In a week in which Albo arrived at the cricket in Ahmedabad in a golden chariot, and inspired some resolute batting, there’s nothing else to say, really. Unless one looks at the succession of articles published in my newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald, explaining why we’re about to go to war with China.
Paul Keating called it “the most egregious and provocative news presentation” in five decades, and – although I’m not able to comment on the past 50 years, I’m in broad sympathy with his opinion. The front-page headline: “Australia ‘must prepare’ for threat of China war” and the graphic with “RED ALERT”, were astonishingly sensationalist, considering the story was a basically a colloquium with five security experts.
Only a year or so ago, we had The Boiled Egg being roundly ridiculed for saying we had to prepare for war with China, and now the Herald has said the same thing.
These hand-picked experts must realise that any war with China would be a very brief and painful one on our side, and a bunch of absurdly expensive submarines won’t tilt the odds in our favour. It would be an impossibly lop-sided contest given the amount of firepower China has at its disposal. Neither should we depend upon the United States to come to our aid, especially if the Republicans find themselves back in control. Talk of Australia needing to have nuclear weapons and to reintroduce conscription, is completely over-the-top. Any government that brought back National Service would be shown the door at the next election. We have to balance our ‘war preparations’ with the consideration that we are also making ourselves into a prime target.
All this beating-the-drum runs completely contrary to Albo’s efforts to re-establish good relations with China and restore the trading partnerships lost under Scummo’s woeful administration. It seems pretty stupid to start talking about a war while these delicate negotiations are underway. It also holds out the prospect of damaging any negotiations intended to get Australian citizens out of Chinese prisons, where they are languishing without proper trial as “examples” to the west. Cheng Lei and Yang Hangjun won’t be thanking the SMH’s expert panel or cheering the newspaper for its comments. Neither will many Chinese Australians, who will see this campaign as encouraging hostile racist attitudes at home.
Over the past decade the public statements of the Chinese government have become more aggressive and beligerent, its sense of destiny more apparent. This is, presumably, what happens when a nation long treated as the poor man of Asia, exploited and abused by the Europeans and the Japanese, rises to the status of a superpower. The former victim becomes a swaggering bully, hell-bent on revenge. Taiwan is a flash point because the civil war that brought Mao to power is still considered unfinished business. If Xi and his crew could abandon their obsession with Taiwan and get back to conquering the world economically, it would lower global stress levels immensely.
Nevertheless, it should be obvious to the experts and the SMH that the Chinese government will tolerate private disagreements so long as they are treated respectfully in public. This means not biting back when a Chinese spokesperson says something angry and abrasive. It means responding to all China’s rhetoric in a diplomatic manner, no matter how outrageous it may seem. Preparedness is important, but it needs be done quietly, without undue provocation. To have a productive dialogue with China one must avoid accusations and name-calling. To make the Chinese lose face is to lose the argument – and the Herald’s Red Alert is a slap across the chops.
So much for geo-politics. The art column this week is blissfully free from political content, unless one counts the art politics that prevent excellent local landscape painters from being properly represented in Australian public museums. That’s basically the story of Idris Murphy, whose survey at the S.H. Ervin Gallery is the topic of discussion. Murphy is the kind of artist that people seem to appreciate slowly, but with slowness comes conviction.
The film column is devoted to the annual hoop-la of the Academy Awards. I’ve made my predictions again, based on what I think should win, but I have a terrible feeling we’ll see some awful results. Can I be wrong every year? Most probably, but I’ll keep up the bad work anyway.
I’ve also added a few recent auction catalogue essays to the Journals section. Another Fred Williams and two more Jeffrey Smarts. If I keep going at this rate I’ll soon have enough pieces on Jeffrey for an anthology. It would have to be called Smart Essays.
I think the only solution to the China Problen is for Albo to take his golden chariot on to Beijing to bless Sino-Australian relations before the Herald’s Red Alert prompts another big freeze.