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National security is in danger due to the large amount of pro-China Australian’s who defend this geopolitical threat domestically.
Watch this video below. This blog is just a transcript of whats in the video.
Australia is under threat from China Geopolitically
So today I have a well, I thought it was pro Beijing, but according to the email pro- China guy, and hopefully he will be able to convince the rest of you guys that authoritarianism.
Let’s kick it off by you just introducing yourself and telling them who you are, where you’re from, and before we get into it.
Okay, cool. I grew up in Sydney, and when I was 18, I moved to China, where I spent two years. I was more or less sponsored by the Chinese government and the Confucius Institute to live on scholarship there for those two years.
I also did a couple of months at the Australian Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, learning about some Australian businesses, some Chinese businesses, et cetera. And so would I say I’m pro-China? I don’t know.
Pro-China Australians Prevent Us From Taking Action
I would say I’m pro-China on a range of things, particularly, I think often the mainstream media commentary gets quite a lot of issues wrong regarding China.
I think particularly recently, there’s a lot of anti-China rhetoric, a lot of posturing against China, people talking about decoupling.
People talking about treating our relationship with China as a kind of pre-war situation, both of which I don’t like and I think will be bad for both Australia and China in the immediate future.
All right, well, I’ve got a few questions.
So what I did was I went through the debate that I saw. So I thought that I would send you an email and see if you can come on here and speak to me. Personally, I’ll just kick it off with my opinion.
My opinion is that Australia and the west are basically becoming more and more of a plutocracy.
So what we have is we have the very wealthy, the 1%, holding a lot of the capital, and then what they do is they control the political systems and they bring up the wealthy.
Then they handle all that money over to their children.
Children From Wealthy Australian Families Can Never Understand China
As you can see above, this pro china kid is giving a cheeky grin because he thinks I’m stupid. This form of arrogance is common amongst wealthy kids in Australia.
Simply because they have never needed to work as hard as the blue collar classes, therefore they don’t fully understand just how hard life can be for the majority of people on planet Earth.
When someone doesn’t understand the malevolence in the world, how can they truly sympathise with the Chinese Communist party, or the Chinese people.
They cannot.
What Are The Threats To Australia’s National Security?
Their children quite often go to universities, and it’s paid for. Anybody can pass University. All you have to do is have enough money to turn up. Really, you don’t really have to be very smart to get yourself a degree these days.
The attendance rate and how many people pass are quite high these days. So what we got is people getting degrees.
Obviously, they come from wealthy families, and then they have their connections, and then they rise to the top.
And what we have is we don’t have a proper meritocracy where a lot of the competent people rise to the top and control the power within a lot of Western countries.
We have a lot of the 1% signing deals and getting rich in an authoritarian government in China? Now I don’t think so unless you want to discuss it.
We’re not really discussing communism. I guess we’re really commentating about authoritarianism.
Chinese Maritime Threat To Australia
From the sounds of things, you like to associate that with a bit of geopolitics. And what we’re doing is we are making our decisions and pitching our cases on the behavioral economics of the people in all of the countries and how each of those countries will Intermix with the alliance structure and who’s going to win at the end.
So we’re really predicting the future here. And you obviously think that we should side with China. I think that we should side with the United States. And what do you think about that? I’ve got some questions here as well.
Okay, cool. It’s a bunch of stuff you mentioned. I’ll just talk about the kind of China aspect at this point. I don’t advocate, I’ve never advocated leaving a security alliance with America.
I think America is basically our best friend. We do a lot of dumb stuff together as well. I think an economic relationship with China can exist in the context of a security alliance with America,
I think that’s going to benefit everyone involved. I think we just have to be a bit smarter about how we go about it. I would say to summarize my position.
Okay, well, the fact of the matter is, when you have great power in politics, you have to choose a side. Australia is an island, but we cannot be an island.
Does Australia Have To Choose USA or China?
Now, it is a fact that we do need to choose. It doesn’t mean that we need to decouple entirely. I never said that I don’t think anybody’s facts.
We need to choose. What makes you say that’s a fact?
Well, it’s a fact. So John Mearsheimer and Scott Morrison don’t think it’s a fact.
I don’t think it’s a fact. A whole lot of people don’t think it’s a fact.
What Scott Morrison tells you publicly is very different from what Scott Morrison is told by Washington privately, obviously, and I guess we have different opinions.
Australia Must Choose USA Over China
Now, the United States wants us to be 100% on their side, and China wants us to be 100% on their side.
So I’m sorry, but a lot of the fools in the past have made that mistake, thinking that we can sit on the fence, and that is what has got us into this situation we’re in today.
So we cannot sit on the fence, so we got to choose. And so that’s why I assume that you’re going to choose China, and I choose the United States.
I don’t believe that’s true at all. I mean, even Scott Morrison recently went to America and said our relationship with China is a special one, and we come at it from a different perspective than America does.
I also don’t think that having economic trade ties with China, where trade is mutually beneficial, necessarily means siding with China.
I don’t think there’s an inevitable war coming. I think we can avoid it, although I think there’s a range of people who do want war.
I didn’t say anything about war. We are a part of an alliance system. And when the economies of both of those two great powers come under jeopardy, they choose the alliance system and they make the smaller powers choose.
John Mearsheimer Said Australia Must Choose
But John Mearsheimer came here last year and he told the Australian people that we need to choose or we will become an enemy of the United States.
So we need to choose. We cannot sit on the fence when it comes to great power politics when it comes to something like this. Look at the Soviet Union.
Everyone needed to choose, right? That’s how they broke up. They made a decision, and this is what’s happening right now.
So the other option is what is up here. We’ve got Hugh White on how to defend Australia.
One of the suggestions that he makes is that we could possibly get nuclear weapons, and a lot of the Greenies aren’t going to like that because they don’t like those nukes.
They don’t like nuclear power. We have a lot of the vast majority of Australian people.
Hugh White Said Australia Should Not Choose a Side
They’re against all of these types of things. But Hugh White did suggest, okay, we go it alone. We try to trade with both. We suffer what we will from both of them.
We get nuclear weapons, which will obviously make us an enemy of both of them, and they won’t necessarily trust us too much when we have nuclear weapons. We could possibly become the North Korea of South Asia if we get nuclear weapons and we go alone. But I don’t think we can sit on the fence any longer, in fact.
I think we have a disagreement about what the word fact means initially. If Scott Morrison is saying we don’t need to choose, Donald Trump has not told us we need to choose. Xi Jinping has not told us we need to choose.
I think you’re obviously saying something that nobody else is. And when you say we need to choose, I don’t also know exactly what you mean. If we choose America, we don’t necessarily need to decouple from China.
If we choose China, I don’t know what that would mean either. The option that I support, which I don’t see being thrown around at all, is actually to win over the Chinese middle class, which has been the beautiful story over the last 50 years of hundreds of millions of people being lifted out of poverty.
There’s a group of people who are very smart, very hard working. They often speak three languages, at least Mandarin, their own dialect, and English.
Is China Peaceful?
We all play musical instruments. A lot of them get educated in Western universities.
And if we can actually win over the Chinese middle class, they can actually act as a really strong bulwark against the overage of the CCP and so that’s the pro piece of pro-trade and prosecutor position that I would support.
So I’m pro-peace as well. But, you see, what we’ve done is most countries I dare say all countries choose security over economic prosperity.
So what we’ve done is we have chosen our security, which is the United States over our economic prosperity.
Now, we didn’t tell China that we didn’t want to sell them resources anymore. We didn’t tell them that we didn’t want to sell beef to them anymore.
We didn’t tell them that we didn’t want to sell our coal and our resources and we didn’t want to sell all of these products right now. And they’re threatening to not buy even more.
That’s sanctions. That’s an act of war. Now, we didn’t choose to sell it to China.
China is sanctioning us because we have chosen to remain sovereign and to look for spies within this country and try to protect our sovereign rights as a nation.
Can China Destroy Australia’s Economy?
So I don’t know where you’re getting this idea that we’re deliberately shooting ourselves in the foot and destroying our own economy for no reason, because that’s absolutely ridiculous. And I’d like to throw it in again, Comrade fact.
Okay, well, first of all, I don’t like the tariffs China has put on Australian goods at the same time. It’s not an act of war. No one has declared war.
No one is even really suggesting war. And I don’t think we have destroyed the Australian economy.
What will destroy the Australian economy is deciding to decouple from China or stop trading with China, which is one of the options being presented and supported by a range of anti-China commentators.
Who is saying that I don’t know anybody that wants to destroy our own economy? China’s sanctioning us.
We want to sell whatever we can to China. We want to continue to trade with China. We want to continue to remain wealthy.
China Put Sanctions On Australia
We don’t want to live in poverty. That’s absolutely a ridiculous argument. We want to remain safe with the United States.
We want our ships to remain safe going through the South China Sea, and we want to remain wealthy.
Now, who is actually saying that we should destroy our own economy because this person needs their head read?
Yeah, dude, I don’t know who you’re arguing with because you’re arguing against points that I haven’t made.
That’s what you said. We’re destroying our own economy. China is sanctioning us. Have we told China that we do not want to sell them something?
Is there anything that we have told China that we don’t want to sell, or is China actually telling us that they are sanctioning us? They’re putting tariffs on us.
China Stole The Sea From Other Asian Countries
They’ve militarized the South China Sea to threaten our maritime trade. What have we done to deliberately destroy our own economy?
Why is that funny? It’s a fact. This is what’s happening. I don’t know what world you’re living in. To be honest.
I don’t know who you’re arguing against. I’ve never said we’ve destroyed the Australian economy.
What I said is that if we pursue decoupling and if we pursue stopping trade with China that will destroy the Australian economy.
But how is that going to happen? We’re not going to destroy our own economy. We’re not going to say, look, we’re not going to trade with you. China is sanctioning us.
China Uses Geo-Economic Coercion Against Everyone
It’s geo-economic coercion. That’s the game that they play. They did in South Korea. They did it with exports out of the Philippines.
They’re in and out of Japan. They’re causing trouble with Japan. They’re doing it to Vietnam, they’re doing it to all of their neighbors.
And now they’re bullying us because we are friends with the United States. We’ve been friends with the United States for over 100 years.
So how are we destroying our own economy?
It doesn’t even make sense. We’ve got products to sell. We want to sell them everywhere, as well as protect ourselves.
Okay, I’m going to say this clearly one more time so you understand me. We have not yet destroyed the Australian economy.
China Started De-Coupling From Australia
We will destroy it if we pursue decoupling and stop trading with China. And that is the option which is being presented by people like you.
For example, at the start, when you say we have to choose between America and China.
Right. And presumably what you mean is you say if we choose the security with America over economic relationship with China and we stop our economic relationship with China, then that’s what’s going to destroy the Australian economy.
So that’s not the position that is being had now in the Australian government. And I believe the Australian government is doing a decent job.
But I also believe China has put tariffs and different embargoes on a range of countries at different times.
I don’t like it when they do it, but it’s also very clear that we can develop that relationship and improve it quickly. And I don’t believe those tariffs will be a long-term thing.
Okay, so decoupling how is this decoupling that you speak of going to play out? How is it going to happen? Because if I don’t understand your point, please explain it to me.
Who Started The Trade War Between China And Australia?
Okay. I don’t want to put words in your mouth. Right. The decoupling suggestion has been put forward by a range of people in America.
I’ve seen it come up a couple of times in the Australian media, which basically says we need to kind of slowly but surely wean our economic relationship with China off make kind of Australia self-reliance, not reliant on China.
And we trade with other countries like India, Singapore, and Japan, instead of China. Right. That’s what decoupling means. And I think that I’ve seen that argument come up quite a lot. And I think it’s a bad strategy.
I think that’s what I would believe you mean when you say we need to choose America over China.
What do you actually mean when you say we should choose America over China? Do you mean we should still trade with China? Or do you mean we should end our relationship?
When China puts tariffs on us and uses geo-economic coercion on us? They do that in order to ask for something in return.
What they’re doing is they’re threatening our economy and saying, look, we’re not going to buy things from you unless you do what we tell you to do.
And what is that? What do they want? Well, they’re constantly bullying us.
Why China Sanctioned Australia?
They’re trying to buy our politicians. They’re trying to tell us what our foreign policy should be. We’re a sovereign damn nation.
We’re a sovereign nation, okay? And just so that we can sell a few resources here and there, we should not sell out the entire country and our freedom.
And that’s what decoupling. When people talk about decoupling, China is doing decoupling.
So what we’re doing is we’re getting ahead of the game and we’re diversifying our foreign trade just in case China decoupled from us.
We don’t want to decouple. Nobody has said that we want to decouple and destroy our own economy. That is an absolutely ridiculous argument.
I’ve heard decoupling as in, let’s diversify our trade just in case China cuts us off and sanctions us.
So why is that even so funny? I don’t think you fully understand what is really going on out there. We haven’t sanctioned China.
What we did was we asked for an investigation into the virus, and then they sanctioned us. And sanctions before you said that sanctions are not an act of war.
Did China Declare War On Australia With The Trade Sanctions?
Sanctions are an act of war. So what you do is you sanction a country, you try to weaken their economy and weaken their ability to build their military to protect themselves.
What happens after that? Military engagement. So, yes, it is an act of war. It is officially an act of war. And I know you love the word.
I’m sure you are enjoying it. Because you get to go and watch it all rolling at the end so that I’ve never heard of it when I’m the one who never made those arguments in the first place. It’s happened a few times already.
Who’s decoupling then? Look, if we can’t get to the bottom of who’s decoupling and who’s sanctioning who, I’m pretty sure it’s China.
If you can’t actually name anyone, if you can name one person who has actually said, look, we should stop or trade with China.
If you can name one of those people. Was it Scott Morrison? You mentioned Scott Morrison before. I don’t know anybody that has actually said that. This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I got to say.
Should Australia Trust Hong Kong Immigrants?
Well, let’s get onto another question. Okay, look, I saw in the debate you said we should allow Hong Kong immigrants into Australia.
Then you went on to say that we should give Hong Kong their own city within Australia, as in letting them create their own country on Australia’s landmass.
I don’t know what you’d call it. You’d call it the new Hong Kong down in Australia.
But that’s what you said in the debate.
I’m pretty sure we can go back and have a look at the debate, but I’m pretty sure you said we should give them their own city in Australia and just hand it over and they can create their own country within Australia.
That’s so generous of you. Now, I don’t know what to say. What do you think? What does that mean?
You got about 50% of that correct. I said we should take in a bunch of Hong Kong refugees and I just kind of floated this idea that I’ve been thinking about is that we could build a new city and it won’t be like a Hong Kong nation.
But it can be a place like Australia doesn’t have the infrastructure making cities right now to support a big influx of new people.
Hong Kong Students Are Often Spies For China
But what’s so valuable about Hong Kong is not its buildings. It’s not a city, it’s not its infrastructure. It’s the creative energy of the people.
And if we can bring all those people into Australia and if we can find a place to accommodate them, I think it could be really beautiful.
I think that we could build a new city and not say it would be a different country or a different nation.
But I was saying it could be like when you have what some people would call a somewhat a capitalist paradise, at least previously in Hong Kong.
You could set up a city as, like a special economic zone in Australia to have kind of minimal taxes, minimal regulatory requirements.
And I think you could build a really beautiful city. That was the point I was making.
So this special economic zone will only be for the Hong Kong people and is like a gated community and excludes everybody else.
Hong Kong People in Australia
I bet the Indigenous Australians would love that idea. They’re going to love that one. How does that work? Am I allowed to enter it, or are there PLA military guarding this gated community you speak of?
Well, of course, anyone would be able to go, right? I haven’t thought about this as a real idea.
No, you haven’t thought about it. That’s the problem with this plutocracy that we have in Australia.
You haven’t had an honest question the whole time. You’re just trying to set me up, bro.
I’m not trying to set you up.
Fake news.
I’m not fake news.
What are you talking about? You’re exactly. Fake news gotcha people.
Okay, obviously the Hong Kong city. I’ll let you think about that one a little bit more. I noticed that you studied at Confucius Institutes. You studied Mandarin, I understand, at the Confucius Institute. And you defend them.
How Confucius Institutes In Australia Conduct Elite Capture
Yeah. So the Confucius Institute sponsors, like, Chinese classrooms.
Right? So I did Chinese. My high school Confucius Institute then comes and sponsors that Chinese class, then got a scholarship through the Confucius Institute to study at a Chinese University.
So they’re kind of like the funding body. They provide money. They also provide, often teachers from China to come to.
For example, in my high school classroom, we had a full-time language assistant teacher who was starting to be a teacher from a Chinese University.
So that’s the kind of support they provide. And then the Institute gave me the scholarship to go and study a semester of Mandarin in Shanghai.
Yeah, we’ve had broad discussions on different things at certain times. But the Confucius Institute is actually a language.
It’s sponsored language learning, not cultural learning.
So you can do some calligraphy classes if you want to, which are like extracurricular, but you’re actually only in there discussing doing language.
So we never really had any political discussions.
This is not really political at all.
How China Corrupts Australia Domestically
This is really not language. And you learn the language there. You don’t learn other things, but yourself.
Learn how to write. And if you’re learning how to write on the mainland and you travel to Taiwan, therefore you’re going to have to write in a different way.
That’s the whole point of learning Chinese. Now, you say that you had broad conversations. Did you actually discuss the Dalai Lama, Tiananmen Square, Tibet, Taiwan,
All of the things that do make up their language today and how it’s changed because it has changed, as you said, since the Cultural Revolution, when all the books were burnt, they had to rewrite it, and they wanted to differentiate themselves from Taiwan?
My final remarks on this discussion would be to keep an open mind. Don’t believe everything you hear. Think critically.
Try to diversify the new sources that you listen to. And you know, I’ve changed my mind on a range of things in China. I’m happy to get convinced either way. And I think that’s kind of the general intellectual attitude we want to promote.
100% you should definitely take in as many sources as you can and try to find what the commonalities amongst all of those sources are, to try and get to what they all agree on.
And then you’ll get as close to the facts as you possibly can.
And this is how I do my research. I might seem like I’m a CIA agent pushing out propaganda, Steve Bannon style, but a lot of this research is my own.
This is all I do. And it’s fun and so hopefully I have convinced you that a lot of your theories so far, I’ve been able to punch massive holes in them so far.
And so hopefully I’ve been able to convince you that authoritarianism is not the way.
But yeah, I guess the biggest problem with Australia today is we have wealthy baby boomers bringing up spoilt little shits that go to University.
They learn a lot of theory, they don’t get a real job, and then they don’t actually put all of their theory into practice in the real world.
And that is creating this plutocracy of incompetence, which is the total opposite of what is happening in China.
Here are my best blog posts
- General Spalding Chinese Assets in Australia (very important video)
- Hugh White on China
- John Mearsheimer on China
