BEIJING – China today said Australia’s sudden scrapping of a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) deal risks “serious harm” to relations, and warned of retaliatory actions against a country that insists it will not be bullied.
Canberra pulled the deal with Victoria state yesterday in a move destined to provoke Beijing, but justified by the defence minister as necessary to prevent Australia from hosting a giant infrastructure scheme “used for propaganda”.
Australia overruled Victoria’s decision to join BRI – the flagship of President Xi Jinping’s geostrategic vision for the Asia-Pacific region – saying the agreement is inconsistent with Australia’s foreign policy.
As relations nosedive – following spats over the origins of Covid-19 and Canberra’s blocking of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei – Defence Minister Peter Dutton said Canberra is “worried” about local governments entering into such agreements with Beijing.
“We can’t allow these sorts of compacts... to pop up because they’re used for propaganda reasons, and we’re just not going to allow that to happen,” he told local radio.
He said the government’s problem is not with Chinese people, but rather, “the values or virtues or the outlook of the Chinese Communist Party”.
Australia last year enacted new powers – widely seen as targeting China – that allow it to scrap any agreements between state authorities and foreign countries deemed to threaten national interest.
Canberra’s first target was BRI, a vast network of investments that critics have said is a cover for Beijing to create geopolitical and financial leverage.
Beijing laid into the Australian government today, saying it will damage trust between the two countries, and warned that it may take further actions in response.
The move “recklessly interferes in and destroys normal exchange and cooperation, and seriously harms China-Australia relations and mutual trust between the countries”, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a briefing here.
“China reserves the right to take further action in response to this.”
Dutton said he would be “very disappointed” should China retaliate, but retorted that Australia “won’t be bullied by anyone”.
“We are going to stand up for what we believe in, and that’s exactly what we’ve done here.”
China has already slapped tariffs on more than a dozen Australian industries, including wine, barley and coal, in what many see as punishment for Canberra’s increasingly assertive stance against its largest trading partner.
Australia infuriated China by calling for an independent probe into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, banning Huawei from building Australia’s 5G network and tightening foreign investment laws for corporations.
Other agreements between foreign powers and local governments are still under consideration, and Canberra may yet target the presence of Chinese government-backed Confucius Institutes at Australia’s public universities.
Critics said the institutes, which have been the subject of controversy on some campuses, promote the Communist Party’s self-serving version of Chinese culture and history. – AFP, April 22, 2021
