Australia’s foreign affairs chief has warned Beijing against resorting to “pressure or coercion”, declaring China would be wrong to assume it was now so powerful it could set the terms of its engagement with the world.
Amid heightened tensions between Australia and its largest trading partner, Frances Adamson used a major speech on Wednesday night to urge the Chinese government to reflect on how its increasingly assertive actions would be received by other countries.
The secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade also waded in to the great power shifts that are occurring in the world, saying countries such as Australia “have to acknowledge that the United States cannot be expected to lead in the way it once did”.
Adamson said the strategic landscape for Australia had become riskier over the past decade and “our operating environment has lurched in profound and often negative ways” this year.
She said China’s influence had risen as its economic weight had continued to grow, “challenging American power, influence and interests” and bringing strong growth in China’s military spending.
Adamson, a former Australian ambassador to China, said the country’s “impressive” development had brought economic benefits beyond its borders to Australia and others, but it had also brought disruption.
She said China’s economic recovery would be an important factor in “how the region and world emerges from what threatens to be a long and uneven recovery from the Covid recession”.
“But the questions around China are much more wide-ranging than simply its economic approach,” Adamson said at the Australian National University in Canberra.
“No power this large and globally integrated can escape scrutiny or debate.
“The rest of the world has done a lot of thinking about China’s power and what it means.
“But it is less apparent that China has carefully considered other countries’ reactions to its conduct internationally.
“China may have reached a point where it believes that it can largely set the terms of its future engagement with the world.
“If it has, it is mistaken – and that is because there is far more to be gained for China, and for everyone else, through working constructively and collaboratively within the international system, without resort to pressure or coercion.”
Beijing has taken a series of actions targeting billions of dollars of Australian exports over the course of this year, although it has generally sought to defend them on technical grounds. The relationship has been tense for several years but Beijing particularly objected to Australia’s early and vocal calls for an independent international Covid-19 inquiry that it argued targeted China.
A Chinese embassy official told Guardian Australia on Friday that “the problem is all caused by the Australian side” and Canberra should stop treating China as a strategic threat if it wanted to resume ministerial level talks that have been frozen since early this year.
Scott Morrison said this week the government would continue to be patient in seeking to resolve tensions with China, while warning against middle powers being forced into binary choices amid competition between Beijing and Washington.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday: “China noticed prime minister Morrison’s positive comments on the global influence of China’s economic growth and China’s poverty alleviation efforts.”
