OPINION
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This week - no, this decade - has been awash with one issue: China. And normally it's at about this point, the second sentence, that you find out if this column represents a dramatic challenge to its rise (requiring us to hugely boost defence spending) or, alternately, a pronouncement that Beijing is beaut and bountiful.
That's what happens when you attempt to divide the world into a binary; good and bad. The reality, of course, is far more complicated.
![Chinese President Xi Jinping waves from above Tiananmen Gate during a parade to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1. Picture: Getty Images Chinese President Xi Jinping waves from above Tiananmen Gate during a parade to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1. Picture: Getty Images](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/tPntrWhUbGLyDWYCTv46rt/1fe65284-d2cc-465e-85ee-2ee913caba2b.jpg/r0_192_2164_1409_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
China spies on us!
Goodness, yes, and we actually spy on them too. That's why the embassy brought their own builders out from home when recently adding a building. We constructed their original edifice back in the '80s, but they discovered we'd helpfully impregnated the rooms with a symphony of bugging devices. Oh dear.
That's why we need to penetrate beyond unhelpful headlines to understand the detail of what's happening. Monday offered two solid insights.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute's Alex Joske released a solid catalogue detailing exchange linkages between Australian and Chinese universities. These shouldn't be stopped - just understood. Knowledge (more particularly, the systems built from such new technologies) doesn't just "happen". We create the moral and intellectual environments we choose to inhabit, and we need to nurture and protect these.
His comprehensive survey reflects the awareness which universities like the ANU bring to engaging with individual researchers. Unfortunately not all institutions appear to be as aware of the subtexts of academic work.
Yet, equally, it's worth realising what's happening today is something different, within China as well as over here. Most worryingly, Beijing is collecting a mass of information - although not as much as Facebook, of course - on individuals. It's developing a panopticon, a new, omnipresent system of observation and control to ensure individuals toe the line and don't challenge the system.
![Peter Hartcher (left) with former prime minister Kevin Rudd. Picture: Getty Images Peter Hartcher (left) with former prime minister Kevin Rudd. Picture: Getty Images](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/tPntrWhUbGLyDWYCTv46rt/1e11c7fb-6370-4a3b-934e-f8ffd3dfc3c0.jpg/r0_18_4056_2298_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Also launched on Monday (by former prime minister Kevin Rudd) was Peter Hartcher's new Quarterly Essay, titled Red Flag. This is a terrific examination of how our relationship with China has changed since Xi Jinping became paramount leader, and it's packed with detail and ideas for the future. You don't need to endorse all of these to understand they are issues we need to confront. Getting across the detail will be important. The complexity of China isn't any longer an issue that can be outsourced to experts. We need to engage and act today.
Firstly, "China". Treat the nation like a monolith and it will behave like one. Penetrate beyond the party hierarchy, and the fragility of the edifice Xi totters over is evident. Yes, just like a (deadly) tin-pot dictator he purges opposition, proclaims himself president-for-life and apparently loves giving long-winded, two-hour orations to worshipping sycophants. Despite protestations to the contrary, he's building another dreadful cult of personality, like Mao Zedong.
He's in charge (for the moment at any rate) and is sponsoring an apparently inimical, simplistic nationalist bureaucracy that's acting way outside the bounds of established international understanding. It is, in other words, time to pay attention.
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Secondly, "expansionist". The Japanese are scrambling jet fighters daily to intercept Chinese overflights of islands in the East China Sea, while the continued militarisation of the artificial atolls in the South China Sea makes a joke of the claim these are "research" facilities. Forget that. Building so-called "future frigates" or "challenging" such territorial claims with overflights won't in any way change the reality below. Fixating on lost battles simply plays into Beijing's game, because it's making huge strides in the Pacific where Australia seems to be doing its best to lose friends and alienate people.
It turns out that building the naval base on Manus Island isn't actually nearly as worthwhile in getting islanders to see things "our" way as providing free (and vital) shortwave services by Radio Australia. Instead the government's been busy selling off transmitters to - you guessed it - China. Australia's Pacific policy is little more than amateur hour, performed inadequately by second-class comedians who are out of their depth anywhere other than the local RSL or Leagues club. Sometimes even Scott Morrison's shtick, presenting as an "ordinary dad", just doesn't cut it. Neither does Foreign Minister Marise Payne's gimmick of friendship while her government's abandoned even the vague pretence it's concerned about climate change.
Now the worst of the bushfires have (temporarily) paused, perhaps we can admit that our carbon emissions (per person) are amongst the highest in the world? The Pacific nations are well aware of this, and what it says about just how little we care about the (apparently) insubstantial matter of their future whenever it comes into conflict with our desire to consume.
But thirdly, if we're so worried about this foreign policy and cultural challenge emanating from Beijing, isn't it worth actually going into some detail about what our "values" actually are?
I'm always a little confused when people talk about Aussie values but, then again, perhaps I just don't spend enough time standing around a barbecue. I'd be absolutely thrilled if I had a PM who could tell me exactly how he was protecting my cyber data. Quite frankly, I'd rather the state knew what I'd been doing online, rather than Facebook having the ability to sell my browsing history off to the highest bidder. The problem is that very little seems to emerge when you probe deep into the detail of what it is that makes us so exceptional.
Australia needs to stand for something, and I'm not sure it does at the moment.
- Nicholas Stuart is a Canberra writer.