【smh】 Dragon is cross, but it's business as usual

rlsrls08

Dragon is cross, but it's business as usual
http://www.smh.com.au/national/d ... -20090818-ep59.html


Peter Hartcher
August 19, 2009
ANALYSIS

IS IT possible for a medium-sized country to stand up to an angry China politically and still do a booming trade with the difficult dragon?

The answer, as the Rudd Government has just demonstrated, is yes.

On the same day the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, told Parliament that China had cancelled a high-level visit to Australia in a fit of political pique, the Government announced it had clinched with China the biggest resource deal in Australia's history.

Smith told Parliament the Chinese had made ''very strong representations'' to demand that Australia deny a visa to Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled activist for China's ethnic Uighur people.

When Smith allowed her visit to proceed, they were ''most unhappy'', he said.

''I vaguely remember the Leader of the Opposition saying to the Government some time ago that we should stand up to China,'' Smith said. ''We did on the Rebiya Kadeer issue.''

Congratulations, Stephen Smith, on maintaining Australian commitment to freedom of movement, freedom of association and freedom of speech, the values for which we have sent young men and women to die on foreign fields since Federation.

And still the Government was able to preside over a $50 billion sale of LNG to China, announced last night. The Chinese are cross with Australia on other matters, too - that is why Stern Hu is in jail. Yet the gas deal proceeded smoothly.

This is an illuminating moment. The Howard government ran a ''business first'' policy with China that verged on being a ''business only'' policy. Rudd is trying something different. On his first visit to China as Prime Minister he called for better treatment of Tibet. Now this. It's a ''business plus values'' policy.

It's a test for the Rudd Government, but it has also posed a test for Malcolm Turnbull. The Opposition Leader had demanded that the Government stand up to China. But yesterday he went public to deplore the poor state of relations. ''Our relations with China are at the lowest ebb they have been for many, many years, and Mr Rudd has mishandled our relations with China.''

Are these positions inconsistent? Yes. Was it poor timing for Turnbull to bemoan the low ebb of relations on the very day that the Government presided over a vast resources deal with China? You bet.

The OzCar fake email affair raised the fundamental question of whether Turnbull has the judgment to be prime minister. We are still awaiting evidence that he does.

magicboy