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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Passing Through Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Jun 2018 at 10:39pm
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China’s trillion-dollar sharp power play

It’s a new economic order. It’s rewriting the political map. More than 70 countries, a trillion dollars and virtually limitless ambition are bound up in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. But is this a benign economic plan or the rise of a new empire? And how will it affect us?

by Michael Bachelard

JUNE 18, 2018

The Chinese call it yi dai yi lu – one belt, one road – a revival of that nation’s mythological transcontinental land and sea silk roads. But behind the romance is a hard-nosed plan that’s staggeringly ambitious: a trillion dollars or more spent on hundreds of infrastructure projects co-funded and mostly built by China in 70 or more countries.

The Belt Road Initiative (BRI) is about railways, ports, roads, pipelines, power stations, industrial parks – and much more. It’s a trade bloc revolving around China. It’s rules and standards written by Chinese companies; economic cooperation zones, financial regulation, high-speed internet, direct investment. It’s about education, culture, health, aid, tourism, foreign relations and politics.

It’s being likened by some, including China, to the Marshall Plan, the US program for rebuilding Europe after World War II. But its financial scope and geographic ambition is much bigger. It’s a bid to anchor China’s economic and political place in the world by exerting a mix of hard, soft and steely “sharp” power.

About 70 countries have signed the memorandum to collaborate. A raft of other “second division” countries are sympathetic. They cover 4.4 billion people and about 40 per cent of global GDP. China expects its annual trade with countries along BRI routes to surpass $US2.5 trillion within the next decade.

Whether you think it's benign or not depends on your view of China's global intentions. Australia, for one, is wary.

It’s either a new network for peaceful cooperation or a bid for hegemony.

And, at its centre, is the Chinese Communist Party and its leader for life, Xi Jinping.he Silk Road Economic Belt, touted as a modern take on the 13th-century route chronicled by Marco Polo, offers new, more certain links across Eurasia to China’s relatively underdeveloped western provinces – offering faster ways to move goods than by sea. America may still rule the waves but China is seeking to rule Eurasia.

The Maritime Silk Road is a product of China buying or building a vast network of ports to secure the passage of goods through maritime chokepoints and in and out of new markets.

An Arctic Silk Road is also on the cards with China exploring new sea routes through the Arctic, avoiding many existing chokepoints, as global warming melts the ice.

Economic corridors are strategic lines of economic development across national borders that include transport infrastructure, trade zones, customs and border controls and connectivity.

www.watoday.com.au/world/asia/china-s-trillion-dollar-project-changing-the-world-20180618-p4zm4k.html

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Isaac soloman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Jun 2018 at 11:25am

Australia will compete with China to save Pacific sovereignty, says Bishop

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The West Australian Published An Article by Chinese Consul-General in Perth Lei Kezhong Entitled" Strong China links good for WA
2018/06/07

On 7 June 2018, the West Australian published an article entitled " Strong China links good for WA" by  Consul-General Lei Kezhong. The full text is as follows:

This year marks the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening up. And Chinese President Xi Jinping declared at this year's Boao Forum for Asia 's annual conference 2018 that "China's door of opening up will not be closed, but will only open wider".

Mr Xi also announced a series of important new measures to expand opening up, promising to ease market access, improve the investment environment, enhance intellectual property rights protection, and take the initiative to expand imports.

China stands ready to work with other countries to promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, and to make economic globalization open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial to all.

China is the biggest developing country in the world. Over the past half century, China's commitment to eradicating poverty has lifted 800 million people out of poverty. By the end of 2016, there were still 30.46 million rural people living below the poverty line in China, which is more than the total population of Australia. By 2020, China will achieve the goal of lifting all of its poor out of poverty and work with the whole country to become a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

At present, the Chinese people are making greater efforts to achieve the "China dream" of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The China dream is interconnected with the dreams of people all over the world.

The Chinese people and the people of all other countries should support and help each other to realize their respective dreams. China hopes to work with all the countries in the world to achieve common development and prosperity.

China has unswervingly followed the path of peaceful development, adhered to the foreign policy of maintaining world peace and promoting common development in a bid to promote the building of a new type of international relations featuring mutual respect, equity and justice and win-win cooperation as well as the building of a community of common future for mankind.

China adheres to the principle of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs and will not impose its will on others. And China has always honored its words with deeds.

Since ancient times, the Chinese people have always been a peace-loving people, and the Chinese nation has always advocated the traditional culture of peace and a philosophy featured by "Harmony is the most precious", "harmony while different", "universal harmony" and "universal love, not offensive war ".

China invented before Europe the compass, cast iron technology and gunpowder, but we have not abused the advantages of these technologies for invasion and expansion.

Zheng He's voyages to the west were much bigger in scale than those of Columbus's to the American Continent.

A country with the world's most powerful fleet at that time had not taken the path of hegemony. China has a clean history and has never invaded any country.

On the contrary, China had been invaded and devastated by colonialism and imperialism for more than one hundred years. There is a famous saying by Confucius, the master of Chinese cultural thought, and a great ancient Chinese philosopher, that is, "do onto others what you want done onto you." China does not agree with the theory that a strong country is bound to be a hegemonic. There is no such a thing as hegemony and militarism in the Chinese bloodline.

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Australia in 1972, bilateral relations have continuously transcended our differences in national conditions and social systems and achieved leapfrog development.

From gradual enhancement of political mutual trust and increasing expansion of common interests, to the establishment of the China-Australia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and the implementation of the Free Trade Agreement, the growth of our bilateral relations conforms to the mutual interests of our two sides and has brought tangible benefits to the two peoples.

China is not only Australia's biggest trading partner, but also the latter's "first partner" in the overseas tourist market and for international students.

Both the "mining boom" which helped Australian economy survive the global financial crisis, as well as the international education and tourism which drove the current economic transformation of Australia have all benefited from China's continuous strong economic growth and huge market. No wonder many analysts believe that the strong Chinese demand is one of the key factors in Australia's 26 year of consecutive growth.

However, since the second half of last year, some Australian media have repeatedly fabricated news stories about the so-called "Chinese influence and infiltration"in Australia, and some Australian politicians also made irresponsible remarks which are not conducive to the mutual political trust between the two countries, putting our bilateral relations in jeopardy.

I have also noticed that quite a lot of people from the Australian side have also expressed their different opinions on these matters.

It is my view that China and Australia, both located in the Asia-Pacific region , are highly complementary in economic advantages and deeply intertwined common interests.

Although the two countries differ in history, culture and social systems, there is no fundamental conflict of interest between our two countries.

A healthy and stable China-Australia relationship will better serve the fundamental interests of the two countries and two peoples.

I hope that the Australian media and people from all walks of life here can correctly understand China and China's development and view China-Australia relations in an objective and positive way.

China values its relations with Australia. However, there is a saying in China, "one slap won't make a sound", or "it takes two to tango".

It is our hope that Australia and China will meet each other halfway and do more to enhance mutual trust and cooperation on the basis of mutual respect and treat each other as equals, so as to ensure that China-Australia relations will move forward on the right track.

WA is located in the same time zone with China and has always played a leading role in Australia's cooperation with China.

For many years, China has been Western Australia's biggest trading partner, export market and source of import.

In 2017, our bilateral trade volume stood at AUD 60.2 billion, up 3 per cent over the previous year, accounting for nearly 50 per cent of the total exports from WA, among which iron ore exports to China reached 666 million tons, accounting for 85.2 per cent of WA's iron ore exports.

Meanwhile, exchanges and cooperation between the two sides in agriculture, education, tourism and innovation have been further strengthened, and new growth points are emerging rapidly.

I am confident that the prospect of our mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Western Australia in all areas is very promising.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Passing Through Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Jun 2018 at 1:05pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Isaac soloman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Jun 2018 at 12:56am

One of the worst human rights abuses in recent times is occurring in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang. The Chinese Communist Party has rounded up possibly one million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities in purpose-built concentration camps where they are subjected to mental and physical abuse without legal recourse.

Despite the scale and intensity of this crackdown, few know what is happening inside Xinjiang, and even fewer are willing to say anything about it. The Australian Government must acknowledge the failure of its closed-door “dialogue” with China on human rights, and join other free countries in publicly condemning this egregious abuse of power.

China unsurprisingly denies the existence of such camps, claiming “the various ethnic groups in Xinjiang have seen great progress in the protection of their human rights”. Yet recent research by a handful of academics and journalists has meticulously documented the construction of a vast network of “collective re-education centres” across Xinjiang.

Anyone engaging in “abnormal behaviour” or exhibiting “symptoms” of radicalisation or political disloyalty can find themselves incarcerated. These “signs” include refusing to drink or smoke in public, wearing a veil, praying outside a mosque, or even wearing a watch on the right wrist. Internment quotas mean many ordinary citizens are now being held indefinitely against their will, and in some cases their families are forced to pay for their detention.

Using open-source procurement and construction bids, German scholar Adrian Zenz estimates that the Chinese Government has already spent more than US$100 million building these walled, barbwire compounds, and that more than 10% of the adult Muslim population of Xinjiang has been locked away.

Law student Shawn Zhang is using satellite imagery to visually document the rapid assembly of these camps, including one, outside the regional capital of Urumqi, that is the size of five aircraft carriers and likely houses ten thousand or more detainees.

We now have a handful of accounts about life inside Xinjiang’s secretive gulag, where detainees are subjected to around-the-clock political indoctrination and forced to denounce their culture and religion. Omir Bekali was detained without a legal warrant and held for eight months in a squalid, overcrowded camp in Karamay. After his release, he told AP News that he was placed in solitary confinement, physically tortured, and deprived food.

Uyghur student at an American university was forcefully removed from a plane in Shanghai when he tried to visit his parents over the summer holiday. He was blindfolded and transported thousands of kilometres to an internment camp in Xinjiang, where he was held in a tiny cell with 19 other inmates under the constant glow of a single light bulb and subjected to continual brainwashing. He was one of the lucky ones, released after 17 days and allowed to return to the US to resume his studies.

This systematic cultural cleansing is what Professor James Millward, one of world’s leading experts on Xinjiang, calls “Beijing’s attempt to find a final solution to the Xinjiang problem”.

These actions violate not only Chinese law but also international norms against the extrajudicial deprivation of liberty. Article 37 of the Chinese Constitution and Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, explicitly forbid any form of arbitrary detention.

In response, the Canadian and US governments have publicly censured Beijing, while the commission monitoring China’s human rights record for the US Congress has labelled these “political education camps” as “the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today”.

The Australian Government, in sharp contrast, has said nothing publicly. This, despite the fact that many Australian citizens of Uyghur ethnicity have relatives in arbitrary detention in Xinjiang, including Adelaide resident Almas Nizamidin whose newly pregnant wife, Bizainafu Abudourexit, was detained without charge in Xinjiang and disappeared before she could join him in Australia. 

Over the past thirty years, both sides of politics in Australia have preferred to raise human rights issues behind closed doors, arguing that “non-confrontational, cooperative dialogue is the most effective way to address the human rights situation in other countries”. Yet these bilateral efforts to engage China on its own terms have failed to produce any concrete results.

In 2015 the Chinese Government made a unilateral decision to walk away from these annual, high-level human rights meetings, leaving Australia with fewer diplomatic options for altering China’s repressive behaviour at home. 

If Australia is unwilling to publicly name and shame Beijing, it has little hope of changing China’s behaviour. The failure to speak out not only sanitises the actions of an abusive regime, but also contributes to China’s efforts to redefine international human rights standards.

The Turnbull government has warned against the dangers of a “coercive China” and the Chinese Communist Party’s interference in Australian politics and national life, but has said little about the systematic abuses occurring inside China itself. The CCP’s autocratic, bullying culture begins at home, with Human Rights Watch, among other global NGOs, documenting “the broad and sustained offensive on human rights” since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.

This week Australia has a perfect opportunity to openly condemn the transgressions in Xinjiang at the UN Human Rights Council. Australia lobbied hard to secure a seat on the council, promising a “pragmatic and principled approach” to its membership. We should now join other countries in deploring the oppression in Xinjiang and call for an independent international commission of inquiry to document what is happening inside these concentration camps and how they violate Chinese and international law.

China and its client states will inevitably block such a recommendation. But a principled approach to our engagement with China requires a firm moral compass. Future generations will judge Australia on whether it speaks out or turns a blind eye to the incarceration and forced domestication of Xinjiang’s Muslim population.T19 June 2018

15:00 AEDTime to denounce China’s Time to denounce China’s Muslim gulagMuslim gulhttps://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/time-denounce-china-muslim-gulagag

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Isaac soloman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Jun 2018 at 11:24am

Beijing uses infrastructure as friendly forerunner of political powerDo you see a pattern here?

The Chinese Communist Party built a road into Tibet and the Tibetans were excited - it was their first highway: "We were promised peace and prosperity with the highway, and our parents and grandparents joined in building the road," as the president of Tibet's government in exile, Lobsang Sangay, tells the story."In fact, they were paid silver coins to help them build the road. So there was a popular song during those days, it goes like this: Chinese are like our parents; when they come, they shower you with silver coins," the Harvard-educated lawyer recounted at the National Press Club in Canberra last year.

The Chinese soldiers were patient with the local kids and bore their taunts with smiles, he said.

"Then they built the road. Once the road reached Lhasa – the capital city of Tibet – first trucks came, then guns came, then tanks came. Soon, Tibet was occupied. So it started with the road."Beijing maintains that Tibet was peacefully liberated and developed."But this is the definition of peace - nearly 1 million people have died under various forms," says Sangay. "They've died of famine, they've died in prison, they've died in labour camps."

The cultural and religious purge of Tibetan Buddhism is well known. The Chinese authorities razed more than 90 per cent of monasteries and convents.

The Chinese Communist Party built roads into Xinjiang, the Muslim-majority lands just to the north of Tibet. "When the Chinese people first went to Xinjiang, we all thought, what nice people," says the voice of the ethnic Uighur people's independence movement in the region, Rebiya Kadeer.

"We treated them nicely, we expected some investment and development," she tells me. "Initially they said 'we will help you with development but you will rule over the land," says Kadeer, once one of the richest women in China and a member of China's National People's Congress, now living in exile in the US.

"Only three per cent of the people in Xinjiang were Chinese," ethnic Han speaking Mandarin Chinese, distinct from the Turkic-speaking Uighur who make up the biggest ethnic group in what is now a province of China.

The Beijing government operates a transmigration policy in Tibet and Xinjiang, relocating Han people from the south to change the ethnic and political composition. The percentage of Han Chinese is now about 40 per cent in Xinjiang.They increased and and increased and now they are killing us," says Kadeer. The Chinese Communist Party has built a network of re-education camps for the Uighurs. Kadeer calls them concentration camps where people are detained indefinitely without due process.

In the biggest Uighur city, Kashgar, 120,000 people were held in the camps in 2017 according to a local security chief, or about one in four of the entire population. Maya Wang of Human Rights Watch estimates the total across Xinjiang to be as many as 800,000 people.

The Economist magazine's headline on a piece about China's gulags in Xinjiang read: "Apartheid with Chinese characteristics."

These are both cases where China has a historical claim, dating back over centuries, for asserting sovereign ownership. Both involve lands adjoining China's heartland.

These are cases of China consolidating power on its periphery. They are not stories of the Chinese Communist Party conquering foreign nation states.

But they are, nonetheless, instructive tales of how Beijing has used infrastructure as the friendly forerunner of political power.President Xi Jinping portrays the Belt and Road initiative as China's generous gift to humankind. Its breathtakingly ambitious scope is offered as a pathway to shared prosperity and harmony, a "community of common destiny".

But it is also a strategic initiative. A general in the Peoples Liberation Army Air Force, Qiao Liang, in 2015 described it as "truly the strategy of the shrewd". A military theorist, he explained that "if you tell people, 'I come with political and ideological intentions', who will accept you?"

It's an infrastructure plan with an underlying strategic intention: "Pulled ever more closely into China's economic orbit," sums up Nadege Rolland of America's non-profit research agency National Bureau of Asian Research, countries embraced by the belt and road "will find it increasingly difficult to stand up to Beijing.

"As China gains political influence over its neighbourhood, it will be able to push back against US dominance and reclaim its own regional strategic space," she concludes in her book "China's Eurasian Century".

Of course, the Chinese Communist Party is not the first power to conceive of a network of dual-use infrastructure. The ancient Romans built 80,000 km of paved road, straight and durable, to allow rapid movement of troops to extend and maintain empire, but also to allow efficient commerce.

The Roman road system was so powerful and its commercial benefits so enduring that, even today, it delivers economic benefit. Four Nordic scholars this year mapped ancient Roman road routes onto today's nighttime light intensity and found that the evidence shows the Roman road network as "playing an important role in the persistence of subsequent development". Right up to now, millennia later.

So what's so terrible if the Chinese Communist Party creates a modern equivalent? They may have strategic motives, but the economic benefits for many millions of people across dozens of countries could be transformative and enduring.Unfortunately, the political costs could be high. Of the 68 countries signed up to date, 33 are ranked as below investment grade by the world's rating agencies. So they're not very creditworthy but China is cheerfully lending them billions they may not be able to pay back.

Already, in this very early phase of Belt and Road, new Chinese lending is exposing eight countries to risk of financial distress, according to a report by the Centre for Global Development, a US-based non-profit think tank.

And if they can't make their repayments? When Sri Lanka asked to renegotiate its $US8 billion debt to China for the Hambantota Port project last year, Beijing converted its debt into ownership equity and a 99-year management lease on the port.

Debt is another way of spelling obligation. The Chinese Communist Party has a history of using infrastructure as a Trojan Horse for domination.

Belt and Road, unless approached with care, could end up being another way of spelling bought and sold, with Chinese characteristics.

Peter Hartcher is international editor.

By Peter Hartcher
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Isaac soloman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Jun 2018 at 11:25am
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Isaac soloman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Jun 2018 at 11:34am

What does it mean for Australia?

The big question for Australia, which has benefited from strong Chinese investment over the past decade, is whether it will miss out if Beijing begins increasingly guiding investment towards BRI countries, its new foreign policy priority.

According to China’s Ministry of Commerce, from January to April this year, the import and export value of goods trade between China and BRI countries was $US389.1 billion, up 19.2 per cent compared to last year.

Direct investment increased by 17 per cent and project contracts soared by 28 per cent.

Sun thinks there is little chance Australia will miss out, even if the Turnbull government doesn't formally sign on to the BRI.

“Practically, Australia is still a top destination for outbound investment,” she says.

“It is a stable country, which is attractive to Chinese investors ... In Africa, it is easier [for a major infrastructure project] to get government financing if the country is BRI perhaps, but in Australia, the project may not need government funds because it can more easily access international financing.”

Li agrees: “A country which has a stable government like Australia, which is resource rich, has a reliable legal system and good access to private financing, is therefore more attractive to Chinese companies.”

https://static.ffx.io/images/$width_1600%2C$height_901/t_crop_auto/t_sharpen%2Cq_auto%2Cf_auto/184773510bf21176361dd53b6f7892ab4b884af0" style="box-sizing: inherit;">https://static.ffx.io/images/$width_1536%2C$height_865/t_crop_auto/t_sharpen%2Cq_auto%2Cf_auto/184773510bf21176361dd53b6f7892ab4b884af0" style="box-sizing: inherit;">
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Passing Through Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Jun 2018 at 11:44am
What do you think it means for Australia Isaac?
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Isaac soloman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Jun 2018 at 12:11pm
go back and read the thread.

you arnt that obtuse pt....
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Isaac soloman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Jun 2018 at 12:13pm

China sets its sights on Tasmania with controversial $100m development plan

CHINESE tourists are flocking to this surprising Aussie state in record numbers. But an ambitious $100 million plan has sparked a local backlash.

news.com.auJUNE 22, 20188:19A
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Isaac soloman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Jun 2018 at 12:16pm
"But by now, concerns were being aired in the West about the motives for the big project and the billions in cheap loans on offer. Was it simply a way for China to export its overcapacity of steel and concrete and avoid huge layoffs at state-owned Chinese construction companies by finding new places for them to keep building stuff?"

The city where a trillion-dollar plan to dominate global trade began

Welcome to Chongqing, the heart of China’s dream to reshape the world. Next stop, Europe.

By Kirsty Needham

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Isaac soloman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Jun 2018 at 1:07pm
oh dear pt, what to do with the live animal export trade, especially when it affects trade with china. confliction, confliction, conflition. 

I know wa's usually forthright labor ag minister, alanah Mctiernan, has gone blubberyLOL

Deaths mar China cattle trade

Jenne Brammer and Nick EvansThe West Australian

WestBusiness can reveal 46 cattle died on a recent voyage to China, triggering the threshold for mandatory public disclosure to the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources.

Harmony Agriculture and Food Company subsidiary Phoenix Exports sent 3180 cattle from Fremantle on June 1, bound for Lianyungang in northern China. Harmony chief executive Steve Meerwald said the deaths were still being investigated by DAWR, but he believed it was likely to be down to respiratory-related issues.

“This is our third shipment of the same, or similar grain-fed Angus cattle, prepared in a similar way, but previous shipments had very low mortalities,” he said.

Mr Meerwald said the cold front that passed over WA late last month caused a significant drop in temperature just before loading, which could have made the cattle vulnerable to respiratory conditions and lowered their resilience to rising temperatures as the vessel approached warmer waters.

“We started losing low numbers early in the voyage, we contacted the DAWR and told them of our concerns,” he said.

“Deaths spiked when the ship was near the equator, there were 12 lost on one day.”

All pre-export conditions had been met and an Australian accredited vet and accredited stockmen were aboard the independently chartered vessel, Mr Meerwald said. Exporters are required to report any voyages on which more than one per cent of cattle die on board.

Mr Meerwald said Harmony was working with DAWR to investigate the circumstances.

“We are terribly disappointed at the outcome,” Mr Meerwald said. “But it’s not through neglect or irresponsible behaviour. This signals further respiratory work needs to be done when taking cattle from southern Australia across the equator.

“We hope to get a credible insight into what caused the issues and determine how to better manage future shipments.”

He said Harmony had recommended to industry the adoption of the heat stress risk assessment model, adopted for the Middle East, be implemented on all shipments.

The news comes amid debate in Canberra about the future of the live sheep trade. Labor introduced a Bill to reinstate the position of the inspector general of animal welfare and the Senate debated a Bill to ban the trade in the northern summer months. Neither Bill went to a vote.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Isaac soloman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Jun 2018 at 1:12pm
oh and by the way, guess who the biggest live animal exporters to china are? none other than the iron ore moguls, gina and twiggy.

noo wonder they are all the way with china. have too look after the hand that feeds you, or  maybe makes you the richest people n aus.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Passing Through Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Jun 2018 at 1:22pm
Originally posted by Isaac soloman Isaac soloman wrote:

go back and read the thread.

you arnt that obtuse pt....

Can I use that when I get a stupid question?
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote stayer Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Jun 2018 at 8:37pm
Ok I think I finally get what you 2 are butting heads about.
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The story China went to furious lengths to stop from airing

CHINA’S Canberra embassy issued a fierce threat over a story on one of the rising superpower’s controversial policies. Here’s what really happened.

Gavin Fernando and Charis Chang
news.com.auJUNE 22, 20188:51PMIVE days before 60 Minutes aired a program about China’s quest for global dominance, the team received a furious phone call.

“Take this down and take it to your leaders!” the voice on the other end was yelling.

On the line was Ms Saxian Cao, the Head of Media Affairs at the Chinese Embassy in Canberra, and she was laying into the program’s Executive Producer Kirsty Thomson.

“You will listen! There must be no more misconduct in the future!” Ms Cao reportedly shouted into the phone.

According to Nine News, Ms Cao accused the network of filming the exteriors of the Chinese Embassy in Vanuatu illegally — a claim Ms Thomson refuted.

Ms Cao also claimed a drone was used to fly over the embassy in a potential safety hazard, which was also disputed.

The report claimed the phone did not end amicably, with Ms Cao shouting: “You will not use that footage!”

It highlighted the lengths to which the Chinese government will go to silence voices it doesn’t agree with — even within Australia, amid an ongoing national debate over foreign interference laws.

The offending 60 Minutes episode — which aired earlier this week — covered the ongoing issue of Chinese encroachment in the Pacific, including the country’s Belt and Road Initiative, a Chinese-built wharf in Vanuatu, and the wider issue of foreign interference in Australia.


So what was the Chinese Communist Party so keen to hide?

CHINA’S RISING INFLUENCE IN THE PACIFIC

Papua New Guinea will soon be the second country in the Pacific to sign on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

“When in China, we’ll be signing the ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative,” PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill said earlier this week, according to local media.

“That is a great potential for Papua New Guinea, which means that this will help integrate our own economy to the global economy … The rest of the world is making business with China and we cannot simply sit back and allow these opportunities to go by.”

The PNG leader is currently in Beijing for a week-long visit.

The move will no doubt raise alarm bells in Canberra, with fears China is increasing its presence in the Pacific region.

In April, Fairfax Media reported Beijing was negotiating a military base less than 2000 kilometres from our border.

China and Vanuatu have both denied the report, which claimed Beijing was eyeing a military base in the island nation, with global ramifications.

“No one in the Vanuatu government has ever talked about a Chinese military base in Vanuatu of any sort,” Foreign Minister Ralph Regenvanu said. “We are a non-aligned country. We are not interested in militarisation.”

The move prompted fears in Australia over Beijing’s aims for greater military influence in the South Pacific region.But Beijing’s economic influence in Vanuatu remains undeniable, with China responsible for almost half of the island nation’s foreign debt.

In places like Sri Lanka and the African nation of Djibouti, China has been granted control over ports after the countries defaulted on massive loans taken out to build the ambitious projects.

There are now fears the same pattern will play out in Vanuatu where China has loaned the country $114 million to build a wharf at Luganville — the site of America’s second largest base in the Pacific during World War II.

CHINA’S DEBT-TRAP STRATEGY

China’s debt-trap game goes something like this: they offer the honey of cheap infrastructure loans, then attack with default when these poorer economies aren’t able to pay their interest down.

At the heart of this sits the Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion-dollar project that seeks to connect countries across continents on trade, with China at its centre.

The ambitious plan involves creating a 6000km sea route connecting China to South East Asia, Oceania and North Africa (the “Road”), as well as through building railway and road infrastructure to connect China with Central and West Asia, the Middle East and Europe (the “Belt”).n a previous interview with news.com.au, Dr Malcolm Davis, senior analyst in defence strategy and capability at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said China is mainly targeting poorer countries and employing a “debt-trap strategy”.

He said the trillion-dollar project basically forces other countries to align themselves with it.

“It gets countries — particularly poorer countries — hooked on debts they can’t pay back,” he said. “When they can’t pay it back, China basically grabs ports, facilities or territory. It’s a debt-trap strategy.

“It services their need in terms of accessing resources, sustaining contacts and national development, and maintaining that ‘China Dream’. It’s really vital for the Communist Party to maintain prosperity if they want to maintain power.”

WHY THE PACIFIC IS CRUCIAL

Why is the Pacific so important to China? From the rising superpower’s perspective, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Fiji are the most crucial, as they have the most minerals and natural resources.

But while the strategic aspects of China’s interest in the region have been highlighted recently, experts believe they have been over-hyped.

“I don’t think (the region) is enormously important to China,” Australian National University’s Development Policy Centre deputy director Matthew Dornan told news.com.au.

“The amounts of aid they provide are still not huge. Australia provides a lot more.”

According to the Lowy Institute, China spent $2.2 million on 218 projects in the Pacific between 2006 and 2016. This is a lot less than the $10 million Australia contributed.contributed.

“I don’t think the Pacific tops its list in terms of strategic importance, even if it does for Australia,” Dr Dornan said.While the Pacific may not be high on China’s agenda, Australia appears to have woken up to the importance of the region to its own interests.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop recently returned from a bipartisan trip to some Pacific nations with Labor shadow minister Penny Wong. They visited Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.

Ms Bishop has denied that the trip was aimed at countering Chinese influence but in an interview with Fairfax Media, acknowledged that China’s construction of roads, ports, airports and other infrastructure in the region had triggered concern that small Pacific nations may be saddled with unsustainable debts.

“We want to be the natural partner of choice,” Ms Bishop told Fairfax earlier this week.

“We want to ensure that they retain their sovereignty, that they have sustainable economies and that they are not trapped into unsustainable debt outcomes.

“The trap can then be a debt-for-equity swap and they have lost their sovereignty.”

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote stayer Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 Jun 2018 at 12:28am
Ok, again, I'm not sure what either of you is arguing about. Is it money or morality?
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Isaac soloman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25 Jun 2018 at 11:34am
Common Sense isn’t Common
1 WEEK AGO
"The Chinese are playing the long game. Their plan is to own the whole world and to do it without major military actions. The new Chinese economics are the weapon. Sell the west ANYTHING for ANY price (usually crap quality consumer goods they can sell you multiple times). It doesnt matter so long as they get the hard currency and use that to buy goods with good solid long term value, like land, mining rights and infrastructure. Repeat until world is fully owned."

How succinct
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Isaac soloman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29 Jun 2018 at 12:09pm
hey pt ive logged in.....

out of curiosity kept a log on the views in this thread. Since tuesday have had 500 views.

is it your chinese mates keeping an "eye" on things pt?

How paranoid.


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Passing Through Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29 Jun 2018 at 1:02pm
Baidu Search Engine watching 41 threads Isaac. Better get your foil hat on.


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Isaac soloman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Jun 2018 at 11:39am

'Something is not right': How $US100,000 ensured a million-dollar illegal catch was forgotten in East Timor

When police in East Timor caught a large fleet of Chinese fishing boats last year, with thousands of dead sharks on board, the evidence of illegal fishing — on a massive scale — seemed indisputable.

But after a nine-month investigation the crew, the boats and the multi-million-dollar haul are gone, having been released and allowed to sail home to China — apparently not guilty of any wrongdoing.

A US$100,000 ($135,300) payment apparently secured their release. But just who paid it, and where has the money gone?

The dawn raid, involving police from East Timor and Australia, was captured on camera and followed months of surveillance by the activist group Sea Shepherd, whose ship the Ocean Warrior had tracked the Chinese fleet off East Timor's south coast.

It was the Ocean Warrior that took police out to sea last September to raid the boats, where they found "thousands and thousands" of frozen sharks "on every single vessel", including leopard sharks and the endangered hammerhead sharks which are protected under the CITES Convention.

The 15 boats and their Chinese crew — owned and employed by Honglong Fisheries — were immediately impounded and detained, while prosecutors in East Timor investigated their activities and prepared a legal case against them.

But inexplicably, East Timor's District Court in Baucau has now released the crew without charge and allowed them to take the boats back to China — in return for a US$100,000 guarantee — on the grounds the crew did nothing wrong.

One Chinese captain remains in detention, but sources have told the ABC they expect he too will soon be freed.

The ABC understands that the huge catch of frozen shark — far from being confiscated — has gone with the boats to China, where it could be worth millions of dollars.

East Timor's former Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, Estanislau da Silva, has told reporters in Dili that there was no evidence the crew had violated Timorese law, and that the court released them because they did not have protected sharks on board.

But critics including Sea Shepherd say the decision "reeks", and raises questions about China's pervasive influence in East Timor.

They question where the money was paid. One key source told the ABC there appears to be no receipt or record of the money being paid into the relevant government coffers.

It is understood East Timor granted the 12-month fishing licence to Honglong Fisheries in 2016 for less than US$500,000 ($677,025). Yet the company which effectively owns Honglong Fisheries — Pingtan Marine — has boasted that each of its fishing boats can generate up to US$1 million ($1.35 million) in annual revenue.Against that background, a US$100,000 payment to free the 15 boats and their crew would barely make a dent in its profits, and simply be written off as the cost of doing business in East Timor.

Sea Shepherd has also questioned — if the crew had done nothing wrong — why they were asked to make any payment at all.

"Why pay $100,000? Something is not right," said Gary Stokes, Sea Shepherd's Director for Asia.

"I think it was a smokescreen to let them go, so people didn't kick up a fuss. And as soon as they've gone the minister has come out and said yes, we let them go. They did nothing wrong."

Mr Stokes also rejects the court's claim that there were no sharks on board.

"Where we're very angry, is that the laws are very, very clear in Timor. The endangered species that are listed on CITES, which include the hammerhead, are protected and are forbidden to be caught," he said.

"When we boarded (the boats) … we instructed the (Timorese police) and they went to the forward freezer and they dug down deep and they actually found hammerhead sharks.

"Here we have the national police holding the evidence, with photos of the evidence presented to the court in Baucau, and for some reason it was thrown out of court, that they didn't violate any of the laws of Timor Leste."

Indeed, it was not the first time Honglong Fisheries had been accused of illegal fishing in East Timor. Sea Shepherd began its surveillance after the same fleet was documented in February 2017 offloading massive quantities of shark to a mothership, just 500 metres from the Timorese coast.

Yet Mr Stokes says on that occasion the company was fined a mere US$500 ($677) and told "don't do it again".

"What they did was they would just go offshore, and they would do the transhipments offshore where nobody would ever see them," he said.

"Every two-to-three months a ship was coming, a big refrigerated cargo ship, and it was literally meeting them offshore, taking all the sharks.

"The whole enterprise is illegal. But their partnership with the Timorese officials — for peanuts — reeks."

The same mothership — the Fu Yuan Y Leng 999 — was later caught in the Galapagos Islands with 300 tons (272 tonnes) of shark on board, much of which presumably came from waters off East Timor.

The ship remains impounded in Ecuador, where the crew were jailed. But the Chinese crew in East Timor are now free.

East Timor is not a signatory to the CITES convention, which prohibits fishing of endangered species.But Sea Shepherd says Honglong Fisheries clearly broke East Timorese law in multiple ways, by breaching the terms of its fishing licence, which was for tuna, not shark.

It says its surveillance showed the crew were repeatedly laying gill nets on the ocean floor, rather than drift nets — in violation of its licence — allowing it to sweep up bottom dwelling species including sharks, rather than tuna. It estimates that 95 per cent of the catch found on board the boats was shark, including hammerheads.

The ABC has sought comment from Estanislau da Silva, who since a change of government in East Timor is no longer the minister for Agriculture and Fisheries. A new minister is yet to be appointed.

Pingtan linked to company accused of slavery, torture and money laundering

Pingtan Marine is a US NASDAQ-listed company based in Fuzhou, China, with a shady record on fishing and human rights.

In 2014 Pingtan was expelled from Indonesia after two marine companies it controlled there were linked to allegations of fraud and bribery, as well as the illicit fishing and trade of protected species.

Indonesia's fisheries ministry had found that one of the companies, Dwikarya, had tortured crew members, engaged in forced labour and committed other serious breaches of labour laws. Dwikarya denied the allegations, but its fishing licence was cancelled.

Indonesia's Supreme Court also found evidence of violent "torture ships" that "implicated Pingtan in the modern-day slavery that has infected pockets of South-East Asia's fishing industry," according to a report to NASDAQ investors last year, by the research company Aurelius Value.

Sea Shepherd says as well as the Chinese crew — who were detained in East Timor for nine months, until their release this month — most of the deck crew came from the Philippines, who were allowed to leave after the boats were impounded last year.

Mr Stokes says the Filipinos are still waiting for payment from Honglong Fisheries.

The ABC has tried repeatedly to contact officials at both Pingtan and Honglong Fisheries, but neither company has responded.

In a statement last month Pingtan rejected specific allegations it had made false statements to East Timor during the licensing process in 2016.

"The (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries) is alleging and is investigating whether false statements were made during the licensing process and the vessels were simultaneously registered in Indonesia. The company disputes these allegations," the statement read.

Mr Stokes says Sea Shepherd is trying to track the 15 Chinese boats — assuming they are returning to China — in the hope it can still bring the company to justice, and prevent the trade of its huge, illicit catch.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Isaac soloman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Jun 2018 at 11:40am
A very large pile of dead and bloody sharks.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Isaac soloman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Jun 2018 at 11:42am
becomes clearer why china is claiming the south china seas for its own. 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Passing Through Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Jun 2018 at 2:52pm
The biggest difference between China and the West today explains why China is taking over the global economy

HARRISON JACOBS

JUN 30, 2018, 7:59 AM



  • China has outpaced the US economically, according to a number of economic metrics.
  • A Chinese professor who has lived in both the US and China believes there is a core cultural difference leading to the country’s diverging paths.
  • He believes Chinese people are fixated on economic advancement and business, while Americans are more focused on politics and personal freedoms.
  • The difference has led Chinese people to be willing to work longer hours and spend more energy on entrepreneurial activities.

By numerous measures – and in particular gross domestic product taking into account relative prices of products – China has outpaced the US economically.

A top Chinese business professor who has spent considerable time in both countries believes that a major cultural difference between the countries may be fuelling China’s economic rise, he told Business Insider.

Dr. Zhang Weining, a professor at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, grew up in China, earned his MBA at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and his PhD at the University of Texas in Dallas.

Zhang, who splits his time between the US and China, said that when he visits villages in rural China, the conversations he hears between villagers, farmers, and other people is about technology, business models, and artificial intelligence.

Meanwhile, when Zhang returns to his former homes in Kentucky or Texas, the dominant conversations both among academic circles and regular people is about the governor, the legislature, or hot button political topics of the day like gun control or abortion. The situation has only exacerbated in the Trump era.

“[Chinese people] only care about this: Who can be richer? What are the ways to get rich legally?,” Zhang said. “We argue more about business models and new technology.”

Zhang believes the American obsession with politics sucks up energy and time that Americans could spend working on new technologies or developing new businesses.

“When you are only arguing about politics, it does not help your life at all,” Zhang said. “No one is paying you for that.”

Zhang recognises that political discussions happen in th US because so much of the culture is based around preserving personal freedom. But, he said, Chinese people are currently focused on a different kind of freedom: the freedom for economic development.

By way of example, Zhang points to the country’s 1.2 million couriers, or kuaidi, who zip around Chinese cities delivering packages, food, and just about every other convenience you can imagine. Most work 12-14 hours a day, six days a week.

“It’s almost unimaginable in the US,” said Zhang.

Journalists from the US often come to China and interview the couriers, many of whom are university graduates, about their labour rights. Many couriers lack the rights provided by western labour laws like overtime pay, workers’ compensation benefits, or insurance in case of accidents.

But what those journalists fail to understand, Zhang went on, is that the couriers want the work, regardless of the long hours and the danger. Couriers can make as much as $US2,000 a month after taxes – enough money in China to feed a large family and save for the future.

The obsession with economic advancement isn’t limited to those in the service industry, Zhang said. It goes up the economic ladder. Middle class people in white collar jobs like tech and finance work crazy hours as well, either to chase their dreams or chase the status and respect of others, according to Zhang.

“Go visit Tencent’s offices at 2 a.m. in the morning and see how many lights are still on and how many employees are still coming out,” said Zhang. “All the young people in this country work overtime … they think if everybody else is going to work eight hours, I’ll work 10 hours. And if everyone else is going to work 10 hours, I’ll work 12.”

Take all of that energy and drive together, according to Zhang, and you have the answer as to why China is developing so much faster than the US right now.


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Isaac soloman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Jul 2018 at 2:58pm
Before Xi Jinping, the internet was becoming a more vibrant political space for Chinese citizens. But today the country has the largest and most sophisticated online censorship operation in the world.Fri 29 Jun 2018 15.00 AESTI
n December 2015, thousands of tech entrepreneurs and analysts, along with a few international heads of state, gathered in Wuzhen, in southern China, for the country’s second World Internet Conference. At the opening ceremony the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, set out his vision for the future of China’s internet. “We should respect the right of individual countries to independently choose their own path of cyber-development,” said Xi, warning against foreign interference “in other countries’ internal affairs”.No one was surprised by what they heard. Xi had already established that the Chinese internet would be a world unto itself, with its content closely monitored and managed by the Communist party. In recent years, the Chinese leadership has devoted more and more resources to controlling content online. Government policies have contributed to a dramatic fall in the number of postings on the Chinese blogging platform Sina Weibo (similar to Twitter), and have silenced many of China’s most important voices advocating reform and opening up the internet.

It wasn’t always like this. In the years before Xi became president in 2012, the internet had begun to afford the Chinese people an unprecedented level of transparency and power to communicate. Popular bloggers, some of whom advocated bold social and political reforms, commanded tens of millions of followers. Chinese citizens used virtual private networks (VPNs) to access blocked websites. Citizens banded together online to hold authorities accountable for their actions, through virtual petitions and organising physical protests. In 2010, a survey of 300 Chinese officials revealed that 70% were anxious about whether mistakes or details about their private life might be leaked online. Of the almost 6,000 Chinese citizens also surveyed, 88% believed it was good for officials to feel this anxiety.For Xi Jinping, however, there is no distinction between the virtual world and the real world: both should reflect the same political values, ideals, and standards. To this end, the government has invested in technological upgrades to monitor and censor content. It has passed new laws on acceptable content, and aggressively punished those who defy the new restrictions. Under Xi, foreign content providers have found their access to China shrinking. They are being pushed out by both Xi’s ideological war and his desire that Chinese companies dominate the country’s rapidly growing online economy.

At home, Xi paints the west’s version of the internet, which prioritises freedom of information flow, as anathema to the values of the Chinese government. Abroad, he asserts China’s sovereign right to determine what constitutes harmful content. Rather than acknowledging that efforts to control the internet are a source of embarrassment – a sign of potential authoritarian fragility – Xi is trying to turn his vision of a “Chinanet” (to use blogger Michael Anti’s phrase) into a model for other countries.

www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/29/the-great-firewall-of-china-xi-jinpings-internet-shutdown

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How much porn do they download or watch in China Isaac?
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Don’t let the long arm of China reach to our critical infrastructure

Let’s start with a simple test: who thinks it would be a good idea to hand over our next mobile communications network to a company with intimate connections to the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army, and which is obliged under Chinese law to support Beijing’s intelligence-gathering activities?

Second question: who thinks it would be a smart idea to allow a Hong Kong company to dominate electricity and gas distribution in Victoria and South Australia, gas transmission and distribution in Queensland and the Northern Territory, and critical gas transmission assets in Western Australia and NSW?

It says nothing positive about Canberra’s approach to national security that these developments are regarded in some circles as serious possibilities to take over critical infrastructure essential to how we function.

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays our political leaders talk a big national security game. As Malcolm Turnbull said last December, the Australian people will “stand up” against foreign interference from China. On the other days of the week we have ministers such as Steven Ciobo in Shanghai last May praising China for its “commitment to openness” and echoing a Xi Jinping speech by saying “we should bring our boats together and help each other to find a way to the other shore”The boats the Trade Minister refers to are not likely to be the 12 future submarines or nine anti-submarine warfare frigates that Australia will build, primarily in response to a vast expansion of Chinese maritime power and Beijing’s illegal annexation of the South China Sea, an area almost as big as the Mediterranean and vital to international trade.

Australia has a huge strategic problem on its hands. Through our own policy choices across many years we consciously built an economic dependence on China, comforting ourselves with the hope that, as China became more wealthy, it would become more open, pluralist and part of a peaceful international system following the rules-based order. This hasn’t happened.

China under Xi has become more assertive and more aggressively nationalistic. Xi makes no secret of his ambition to supplant the US as the dominant power in the Asia-Pacific. Domestically, he is cementing his authority by abandoning the two-term limit on the presidency and vigorously “recentralising” CCP influence and control over all elements of Chinese life, including so-called private businesses.

As the Australian Strategic Policy Institute reported in three new studies last week, modern telecommunications technology is enabling Beijing to roll out a nationwide population surveillance capability that makes the state in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four look like a hippie commune. Beijing’s increasingly elaborate “social credit” system will measure people’s loyalty to the party like a credit rating, where low scores will cut off access to travel, jobs and promotions, stifling any unauthorised dissent.

Externally, China is squeezing Taiwan to strangle the independence instincts of a liberal democratic state of 25 million people. Beijing’s coercion of international airlines, including Qantas, to erase any reference to the “Republic of Taiwan” is one example of the CCP’s desire for an Asia-Pacific that is expected to quietly toe the line while the party’s reach is extended to Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, African and Indian Ocean countries, backed by an increasingly powerful People’s Liberation Army.

Australia’s foreign policy and defence statements for years have meticulously “welcomed China’s continued economic growth”, but Beijing’s return to a Leninist autocracy empowered with high-end information technology and growing artificial intelligence capabilities is a compli­cating factor we can’t afford to ignore. This is the essential broader context for thinking about Chinese foreign direct investment into Australia, particularly of large Chinese companies — state-owned enterprises or “private” — into critical infrastructure.

Huawei has been a Chinese success story that, with the preferment and backing of ­Beijing, has grown to operate in 170 countries and, according to Huawei’s chairman in Australia, John Lord, it provides a third of the world’s population “with their telecommunications needs”. Lord admits there is a “Communist Party branch in Huawei” but claims “it has no say in our operations, it meets in non-working hours and looks after staff social ­issues (and) is run by a retired employee of the company”

Research done for the ASPI by American China expert Elsa Kania presents a different picture. Kania has found that Huawei’s party committee controls 300 party branches in the company with 12,000 members. Nor is it just a social club, she tells ASPI: Huawei’s current Communist Party secretary, Zhou Daiqi, often represents the company at high-level talks.

None of this should be surprising; it reflects how business is done in a country where the party and the state operate as a single entity. But in communications and information technology, which is so central to the party’s apparatus for controlling the country, the party and business are getting closer. In the words of one Chinese IT business leader, Wang Xiaochuan, “we’ll be fused together … (if) you think that your interests differ from what the state is advocating, then you’ll probably find that things are painful, more painful than in the past”.

One marker of the CCP’s intent in controlling business is the national intelligence law released in June last year that bluntly says “all organisations and citizens shall, in accordance with the law, support, co-operate with and collaborate in national intelligence work”. Would that apply to Huawei’s activities in Australia? It’s interesting to note a change of emphasis in Lord’s language on this issue. Giving evidence before the parliamentary joint committee on intel­ligence and security in September 2012, Lord said: “We comply with Chinese laws, as we comply with Australian laws, wherever we are operating.” Speaking to the National Press Club last Wednesday, Lord said the Chinese national intelligence law “has no legitimacy outside China. We obey the laws of every country in which we operate in. In Australia we follow Australian laws.”

Read that carefully. It may be that Huawei in Australia isn’t looking for Chinese intelligence services, but you can be absolutely assured that, in China, the intelligence services are looking at Huawei. As Lord told parliament in 2012, “we obviously do not make the product; that comes from head office”. And what does Huawei’s management do in Australia? Lord again: “market the company … part of that is football teams, meeting people, offering people the opportunity to go to our headquarters”.

Although Lord told parliament “I am a bit unsure” about who paid the costs, ASPI’s research into MPs’ declarations of interest have found that no corporate entity has sent more Australian federal politicians on free business-class trips overseas than Huawei. The aim “is getting Huawei known”. It’s very unlikely, though, that this will improve the company’s prospects to be allowed into bidding for the 5G mobile network. In 2011 and 2013 Australia’s intelligence agencies put cases to government to keep Huawei out of bidding on the Nation­al Broadband Network scheme on national security grounds. Both times the government accepted that advice.

In May this year the Turnbull government committed more than $130 million to provide a high-speed undersea telecommunication cable between Australia and Solomon Islands that also will support internet connectivity to Papua New Guinea. That made it possible for Honiara to avoid a communications deal with Huawei following “some concerns raised with us by Australia”, according to Solomon Islands Prime Minister Rick Houenipwela.

It is clear that concern about the national security risks of giving Huawei access to Australia’s telecommunication’s backbone has grown substantially in the past decade. On all the information publicly available, how could it be otherwise? Hopefully we can count on a quick and carefully explained government decision excluding Huawei from 5G consideration.

Hong Kong-based infrastructure firm CKI is developing a $13 billion takeover bid for gas pipeline group APA, whose assets are critical to the flow of gas along Australia’s east coast from Queensland down to Victoria and between Moomba and Ballera in South Australia. CKI, along with the Chinese state-owned enterprise State Grid, were blocked on national security grounds from acquisition of the Ausgrid electricity distribution and transmission network in NSW in August 2016. The government never sought to explain the reason for the decision ­although it has since been reported that it was connected to a critical operational aspect of the Australia-US joint facilities located at Pine Gap near Alice Springs.

An equally surprising decision was to approve the sale of energy company DUET’s gas facilities in Western Australia to CKI, news of which trickled out of a near-empty Canberra late on a Friday in April last year, between Easter and an Anzac Day long weekend. Apart from supplying Perth, the Dampier Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline feeds three critical operational ­Defence bases in the signals intelligence facility at Geraldton, the Special Air Service regiment headquarters at Swanborne, and Navy Fleet Base West at Stirling.

Again, the federal government didn’t see fit to explain the basis this time for an approval of a sale to a foreign company of assets that rather convincingly looked like critical national infrastructure. I understand CKI management found the combination of these decisions to be wholly incomprehensible, as did industry observers.

What then are the prospects for CKI to receive government approval for the takeover of the much larger stock of gas and electricity assets held by APA? I see at least two problems from a national security perspective and, although this is not my field, a competition problem. The first problem is China. Hong Kong is trying desperately to hang on to some believable shreds of autonomy as a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China, but it is clear Beijing has no intention of allowing that autonomy to compromise its control of the territory and of the people and businesses that reside there. While Hong Kong maintains a separate legal system to the People’s Republic, and therefore the 2017 national intelligence law would not (formally) apply to CKI, there is no escaping the reality that Xi intends for his will to prevail in Hong Kong. Businesses there will have to be as solicitous to the interests of the CCP as those on the mainland.

The national security calculation for Australia is hardly less stark for the gas and electricity sector as it is for telecommunications. Can we afford to let the bulk of that critical infrastructure be owned and run by a company ultimately subject to an authoritarian one-party state with a vast intelligence apparatus and an equally large cyber force within the PLA looking for national vulnerabilities that might offer exploitable advantage?

ince the Ausgrid decision not to sell NSW’s “poles and wires” to State Grid or CKI, a Critical Infrastructure Centre was created by the federal government and a new Security of Critical Infrastructure Act passed by parliament this year, showing that more attention is being paid to how Australia can protect critical infrastructure, particularly from malicious cyber interference.

It’s true that one does not need to own an asset to be able to damage it through cyber manipulation, but hands-on access to the hardware and software is a clear vulnerability. The non-negotiable interaction of Chinese intelligence services with their business community remains a persistent challenge.

The non-national security problem for CKI remains what Scott Morrison has called the “aggregation effect” of an ever-larger part of Australia’s energy infrastructure being owned by a small number of mainly Chinese and Hong Kong businesses.

The government has warned on several occasions that “Australia’s national critical infrastructure is more exposed than ever to sabotage, espionage and coercion”. The statement is not made lightly and we should take it seriously. As difficult as these decisions are, Canberra should move quickly to block Huawei’s access to 5G and CKI’s access to APA’s gas and electricity business. This is the necessary price of maintaining national security interests in the face of an increasingly predatory China looking to maximise its own strategic interests at the expense of all others.

Peter Jennings is executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and a former deputy secretary for strategy in the Defence Department.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Second Chance Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03 Jul 2018 at 10:32am

Former trade minister Andrew Robb has warned American efforts to contain China's rise are "futile" and "counterproductive".

Key points:

·         Andrew Robb says China and India would share power with US this century

·         Says efforts by US to contain China "futile" and "counterproductive"

·         Power-sharing is "biggest opportunity and potentially the biggest threat" for the Indo-Pacific region

The long-serving Liberal MP, who accepted a lucrative consultancy with Chinese-owned company Landbridge just after leaving Parliament in 2016, says Australia should exercise its influence independently of both rival superpowers.

Speaking at the Mineral Council of Australia's (MCA) annual dinner last night, Mr Robb said both China and India were re-emerging as major players in Asia and would "share" power with the US over the course of this century.

"Unfortunately, the United States appears yet to accept this inevitability, with both sides of the political aisle in Washington endlessly focusing on 'containment' of China — a futile and counterproductive approach in my view," Mr Robb said.

The former minister, who oversaw successful negotiations on the Chinese free trade agreement, warned the biggest threat to Australia's economic prosperity came from the risk of a botched transition to sharing power with China and India.

Mr Robb warned his MCA audience that mining was the Australian industry most exposed to the region's changing geopolitical environment.

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