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The political lessons from Australia’s defiance of China
Consistency and bipartisanship have helped Canberra resist trade coercion by Beijing.
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China has lifted punitive tariffs on Australian wine, reopening a billion-dollar market as ties improve between the two countries after years of tension.
PHOTO: AFP
Alan Beattie
Few trade conflicts can be calibrated quite so precisely, commodity by commodity, as the China-Australia spat whose denouement continued to play out last week. Four years after Beijing started to impose trade bans in retaliation for Canberra’s temerity in suggesting an inquiry into the origins of Covid-19, China lifted its tariffs on imports of Australian wine.
Both sides portrayed the outcome as a mutually beneficial de-escalation of tensions. But fair-minded observers would award a win on points to the country of almost 27 million people with a gross domestic product of US$1.7 trillion (S$2.3 trillion) against the one with an economy 10 times the size, which also has nuclear weapons. Australia stuck to its geopolitical stance as a strong US ally, and China backed down. With resistance to economic coercion a pressing issue, the episode has been keenly watched in Brussels, Washington and Tokyo – and indeed in Brasilia, Jakarta, Hanoi, Seoul and New Delhi.
