic concern’, and also need to increase our defence expenditure. But he still believes that America won’t ‘pull out of Asia’ and says that Australia needs to ensure that it ‘continue[s] to have access to highly advanced American military equipment’ to ‘maintain our technological edge in our region’. Insisting that Australia has ‘no credible defence without the US alliance’, Dibb continues largely to think within the old paradigm.

ASPI chief Peter Jennings has been formulating a genuine Plan B. Although hoping Australia will do everything to ‘sustain the alliance’, he believes little thought has been given to ‘the worst-case scenario’. Jennings argues that we must ‘do more for our own security’, positioning ourselves to operate ‘without confidence in the US security umbrella’. To that end, Australia must lift its defence spending to 2.5% or 3% of GDP, develop nuclear-powered submarines, and strengthen its defence relationships with Japan, Indonesia and India.

It’s hard to believe that that level of military enhancement will equip Australia to operate separately from the US. Going back to an earlier crisis time in our foreign relations, the late 1960s (when once again the level of US commitment to the Asian region was in doubt), the Gorton government was reluctant to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and gave serious thought to developing an Australian nuclear weapon. John Gorton’s Liberal successor, William McMahon, returned to reliance on the US as the primary national security strategy. But another senior Liberal, Malcolm Fraser, also wanted a more ‘independent Australian foreign policy’, and to him (as reported in his memoirs) that meant ‘greater and more intense alliances within the region’.

The Gorton nuclear position, it must be said, has at least a degree of logical integrity. It is genuinely muscular, but would require sophisticated and courageous advocacy in Australia and our neighbourhood.

As to the Jennings (and Fraser) emphasis on developing greater defence engagement in Asia, it has promise—but it’s a complex task, and one that must be enmeshed with broader political and economic diplomacy. There’s a general wariness in the region about alliances. Allying against China is dangerous for us, not only because Australia (by any international standards) is economically bound to China, but also because many other countries in the region want to avoid Cold War–style confrontation. That’s certainly the case in most of Southeast Asia, as was made clear at the Australia–ASEAN meetings in Sydney this year.

Leaders on both sides of Australian politics have expressed support for some form of quadrilateral (US, Japan, India, Australia) security cooperation. At times, each of these countries has signalled an interest, but we would be unwise at this stage to assume serious commitment on any of their parts.

Euan Graham has suggested that Australia and Japan are ‘more united in mutual caution than shared strategic ambition’. Japan, of course, is anxious about China, but the emergence since 2008 of the three-cornered (China, Japan, South Korea) Trilateral Northeast Asia Summit is an indication of a new commitment to reconciliation. India too has its serious China issues, but in 2017 became a full member of China’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization—and this year again kept Australia out of its Malabar naval exercises with the US.

The strategic context in the Asian region today is fluid, and Australians tend to prefer black-and-white clarity. But if we reject a Gorton ‘Fortress Australia’ option, our Plan B must stress diplomacy—and must recognise that deeper engagement with Asia will require much patience. We’ll need to look beyond our immediate security or economic gains, and that is always difficult for short-term democratic governments.

Building Australia’s independent influence in Asia must be a long game—moving between the different nations in the region, large and small, and sometimes leveraging relations with one state to advance engagement with another. Well-publicised successes with ASEAN countries (particularly Indonesia) always enhance our reputation and strengthen our voice with major powers.

Promoting the ideal of a rules-based order—as we have been—is a potentially productive measure, but the focus should be on working with Asian partners to gain a consensus understanding of ‘the rules’. We have a long track record in international rule-making, particularly in the founding period of the United Nations. At that time, as Paul Hasluck explained long ago (‘Australia and the formation of the United Nations’, Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. XL, no. III, 1954, pp. 133–78), we played the role of broker between major and smaller states. And we could gain respect today by becoming a broker in a civilisational context.

Working creatively with our region—in almost any way—is what matters. To avoid becoming a ‘lonely nation’ in a possible post-American Asia ought to be a high priority, unless we wish to choose and fund a Fortress Australia.

ASEAN at 50: the authority of weakness

August has been replete with praise for ASEAN as it celebrates 50 years on the job. It is worth reflecting on the impact ASEAN has had on Australia and its place in our future.

First, what ASEAN did not do.

In its early years, ASEAN was given a sense of purpose by the fear of communism. However, its actual role in curbing the latter was limited. When ASEAN was created, the emergency in Malaya was over and Suharto had already been categorical in dealing with the communists in Indonesia. While Thailand had problems with communists in its northeast, their defeat owed little to ASEAN.

Some argue that ASEAN’s role after the fall of Saigon in 1975 was pivotal in containing Vietnamese expansion and in the eventual achievement of a settlement in Cambodia. We should give credit to ASEAN where credit is due. But Chinese and American pressure on Vietnam at a time when the Soviet Union was decreasingly in a position to fight proxy wars was as salient a factor. Vietnam needed to get out of the economic straitjacket which the war and its own statist system had imposed. And on the Cambodia settlement, the last chapter in the Indochina wars, Australia did much of the grunt work.

In recent times, some of ASEAN’s own members have frequently rehearsed ASEAN’s failure to make real progress on security issues (the South China Sea, for example) or on the multitude of economic initiatives which are part of its discourse. This is partly because of its insistence on moving by consensus and doing things the ASEAN way.

That said, ASEAN sits on the credit side of our ledger, but perhaps not for reasons which are commonly adduced.

While ASEAN’s adherence to consensus has contributed to its spending too much time on the treadmill and too little in making progress on the ground, its modus operandi has also diminished the danger of frictions that could have led to ASEAN’s break-up. Its informal sense of community has done much to keep the peace in the region among the original members and was important in healing the divide of the Indochina wars. ASEAN has prospered from peace—as have we.

ASEAN has also been the centrepiece of Asian regional architecture—the ASEAN dialogue partner system, APEC, the ASEAN Regional Forum and the East Asia Summit. While no realist would suggest that the Asian architecture has done everything intended of it, it could not have been developed at all without ASEAN in the middle—because the major powers tend to deny rivals a central role in such schema. It’s because ASEAN hasn’t been able to constitute a powerful phalanx, and because it has been reasonably neutral, that it has been allowed the centrality in Asian affairs that it has sought. Ironically, it has thus derived much of its authority from relative weakness.

As to the future, these factors raise the question of whether it’s in Australia’s interests to have the stronger, more assertive ASEAN which we say we would like to see in the context of China’s growing influence in Asia. Yes, it would be nice to see ASEAN being more assertive, but how much more? The role it enjoys as the prime mover in Asian regional forums, and to some degree the influence it derives from that role, depend on its acceptability to all and its cohesion. Too much assertiveness within ASEAN could endanger both.

Damage to ASEAN’s cohesion and acceptability could in turn menace the fragile web of understandings that underpin the structures we currently have in Asia.

If these arguments have merit, what should Australia do about ASEAN?

Above all, we need ASEAN to survive. If its unity is more important than its robustness, so be it. That unity has served us well and may provide some stabilising presence should the strategic climate in East Asia and the Indo-Pacific deteriorate. And we need our imperfect regional machinery—built around ASEAN—to keep working. But if indeed it does become more assertive, the drive must come from within.

If we put store by ASEAN unity and the value of ASEAN centrality to the Asian architecture, the case is unconvincing (other than in an essentially economic context) for a structurally closer Australian association with ASEAN and negligible for Australian membership of ASEAN—even if we really wanted either.

Many in ASEAN wonder about the integrity of our professed identification with the region given the wholesale priority we have put on our security dealings with the United States since 9/11 and the degree to which we alternatively blow hot and lukewarm on our engagement with the region.

But even if were we to convince ASEAN that we meant what we said about closer association, it’s impossible to see the Australian political style and the current overriding priority we attach to the American relationship permitting ASEAN’s acceptance of our overtures. Moreover, ASEAN’s acceptability to others as the centre of the Asian region depends on maintenance of its broad neutrality and attachment to consensus, which would be contradicted by too close a structural relationship with Australia, at least as our current security policies are constituted.

That’s not to say that we shouldn’t do more of what we already do with ASEAN or continue strengthening our bilateral dealings in Southeast Asia. We should do both. But for us, ASEAN probably works best as it is.

ASEAN at 50: more success likely, in spite of itself

Commentary on ASEAN’s 50th birthday has been largely congratulatory, and deservedly so. Observers have recalled that back in 1967 there were apprehensions about the possible spread of communism further into Southeast Asia, as well as tensions between Indonesia and Malaysia, between Singapore and Malaysia, and between Vietnam and the non-communist nations of the region.

ASEAN, starting with its five founding members (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines), and then later with the addition of Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, has done much to foster a sense of community. Of course, there are disagreements among the member states, but generally there’s an effort to prevent tensions from getting out of hand. ASEAN has had some success in projecting a collective identity internationally. It has also benefited from perceptions that it’s been a region of strong economic growth, in contrast to much of the rest of the world.

In recent times, there’s been more questioning of ASEAN’s coherence, its economic course and its relevance as a force in the political and security affairs of the wider region. This is justified. Economic growth rates in the member countries are now decidedly mixed. ASEAN governments have been slow in developing joint positions on key economic and other policy challenges. A marked failure has been ASEAN’s inability to respond with clarity and force to China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea, including at the ASEAN Regional Forum and related meetings in Manila earlier this month. China’s march as the emerging regional hegemon rolls on, aided and abetted by Cambodia and Laos, which risk sliding into roles as Chinese satrapies.

The prospects for ASEAN to recover momentum as a vehicle for collective progress and regional influence are cloudy at best.

Developments within several of the major ASEAN member states have caused them to be domestically preoccupied. Malaysia is grappling with the import of the 1MDB corruption allegations swirling around Prime Minister Najib Razak and his government, and sectarian and racist bigotry is on the rise in the political and social sphere. Thailand has been in something of a time warp since reverting to military rule in 2014 and has yet to work out a sustainable equilibrium between its principal national institutions. Myanmar’s governance remains in transition, and hopes of fully democratic rule are as yet unfulfilled. Indonesia has done little since the election of President Joko Widodo in 2014 to assert what one might think should be its natural regional leadership role. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that ASEAN as a grouping is in a state of drift.

The good news is that economic integration within ASEAN is likely to continue, albeit driven more by the private sector and demographic trends than by government fiat.

Across the ASEAN economies, state-owned enterprises play a major role, often drawing on their government links to develop their business. Within the private sector, much of the business activity in the region is in the hands of ethnic Chinese who are nationals of the ASEAN countries where they’re based. Through dialect group and family networks, their reach into other ASEAN economies—and China and elsewhere—is enhanced. Thus we see Singaporean and Malaysian banks with branches around ASEAN. Thailand’s Central Department Store group has established itself in Indonesia. Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand conglomerate has agribusiness, retail and telecommunications operations across ASEAN. One can expect these business networks to foster the development of an integrated ASEAN economy, as well as, in time, the harmonisation of regulatory structures.

Demographic trends, along with labour market forces and porous borders, are already increasing people movements within ASEAN. Thailand, in particular, has seen an influx of people from Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam, estimated to total 2 million or more. The UN classifies Thailand as an ‘aging society’, and the World Bank predicts a contraction of the working-age population of about 10% between 2010 and 2040. Malaysia is estimated to have more than 3 million foreign workers, most having ‘migrated’ illegally from Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar, along with a considerable number of refugees and asylum seekers. Singapore has a very low birthrate and relies heavily on foreign workers, notably professionals from Malaysia and Indonesia. Over time, such movements can be expected to bring about closer personal and economic links between ASEAN countries, notwithstanding the challenges of legitimising the status of the ‘migrants’.

Enhanced connectivity across ASEAN, encouraged by improved transport links, along with the tourism and business flows supported by increased prosperity, will assist in developing mutual awareness and in all likelihood a greater sense of regional solidarity.

To make real progress, including in the regional political and security spheres, ASEAN governments will individually have to lift their sights above their internal preoccupations. Among the challenges ASEAN faces as a region, China’s rise, which presents a threat as well as opportunities, is the biggest. Indonesia and Vietnam will be critical in addressing this: each has a robust sense of its own independence and a historical wariness about China.

Asia’s history challenge

ASEAN’s leaders are worried about what history tells them about the future of Southeast Asia. The fears about the lessons of history are a discordant note as ASEAN steps up to a great moment in its history—the creation of an economic, political-security and social Community in December 2015.

Perhaps this moment of historic creation is partly driven by dark understandings of history. As ASEAN embraces a date with regional destiny, its leaders are invoking some tough history as reference points.

The President of the Philippines, Benigno Aquino, stirs headlines by comparing China with Hitler’s Germany. In this metaphor, the Philippines has the role of Czechoslovakia. Aquino ran this line last year to The New York Times and during his recent visit to Japan.

The point about Aquino’s history isn’t just the Germany–China analogy, but the casting of the US in the Britain/France role—the great powers that stood mute while the small state (the Philippines as Czechoslovakia) got monstered.

Another history that keeps popping up is Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian war 2,500 years ago, the conflict between Athens and Sparta. The Thucydides trap that ASEAN sees is different to the Thucydides trap that worries China and the US. Different aspects of history for different folks.

Professor Graham Allison’s version of the trap is the danger posed when a rising power confronts a ruling power.

For Allison, the crucial news is this line: ‘It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.’ Applied today, this becomes China’s rise, US fear and inevitable conflict:

Never has a nation [China] moved so far, so fast, up the international rankings on all dimensions of power. In a generation, a state whose gross domestic product was smaller than Spain’s has become the second-largest economy in the world. If we were betting on the basis of history, the answer to the question about Thucydides’s trap appears obvious. In 11 of 15 cases since 1500 where a rising power emerged to challenge a ruling power, war occurred.

The trap has captured the attention of China’s leader, Xi Jinping. He told the Berggruen Institute:

The argument that strong countries are bound to seek hegemony does not apply to China. This is not in the DNA of this country given our long historical and cultural background. Also China fully understands that we need a peaceful and stable internal and external environment to develop ourselves. We all to need to work together to avoid the Thucydides trap—destructive tensions between an emerging power and established powers, or between established powers themselves.

When ASEAN leaders go to Thucydides, however, they are interested in a different trap – what big powers can do to the small.

The Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak, had his Thucydides moment at the Asia Pacific Roundtable last year, with this bit of dark history:

Imagine a world where institutions, rules and norms are ignored, forgotten or cast aside; in which countries with large economies and strong armies dominate, forcing the rest to accept the outcome. This would be a world where, in the words of the Greek historian Thucydides, ‘The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’.

Going Peloponnesian a few weeks ago, Singapore’s Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, worried about the same history:

It should not be a world where might is right, where the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must. It should be a world where legitimacy and constructive engagement are the international norm, and every country, big and small, can compete peacefully for the chance to prosper.

The strong doing as they will and the weak suffering as they must is what Athens told the small state of Melos in the Melian dialogue, demanding surrender and payment of tribute. Melos refused to yield, claiming the right to remain neutral (or lean towards Sparta) on grounds of justice and honour. After a siege, Athens infamously carried out its threat to kill every Melian male of arms-bearing age and sold the women and children into slavery.

Such history speaks to core aims of ASEAN neutrality and centrality. Neutrality for individual ASEAN states has a distinct Melian flavour—the right to stand aloof or to lean between China and the US, depending on the issue. The ASEAN fear is of not being central to decisions and being forced to pick sides under duress.

The ASEAN version of the Thucydides trap is another version of the conundrum expressed by Wang Gungwu: ASEAN’s problem is to form a realistic assessment of China’s intentions and America’s resolve.

Musing on the prospect of tough choices is such a habit it qualifies as part of the ASEAN way. Coral Bell’s line was that NATO is ever in crisis; in the same manner, ASEAN is ever tormented by existential angst. The history lessons feed the angst.

Licking catastrophes

At the time of the 1993 federal election I was shirt-fronted by an ardent South Australian conservationist appalled at bipartisan political support for defence spending when there was, apparently, an enormous feral cat problem attriting the wildlife in the Adelaide hills. To be clear, my petitioner thought it was the problem that was enormous rather than the cats themselves, but the solution was to put the ADF onto a feline search and destroy mission. This would surely be a good use for all those expensive weapons. Army’s 16th Air Land Regiment based at Inverbrackie SA would no doubt turn the moggie tide with their RBS-70 short-range missiles.

Kym Bergmann’s piece belling the cat on Tony Abbott’s surprise visit to Iraq is reminiscent of my 1993 experience. He ‘wonders what the people in affected areas such as the Mt Lofty Ranges consider the greater danger: an immediate roaring wall of flame and smoke, or the barbarians of the Islamic State (IS) in northern Iraq.’ Read more

Tag Archive for: Asia

Stop the World: TSD Summit Sessions: ASEAN, regional stability and disruptive tech with Dato’ Astanah Abdul Aziz

In the latest video edition of The Sydney Dialogue Summit Sessions, Bethany Allen, Head of China Investigations and Analysis at ASPI, speaks with Her Excellency Dato’ Astanah Abdul Aziz, Deputy Secretary-General of ASEAN for Political-Security Community.

They discuss Dato’s career path and how her time as a diplomat within Malaysia’s foreign ministry led to her current role with ASEAN. They also explore the role of ASEAN and the value that it brings to the region – not just economic value but also in building relationships.

With growing tensions in the South China Sea, Bethany and Dato’ discuss how ASEAN can contribute to greater stability in the Indo-Pacific. They also talk about how ASEAN nations are working to address the rise of disruptive technologies, particularly artificial intelligence.

Dato and Bethany were both panellists at The Sydney Dialogue, ASPI’s premier policy summit for critical, emerging and cyber technologies, held on September 2 and 3. This special episode is the fourth in a series of podcasts filmed on the sidelines of the conference, which will be released in the coming weeks. 

Speakers: 
Her Excellency Dato’ Astanah Abdul Aziz 
Bethany Allen

Mapping China’s data harvesting and global propaganda efforts

ASPI has released a groundbreaking report that finds the Chinese Communist Party seeks to harvest user data from globally popular Chinese apps, games and online platforms in a likely effort to improve its global propaganda.

The research maps the CCP’s propaganda system, highlighting the links between the Central Propaganda Department, state-owned or controlled propaganda entities and data-collection activities, and technology investments in Chinese companies.

In this special short episode of Stop the World, David Wroe speaks with ASPI analyst Daria Impiombato about the key takeaways from this major piece of research.

Mentioned in this episode:
Truth and reality with Chinese characteristics

Guests:
David Wroe
Daria Impiombato

Tag Archive for: Asia

Chief of Army Roundtable

On 13 March, ASPI DC welcomed Australian Army Chief Lt. General Simon Stuart, AO, DSC for a roundtable discussion moderated by Senior Analyst Dr Nishank Motwani at the Australian Embassy in Washington, DC.

The discussion explored the changing deterrence dynamics in the Indo-Pacific.

CSIS Panel: Achieving the Quad’s Tech Potential and Strengthening Connectivity in the Indo-Pacific

On 12 April, ASPI DC Director Adam Leslie joined a panel discussion on the Quad’s technology potential and strengthening connectivity in the Indo-Pacific at Yale’s inaugural GeoTech Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The panel discussion featured Channing Lee, Associate Director for Foreign Policy at the Special Competitive Studies Project; Vikram Singh, Senior Advisor to the Asia Program at the United States Institute of Peace; and Dr William Chou, Japan Chair fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Tag Archive for: Asia

Wong is in an exquisite predicament. She must make China fear her response

Hostage diplomacy is an apt name for the exquisite predicament in which Australia finds itself. An Australian citizen, Yang Hengjun, is held arbitrarily and then, in a shocking decision, sentenced to death. But with the diabolical twist that the sentence is suspended for two years dependent on good behaviour.

Whose good behaviour? Not Yang’s but ours – Australia’s. With Yang as a hostage, Australia is being blackmailed into submission and silence.

Beijing is masterful at planting self-doubt in the minds of rivals. If we speak out against Chinese bullying of neighbours in the South China Sea, will Yang be executed? If we name China as a perpetrator of cyberattacks, will Yang be executed?

If you are worried about what another party might do, they are in control. So, we need to make Beijing worry more about what we might do.

As a smaller nation that abides by rules and norms, the way to do that lies in collective action. Rather than try to walk this treacherous tightrope alone, Australia needs to work with liberal democracies to establish a coalition of nations that can respond to hostage diplomacy and impose a cost – from economic to reputational – on nations that abuse the rule of law this way.

And we are not starting from scratch. In 2021, the democratic world signed the Canada-led Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention. Canada was driven by the experience of having two of its citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, detained arbitrarily because Ottawa agreed to consider an extradition request by the United States for Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer to the telco giant Huawei, whom US authorities accused of fraud.

Canada’s stoutness demonstrated that when a country stands up to bullying, it is standing up not just for itself but for everyone who believes in rules and norms.

The 2021 declaration was a good start, but it needs enforcement mechanisms to stop it being toothless. Australia should start with the Five Eyes group – our partnership with Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States – and the G7 nations, which adds France, Germany, Italy and Japan. It should also encourage participation from other countries that have citizens arbitrarily detained, such as Sweden with Hong Kong publisher Gui Minhai held since 2015. Countries that have experienced Moscow’s and Beijing’s bullying, like Lithuania and other European Union members, would also be powerful partners.

It must be clear to Beijing, and all totalitarian regimes such as Iran, that it will be held to account when it tries to blackmail another country through hostage diplomacy. The only way to deter a malign actor is to convince it that its actions won’t work, and moreover there will be costs. A good recent example of such collective action was Australia, Britain and the US’ use of Magnitsky sanctions laws to target the Russian hacker behind the Medibank breach. Coordinated sanctions help tighten the net around a criminal’s assets.

No one should doubt this is a tough balancing act for Foreign Minister Penny Wong. She is rightly prioritising Yang’s welfare, and therefore the immediate step is to continue the most strenuous representations for Yang’s health and wellbeing.

That means medical care, books, contact with his family and a pathway to him being freed and returned to Australia. He should never have been jailed, and he certainly should not have been sentenced to death. His detention in reportedly harsh and even cruel conditions is a continuing abuse of a man in his late 50s with significant medical ailments who is likely not getting adequate care.

Wong rightly responded on Monday with a clear denunciation of Yang’s sentence. She also trod carefully, saying this was a decision by the Chinese legal system. In truth, there’s no separation between the party-state and the courts in China, but Wong’s language may give the Chinese government space to step in and commute the death sentence.

Yet, this must not mean any kind of backward step by Australia on issues key to our values and long-term interests. If we let ourselves be tugged into a slippery slope of submitting to Beijing’s coercive will, the coercion will continue. And unlike, say Iran, which has taken prisoners as bargaining chips in straight out government-to-government transactions, Beijing tends not to offer any kind of clear exchange but rather builds pressure for long-term submission to its core strategic objectives.

Hence, for Wong, there are short and long-term goals that arise from the Yang case.

Long-term, it’s about having as many countries on our side as possible so that Beijing recognises that to execute an innocent citizen of another country is no longer just a bilateral issue with a smaller power, but a global issue. The risk-benefit calculation changes dramatically.

It’s time for Beijing to stop assuming it can worry Australia, and start worrying about what Australia might do. In this case, we can fight for Yang and our democratic sovereignty.

Australia and China have very different notions of stability

The remarks on Wednesday from Chinese ambassador Xiao Qian and other embassy officials confirm what many national security observers have been worried about for months.

If we pull our punches, if we subordinate our values and long-term interests to a short-term effort to orchestrate a trouble-free diplomatic relationship, we won’t actually buy stability. Rather we’ll find ourselves on a slope where nothing we do is good enough, and we will be eternally tempted to find unilateral compromises.

The embassy press conference demonstrated Beijing is looking for Australia to keep sliding ever closer to positions that will satisfy the Chinese Communist Party.

Questions about the sonar burst that our government says injured Australian naval personnel prompted an official to warn against making trouble on China’s doorstep.

Questions about the Taiwanese election elicited further demands that Australia stay silent when Taiwan freely elects a new leader.

These would be breaches of Australia’s core values. We have every right to operate in international waters as HMAS Toowoomba was doing in support of a United Nations mission late last year. And Australia should never shrink from championing the expression of democracy through free and fair elections, as we have through statements on Taiwan’s election that were actually fairly mild.

The day we fail to celebrate people’s participation in their own government – something mainland Chinese people don’t enjoy – is the day we might as well pack our bags and go home, geopolitically speaking. Xiao stated bluntly that Beijing could show no flexibility or compromise on Taiwan, meaning any shift to smooth the waters would have to come from Australia.

Stabilisation is the stated goal of the Australian government, but Beijing has a different definition of stability. Australia wants to co-operate where we can and disagree where we must, but Beijing doesn’t accept when we disagree. This was clear from Xiao’s opening remarks, which painted an ambitious picture of an ever deepening relationship that ignored differences and sought increased co-operation, including joint defence exercises.

Beijing is trying to achieve its strategic objectives through aggression, coercion and threats.

How could we seriously have joint exercises with a military that is bullying a democratic nation in the Philippines through steady and calculated harassment of its vessels in the South China Sea? We couldn’t speak out with a straight face the next time the Chinese navy used water cannon on a Philippines ship. But that’s the idea.

Beijing is trying to achieve its strategic objectives through aggression, coercion and threats. This is its own doing, not Australia’s. Xiao’s naked threat to Australia ahead of the Taiwan poll, warning that support for Taiwanese independence – which is not Australia’s position – would push the Australian people “over the edge of an abyss” should be intolerable.

For the sake of staking out consistent positions on core issues, Canberra should make clear that such remarks are unacceptable. While unlikely to change Beijing’s malign objectives, we would send a signal that stability, to us, doesn’t mean submission, but prioritising our own security, transparently and consistently.

Sonar attacks, threatening Australians with the abyss, unfair trade sanctions – they all demand condemnation because they are breaches of rules and norms that are essential to our region’s future. Inconsistent responses only contribute to the degradation of the rules that have helped keep us secure since 1945.

Xiao also continued the recent Chinese government effort to drive divisions between Australia and Japan, hinting preposterously that the Japanese Armed Forces might have been responsible for the sonar attack.

This points to another Beijing ambition – hamfisted though its execution might seem. It would prefer that regional partnerships are weakened so that it can manage others bilaterally, giving it a sizeable advantage.

But Australia needs friends, partners with whom we co-ordinate and collaborate. We can’t have regional stability unless we work together to balance and deter China, impose costs for its transgressions and gradually persuade it that bullying and coercion will be ineffectual and detrimental to its own interests. Stabilisation can’t become code for tolerating Beijing’s destabilising activity. The UK made this mistake in the 1930s, with disarmament and appeasement policies that tolerated German rearmament and illegal land grabs.

As we start 2024 with increasingly confident authoritarian regimes, wars in Europe and the Middle East and increased tension in the Indo-Pacific, democracies like Australia are faced with two roads diverging. The pathway ahead is not a confected improvement to the bilateral relationship with Beijing that rests on our biting our tongue and entering into arrangements that only leave us more vulnerable, such as returning to an excessive and risky trade dependence.

We are no longer in a period of stability to be maintained but an era of instability that means a business-as-usual approach will be insufficient. Our approach needs extra effort ranging from greater defence investment to diplomacy that manages tensions rather than ignoring them – because whatever the rhetorical niceties, our long-term values shouldn’t be sacrificed for short-term interests. Both roads cannot be travelled.

Labor ‘softly, softly’ tactic, leaves China holding the big stick

As 2023 draws to a close, how should we assess progress on the government’s stated objective of “stabilisation” in Australia-China relations?

On the face of it, the Australian government has built significant momentum this year towards restoring to an even keel relations with China. The Prime Minister’s visit, in early November, was the obvious high point, signalling a diplomatic thaw after a years-long freeze.

We’ve seen the release of journalist Cheng Lei and the prospect of senior Chinese government officials visiting Australia in 2024. And the government can point to some success in the area in which it has put most focus – securing the winding back of punitive trade barriers Beijing imposed against a range of Australian imports from mid-2020.

Stability is, of course, a laudable aim in the abstract. However, it is becoming increasing clear the diplomatic rhetoric of stabilisation is wearing very thin – and in fact risks being distracting or self-delusory – when the underlying reality is so at odds; namely Beijing’s ongoing destabilising behaviour and the fundamental differences in our strategic interests and political systems.

First and foremost, though least obvious, it encourages a damaging relationship-management mindset towards China. This is a common foreign policy trap Beijing knows how to play to its advantage. Whenever China succeeds in elevating subjectively defined atmospherics as a basis for engagement, it undermines national interest considerations if the other side accepts that differences should be minimised in order to establish goodwill or to maintain access.

Canberra needs to be careful not to overemphasise a relationship-building approach towards China, especially one centred on personal diplomacy between Albanese and Xi Jinping. In China, the PM said he regarded Xi as an “honest and straightforward” interlocutor. Earlier, he said Xi “has never said anything to me that he has not done”. While Albanese may have made such comments in the context and spirit of relationship building, such descriptions are a shaky foundation for a substantive relationship.

The most obvious weakness with “stabilisation” is that it runs directly counter to China’s deliberately destabilising behaviour in the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, South China Sea and across its land borders with India and Bhutan. This has continued unabated since Labor came to power. In particular, the unsafe and unprofessional use of sonar by a Chinese warship, injuring Australian divers from HMAS Toowoomba right after Albanese’s visit to China, dramatically undercut Canberra’s claim to have steadied bilateral relations. This incident forced an immediate course correction from the government, when Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles condemned China’s “aggressive” behaviour, in a media interview in India.

Beyond scripted joint statements issued at international summits, Australia’s ministerial lineup has appeared reluctant to call out China’s concerning pattern of escalatory and intimidating behaviour towards The Philippines in recent months. Official statements of concern have seemingly been pushed down to the ambassadorial level.

Labelling Beijing’s actions as destabilising has arguably become harder for the government now it has made “stabilisation” the main metric of its China policy. That said, the most recent statement issued by DFAT in support of The Philippines marks a noticeable strengthening in our language, though it also highlights the limitations if not contradictions in the government’s stabilisation narrative. It is also abundantly clear Australia continues to compete geopolitically and directly with China in the South Pacific and that this is driving Canberra’s statecraft in the subregion.

As I wrote in Australia’s Security in China’s Shadow, the paradigm undergirding the Australia-China relationship swung from economics to geopolitics around a decade ago and will not swing back again quickly. A competitive, largely adversarial framing is more likely to define the future than one based on expanding co-operation.

Even in the economic arena, where the government’s diplomatic efforts have borne the most tangible fruit, stabilisation is falling short of Canberra’s expectations. Trade Minister Don Farrell has said he is “very confident” that “by Christmas”, China will remove all remaining trade impediments against Australia, predicting “we will have restored that stable relationship that we want with our largest trading partner”.

In fact, China is likely to defy Mr Farrell’s optimism by keeping a range of trade restrictions in place. This is Beijing’s best tactic to ensure Australia remains absorbed in the “low politics” of bilateral trade, averse to the risks of spillover from more contentious policy differences. Businesses desperate to re-enter the Chinese market are likely to counsel caution against holding Beijing to account in their own cause of stabilisation, narrowly defined. China’s efforts to coerce Australia, including through economic means, have not ended – they are merely likely to take on new and more pernicious forms.

The other shortcoming of the stabilisation narrative is that it underplays the fact the primary explanation for China’s fence-mending approach towards Canberra was not Labor’s superior diplomacy in comparison with the previous Coalition government, but Beijing’s own realisation that its efforts to coerce Canberra into a more compliant mindset had failed.

While certain export industries have undeniably suffered as a result of China’s economic punishment campaign, Australia avoided macroeconomic damage because of the success of market diversification efforts, by both government and the business sector. In fact, the value of bilateral trade with China scaled new heights, because China continued to import the commodities it most needed from Australia, at prices inflated partly by its own politically motivated interference.

The most important revelation from China’s attempts to punish Australia economically was Australia’s underlying resilience as a competitive exporter in a global, rules-based trading system. In the final analysis, Australia’s macroeconomic stability was shown not to depend on the political health of its relationship with China.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has recently transitioned to talking about Australia-China relations in terms of a need to “navigate our differences wisely”. As 2024 beckons, with all of its uncertainties, perhaps it is time to quietly retire “stabilisation” as a narrative that has served its limited purpose.

Tensions must be managed, not ignored. Time to bring funding forward

Geopolitics is driving the dangerous strategic realities that Australia faces.

Beijing’s expansionist agenda is seen through its military aggression and commitment to undermining and changing international rules; Russia continues its revisionist war against Ukraine and a disruptive foreign policy; and we were reminded on October 7 that terrorism remains a top security threat with global implications.

However, the way Australia responds is within our control. Strong foreign and security policies, matched by serious defence investment, can ensure that potential adversaries looking to upend the status quo are deterred from dragging us into conflict.

There are two clear, related priorities. The first is to ensure our foreign and defence policies are consistent and not at odds – the latter being a misstep that seems increasingly likely. The second priority is to invest properly in our defence force.

The defence and intelligence communities have made the hard-headed strategic assessment-articulated in the Defence Strategic Review – that Beijing’s assertiveness is the greatest threat to our security and needs to be checked.

Our diplomacy, meanwhile, has been seeking “stabilisation”, in which we improve the atmospherics of the Australia-China relationship, reduce the focus on areas of disagreement and look for co-operation.

It’s a laudable goal, but is it sustainable or even consistent with our strategic assessments?

There are signs that stabilisation is coming at a cost to our strategy of seeking peace through strength and deterring Chinese aggression by having a highly capable defence force that we will deploy to support regional stability.

We have been too quiet about Chinese breaches of international rules, such as the bullying of Philippines vessels in the South China Sea. When the Chinese navy threatened the safety of Australian personnel, the government sent mixed signals as to how seriously it took the incident, with Defence Minister Richard Marles issuing a clear statement but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese unable to say that he had raised the issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

That inconsistency removed the opportunity for what should have been a moment of Australian unity in the face of direct confrontation and injury to defence personnel.

There is a growing risk of a defence and foreign policy gulf in which we pull our punches diplomatically while trying to show military credibility through initiatives such as AUKUS and defence exercises.

Indeed, it is why there is an inherent weakness in democracies viewing foreign policy as soft power and defence policy as hard power with distinct roles, while our authoritarian rivals see them as fused.

Our ability to deter aggression will be undermined if our defence policy suggests we face serious threats while our diplomatic communications suggest we don’t.

Good diplomacy isn’t about denying differences but confronting them with clear affirmation of the legitimacy of Australia’s national interests, and our right to protect them.

Otherwise, Australia risks playing into Beijing’s strategy of claiming that any response to Chinese provocation amounts to Australian escalation.

Of course, providing assurances is an important companion to deterrence. The West is justifiably assuring Beijing that we don’t seek regime change in China, Taiwanese full independence, nor to contain Chinese growth where it is rule-abiding and peaceful.

Such messages help reduce mistrust, but assurances alone provide no deterrence, only incentivising more bad behaviour, which is why they must be accompanied with unequivocal signals that we will respond when Beijing breaches rules.

Failure to do so is the mistake that Europe made with Moscow, relying too heavily on assurance that NATO posed no threat to Russia, even while Vladimir Putin escalated aggression after 2008 and as Europe wallowed in complacency with meagre defence spending.

If we do not project the strength to match the reality of the threats, we risk making the dangerous misjudgment that Winston Churchill implored England to reverse in 1932 when he said he could not recall a time “when the gap between the kind of words which statesmen used and what was actually happening in many countries was so great as it is now.

The habit of saying smooth things and uttering pious platitudes and sentiments to gain applause, without relation to the underlying facts, is more pronounced now than it has ever been in my experience”.

The recent AUKUS defence ministers’ meeting showed progress in developing capability but also importantly expressed clear collective intent. The ministers’ statement that “AUKUS contributes to integrated deterrence by pursuing layered and asymmetric capabilities” sent a clear signal to Beijing.

These signals can’t be limited to defence ministers-our long-term sovereignty requires deterrence to be a national priority, baked into our economic and industrial policies, bringing industry and the public along the journey and not merely surprised when crisis hits.

At the bottom line, the Albanese government needs to invest in defence in a way that matches the rhetoric that statements such as the DSR have expressed.

Resourcing defence to match a damped-down foreign policy aim of stabilisation may result in short-term savings but will only lead to more spending down the track.

As ASPI’s budget analysis in May stated, the additional funding the government has promised beyond the forward estimates period needs to be brought forward. Budgets are tight, but we are not going to deter aggression unless we are prepared to put real money into defence capabilities.

It would be wonderful if all states got along and if all conflict and unfair competition could be resolved by diplomatic niceties. History shows this is wishful thinking.

Diplomacy is vital but it is ineffective if viewed as the good cop to defence’s bad cop; a message to adversaries that we do not have the willingness and competence to use our hard power.

Meanwhile, our own industry perceives a lack of seriousness and our public senses a lack of need and justification for investment.

Indeed it is defence investment that helps ensure diplomacy can focus on managing, not ignoring, tension.

It is the will to confront difficult realities and think through worst-case scenarios that provides the greatest chance of developing effective strategies to deter them, and to be best prepared if they do eventuate.