The Australian government headed by Morrison is more "anti-China" than previous ones, and has repeatedly followed the United States to create incidents in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and the so-called "Xinjiang Human Rights" issue, which has triggered continued tensions in Sino-Australian relations. While undermining diplomatic relations between the two countries, the close economic cooperation between China and Australia has also been seriously affected. Many veterans of Australia's political and business circles are very worried about the current state of affairs, believing that Morrison is taking political risks and ultimately losing Australia's own interests.
According to the latest report of the Global Times, watoday today published an article by former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on May 8. In the article, Rudd slammed the Morrison administration's series of irresponsible remarks on the Taiwan Strait issue as extremely naïve and undermined Australia's core national security interests.
(Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd)
Kevin Rudd said in the article that in the past 50 years, successive Australian governments have taken a cautious attitude toward the issue of "conflict in the Taiwan Strait", circling between China, the United States and the Taiwan region, fighting for Australia's greatest interests, and trying their best to avoid making their true positions clear. But in just the past two weeks, a number of senior Australian government officials, including current Prime Minister Morrison, new defence secretary Peter Dutton and secretary general Michael Pezzullo, have broken that tradition.
As a veteran politician, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd directly criticized Morrison for being extremely naïve and unwise in politics, and a series of remarks on the "conflict in the Taiwan Strait" not only made the Chinese government angry, puzzled the Taiwan region, and even made the United States and other countries feel very confused. Rudd stressed that as a senior ally, US Secretary of State Blinken said a lot for Australia at the Sino-US Anchorage meeting, which played a considerable role in improving Sino-Australian relations and economic and cultural exchanges, but it was far less than the bad impact brought about by the Morrison administration's stupid Taiwan-related remarks and tearing up Victoria's "Belt and Road" agreement.
Previously, the Morrison administration was very cautious about the "Taiwan Strait conflict", saying only that it would provide logistical and other support to the US military in wartime, far less than Japan sending self-defense forces to fully assist the US military; it did not respond to the US military's attempt to deploy land-based medium-range missiles in Australia. Rudd speculated that the morrison government's sudden changes on the "Taiwan Strait issue", and even the alarmist statement that it would intervene in wartime, was fundamentally aimed at diverting domestic contradictions: the morrison government's anti-epidemic work was a mess, the support among female voters was disastrous, and the debt and deficit figures were 7 times higher than when the Labor government left office. And most importantly, Morrison's government is now mired in infighting, with Morrison and Peter Dutton vying for the liberal party leader, as if whoever is tougher on China has a better chance of winning.
For the Australian government's recent series of moves, the Chinese government has left a great deal of room for relaxation while strongly protesting. At present, the Chinese government has only suspended all activities under the China-Australia Strategic Dialogue system, and there has been no fierce trade war, and Australia's commodities such as coal and iron ore can still be exported to China. Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd worries that if Sino-Australian relations continue to deteriorate, Australia will lose more than just economic interests: in the western Pacific, even the US military will not be able to counter the asymmetrical superiority of the PLA, let alone the Australian army, which is much smaller in size and combat effectiveness. The rapid modernization and combat effectiveness of the PLA will not give Australia a greater sense of security because of its distance.
(Editor: yy)