Australia At The Front of New Battle Ground With China Treasurer Warns

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Australian business leaders have been told the country is at the front of a new battleground with China.

Speaking at the Australian National University’s Crawford Leadership Forum in Canberra on Sep. 6, federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said Australia was ‘on the front line of new strategic competition and facing increasing pressure to compromise core values’ from Beijing.

“We have faced increasing pressure to compromise on our core values,” Frydenberg said. “And when we have stood firm, as we always will, we have been subjected to economic coercion.”

Singling out China as the source of the bullying, Frydenberg noted this coercion had included the Chinese regime’s attempt to coerce the government to change with its fourteen ‘grievances’ that covered everything from Australia’s foreign investment laws to the government willingness to call out cyber attacks.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg during a press conference in the Blue Room at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on June 2, 2021. (Sam Mooy/Getty Images)

“It is no secret that China has recently sought to target Australia’s economy,” Frydenberg said. “They have targeted our agricultural and resources sector, with measures affecting a range of products, including wine, seafood, barley and coal.”

He also noted that the Morrison government would remain “steadfast in defending our sovereignty and our core values.”

Reacting to the comments, the Head of the ANU’s National Security College, Prof. Rory Medcalf, said in a post on Twitter Frydenberg’s address shows that ‘economics is now a security issue’, labelling the comments a ‘strong message to business.’

The speech comes amidst increasing global recognition that economic coercion is becoming a routine foreign policy weapon of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is galvanising political opposition to the regime’s tactics.

Last month European Union (EU) leaders and the United States expressed solidarity with Lithuania after Beijing froze rail freight to the Baltic country and suspended export permits for Lithuanian industries.

A small European country, Lithuania, is being targeted by the CCP after it chose to open diplomatic offices in Taiwan.

In a joint statement from the United States and the 13 chairs of E.U.’s foreign affairs committees and drawn from 11 EU member states, including Germany, Sweden, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and France, said they ‘stood firm with Lithuania.’

“We, the Chairs of the Foreign Affairs Committees, strongly condemn the political, diplomatic and economic pressure of the People’s republic of China on Lithuania. The interference in the internal affairs of a European Union and NATO state are neither welcome nor appropriate,” the statement read.

They also urged Lithuania to maintain its current course in rejecting China’s behaviour.

Despite the immediate economic threat posed by the CCP, the Australian Government remains optimistic in the longer term, with Frydenberg telling the Forum that the economic impact of CCP coercion had been ‘modest.’

The treasurer put this down to Australian exporters finding alternative markets in South Asia and worldwide, which he said were increasingly hungry for Australian goods.

Frydenberg also urged businesses to ‘diversify their markets, and not overly rely on any one country’, pledging government would help businesses ‘diversify and adapt to this new environment’.

However, Frydenberg speech has faced criticism with Australia China Business Council Board Member Daryl Guppy in an opinion piece for CTGN calling the treasurer’s calls for diversification wishful thinking.

Guppy said that while ‘some industries have been able to find substitute markets for those lost in China, “many businesses have not.”