China is not a military threat
I mean obviously they are a threat: they have a military, they could pose a threat if they chose to, but the article is saying: Australia should not consider them a threat militarily. I agree.<p>It also says, strategy should not be driven by media coverage and public opinion so formed, I also agree, but it seems rather than strategy being driven by media, Australia has media and strategy both driven by &quot;some other narrativizing force&quot;, intent on framing China as a military threat, then using media to produce compliant public opinion for wartime-like strategy by manufacturing consent.<p>Also says: strategy should be founded on useful points of engagement, like:  <i>non-military security policy, including foreign policy, economic policy, technology, environmental issues, human rights and development, in order to build a non-confrontational bilateral and multilateral relationship.</i> I also agree.<p>Also: <i>I submit that our security policy should be multi-dimensional. Military, political, development assistance and exchange of people and ideas should all work together to shape the security environment.</i> Agree.<p>Also: <i>Practical engagement with China and other regional countries and trade partners is essential because we are in no way self-reliant. Australia needs stable and preferably friendly relations with other countries for economic and practical reasons.</i> Agree.<p>What&#x27;s standing in the way of getting to this being a widely held Australian view?<p>The counter-narratives to this are powerful: &quot;they&#x27;re not like us (they&#x27;re an authoritarian dictatorship Orwellian surveillance state)&quot;, &quot;look what they&#x27;re doing to their people (Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong), we don&#x27;t want that happening here&quot;, &quot;they don&#x27;t share our values (look at the human rights, organ harvesting, Muslim suppression)&quot;, &quot;we have to trust in the Alliance (they are like us)&quot;, &quot;how can we trust them (they are trying to influence our politics and buying our strategic ports and assets, they do debt diplomacy)&quot;. These stories invoke powerful emotions of fear and anger. In such a narrative environment, Australians are naturally terrified of the Chinese people in general, and the Chinese state and its intentions in particular. With such a mindset and &quot;heartset&quot;, all possible fearful, nightmarish speculations become possible. In truth, Australians really &quot;don&#x27;t know what those Chinese are up to&quot;. In this environment of ignorance, it&#x27;s unlikely to see any narrative shift. The fear is simply too powerful, to easy to invoke, and too hard to dispel. The lack of a common language, or shared cultural experience, means these fears can&#x27;t be replaced with commonality, which mostly happens through direct interaction, conversation, time and shared experience.<p>So given that the medium term future history of Australian-Chinese relations will therefore be inevitably dominated by these fears, and that these fears will cause us to miss out on many possibilities and benefits of working together, how to make the best of this fear-environment anyway?<p>They could continue to be mined for domestic political points, and pretexts for new laws, so the fearful environment has high political utility perhaps. But what else could they be usefully put to work to do?<p>If the fears could be channeled into driving some sort of &quot;national awakening&quot; where Australians realize the only way to secure their future is to work hard and hungrily create a better tomorrow (so they can beat those dastardly Chinese creeping at their doorstep doing who-knows-what), it could be a useful motivation for an Oz-style &quot;national rejuvenation.&quot; But I think that would be blocked by how good life already is in Australia, and how content Australians can be keeping things mostly the way they are (pending the housing market, of course).<p>I think the main issue is that <i>these fears cost basically nothing</i>, right now. They may of course prove to have a high interest rate, and &quot;come due&quot; at some time in future, but right now, these fears are simply a comfortable backdrop to &quot;how good life is in Australia&quot;, reminding people there, that: there are other much worse places out there, their own morals culture is decidedly better (so let&#x27;s stop bringing up the past?), they have something important that someone else is trying to interfere with and steal.<p>So the fears are comfortable, psychologically compelling (it just &quot;feels right&quot; to be &quot;concerned&quot; about such a &quot;massive potential threat&quot;, it would be &quot;irresponsible <i>not</i> to be adequately cautious and concerned about it&quot;), and &quot;cost free&quot; (at least right now). Why fix what ain&#x27;t broken, indeed?