Tuesday 31 March 2009

Anti-China tensions brewing in Australia

Australia’s Sinophile Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is fighting perceptions he has become a “running dog” for Beijing as anti-China sentiment mounts at home, threatening billions of dollars worth of Chinese investment.

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Anti-China tensions brewing in Australia

Reuters in Canberra
30 March 2009

Australia’s Sinophile Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is fighting perceptions he has become a “running dog” for Beijing as anti-China sentiment mounts at home, threatening billions of dollars worth of Chinese investment.

With Mr. Rudd urging a greater IMF role for China at a meeting this week of major economies in London, Australia’s conservative opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull accused Rudd of having become a “roving ambassador for the People’s Republic of China”.

Even a shock decision last Friday to refuse a bid by Chinese state-owned Minmetals to buy Australian miner OZ Minerals on national security grounds appears to have backfired, with media accusing the government of belated chest-beating.

“The government has thrown up a series of arbitrary investment barriers apparently to look like it is ‘standing up to China’”, the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper said on Monday.

“It has sent a message to the Australian public that Chinese money is inherently dangerous. The result is red peril hysteria.”

The Mandarin-speaking Mr. Rudd, elected in late 2007, was expected to take Australia’s relations with China to a new high with his expert understanding of the country, learned in Beijing as a junior diplomat.

But Chinese investment bids now before Australia’s foreign investment watchdog, including a US$19.5 billion tie-up between Chinese state-owned metals firm Chinalco and Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto, have sparked public unease.

Conservative opposition politicians and an influential upper house swing vote independent senator plan television advertisements with more than a whiff of nationalism, demanding the centre-left government not sell the farm to Beijing.

At the same time, Mr. Rudd’s Labor has given inadvertent credence to populist attacks, although a poll on Monday showed its popularity remains strong with voters.

Defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon is fighting for his job after failing to declare two free trips given to him by a Chinese-born friend, while Mr. Rudd has endured a media storm over undeclared meetings with China’s security and intelligence chief Zhou Yongkang, as well as propaganda tzar Li Changchun.

Opponents had all but tarred Mr. Rudd as “Beijing’s running dog”, newspapers said, with perceptions rising of the popular prime minister as a “Chinese lickspittle” or “Manchurian Candidate:.