That Prime Minister Albanese had just 30 minutes following a 3-hour meeting between the USA and China to talk with the Chinese leader President Xi Jinping, was it worth the effort? Indeed, it was.
In diplomatic terms, even just talking with the President was Prime Minister Albanese’s most significant achievement since winning the May 21 election.
Following a decade of Abbott, Turnbull, and Morrison’s belligerent style of decadent diplomacy, Albanese is showing Australians that relationships with those who differ politically and culturally and who you disagree with can exist so long as differences are respected.
We have not respected China’s rise from poverty to a global superpower in the last 40 years. An astonishing accomplishment, however one looks at it. That China now has all characteristics of a Fascist state doesn’t make the task any more manageable, but we must try to understand their objectives culturally and geopolitically.
China now has:
“… the world’s second-largest economy, trailing only the United States (International Monetary Fund 2020). Within a few years, it will be number one. It was the world’s leading exporter and second-largest importer in 2018, the last year for which data were available (World Bank 2020a). Its foreign aid provision and outward foreign direct investment (FDI) have also increased exponentially over the last decade.”
“Accompanying China’s economic rise has been an escalating assertiveness.” America has been exporting its culture as a democracy to the world for as long as I recall, and China now chooses to exhibit itself to the world. That’s right, guys.
Whatever was in the minds of Abbott, Dutton, and Morrison in using language calculated to offend China but impress a domestic audience is anyone’s guess. One can only conclude that it was dumb diplomacy. China and the Australian electorate were equally unimpressed.
That they continued to use such belligerent language after losing billions in trade speaks volumes for their inability to talk the talk of international diplomacy.
Deliberately picking fights with a superpower is as stupid as saying, “I am responsible for what I say, but I’m not responsible for what you understand.” (Anonymous)
Albanese may not be our most articulate politician, but his knowledge, maturity and experience tell him when to ruffle feathers and when to push the diplomatic button.
After reading and listening to the many media reports, it is evident that he was, in the time available consistent in saying what was relevant to Australia’s interests.
Our Prime Minister, having employed the basics of international diplomacy, has taken giant steps toward restoring our relationship with China after years of open hatred. All it took were words that made the point intended without offence.
All of this doesn’t hide the obvious. Stan Grant, in an article for the ABC, made these points.
“That Xi Jinping is the same Xi Jinping today as he was yesterday. The leader who has overseen what has been called a genocide against the Uyghur Muslim minority.
The same Xi Jinping who threatens war with Taiwan.
The same Xi Jinping who crushes dissent. Who has strengthened his iron grip on Hong Kong, tearing up the commitment to one country, two systems?
He is the same XiJinping whom Joe Biden called a thug.
The same Xi Jinping who calls Vladimir Putin his best friend and inked a no-limits pact with the Russian leader on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
All of this, of course, is true, and Grant adds the following to the world’s most perplexing problem.
“Democracy is in retreat globally. The US appears as a nation exhausted.
The midterm elections may have given some pause to Trumpism. But Donald Trump was always a symptom of a deeper malaise, which has not gone away.
America’s social contract is broken. It is crippled by inequality. It is lacerated by race.
Joe Biden is a pause from Trump’s excess and disruption. Even if he runs and wins a second term, he is not the future of the US.
More broadly, the West cannot expect that the liberal democracy that triumphed in the 20th century will meet the challenges of the 21st century.
It is tested at home and abroad.
Market-first neoliberalism ran aground in the 2008 global financial crisis. Globalisation has produced as many, if not more, losers than winners.
Those left behind have fallen for the siren song of political populists. From Hungary to Poland, Italy, India, Turkey, and the US, race-based nationalists, far-right white supremacists, and identitarians have triumphed.”
And where in this conundrum does the nation of Australia stand?
Despite the economic and social concerns that still exist, we have a mature leader who, in a short time, has proven himself to be a leader willing to get things done for the common good. He has already demonstrated the art of diplomacy and delegation – a leader for the times.
He has this thing we call character. Loosely it is described as a combination of traits that etch the outlines of a life, governing moral choices and infusing personal and professional conduct. It’s an elusive thing, easily cloaked or submerged by the theatrics of politics. But unexpected moments can sometimes reveal the fibres from which it is woven.
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My thought for the day.
“We can learn so much from people we disagree with that it is a wonder we don’t do it more often.”
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