Why Keating is wrong on China
The former PM has unfortunately become an unwitting apologist for the Communist Party
“Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise. But the companion of fools will suffer harm.”
An agnostic, I was nevertheless reminded of this Bible verse last week when seeing numerous tweets from Chinese state media accounts admiring Paul Keating’s speech in opposition to the AUKUS agreement at the National Press Club. He was featured prominently on Chinese state TV nightly news. You can know a man by the friends he keeps, and at the moment the entire propaganda apparatus of the Chinese Communist Party are his best mates.
Setting aside his terrible manners and gratuitous insults (Keating wrote that Boris Johnson was “one of the greatest vulgarians of our times”, right after the former Australian Prime Minister told a female journalist to her face that she didn’t have a brain), and leaving to the experts the debate about the comparative merits of conventional and nuclear-powered submarines, Keating’s assumptions underpinning his strategic outlook are simply flawed.
First, Keating’s objection to AUKUS is premised on his incorrect designation of the US as an “Atlantic power”, “half a world away” from Australia. This contradicts its history of the last one hundred years being also a Pacific power, and its recent strategic “pivot” to Asia, initiated by the Obama administration. The entire US west coast joins the Pacific Ocean. The US Pacific Fleet, the largest naval command in the world, consists of 200 ships, 1,500 aircraft, and 150,000 military and civilian personnel. Most of the major land wars the US has fought since WWII were in Asia, from Korea, to Vietnam, to Iraq and Afghanistan. Had the Americans not fighted and defeated the Japanese Imperial Army, Keating would be making his address in Japanese.
Second, Keating’s suggestion that the US cede its “hegemony” in Asia Pacific to China wades dangerously into the disgraced Nazi theory of Lebensraum and imperial Japan’s idea of “Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”. As if a greater power deserves to dictate the security interests of smaller countries around it, regardless of their own wishes. It is exactly under this imperial mindset that Putin launched his brutal invasion against ukraine.
Keating echoed Chinese propaganda about the “encirclement” of China by various US military bases in the Asia Pacific region, even though US troops in Japan are there as a result of allied victory in the pacific theater of WWII (of which China was a major part) to ensure Japan no longer poses a threat to the region, and those stationed in Korea saved and protected the country from annihilation by Pyongyang (of which China has been the major backer). What Keating conveniently ignores is the fact that US presence in the region is sanctioned, indeed requested by the host countries for their own security needs.
Just as the Pacific Islands have the right to engage and develop political, economic and even security ties with China in the way they see fit for their national interest regardless of the strategic challenges to Australia, the regional power, countries in the Asia Pacific region, including those adjacent to China, have the agency to determine for themselves whether to be ideologically and militarily aligned with the US.
Third, Keating’s prediction of a declining America and a rising China taking over its superpower status is premature. Beijing is facing unprecedented challenges in declining birth rates, aging population with associated social security payment crisis, a state-owned banking sector laden with bad debts and housing bubbles, and most crucial of all, a sclerotic political system propped up by billions of dollars of domestic security budget,stifling crackdown on dissent, and uncertain prospect of regular and peaceful transfer of power after Xi seized a norm-breaking third term.
The US has its share of structural deficiencies, but its constitutional institution has survived the test of over 230 years. A political or economic crisis would merely change the party occupying the White House, while in China it can lead to a completely unpredictable or even existential turn of events, as the country’s 74 years of turbulent history showed us.
What Keating fails to take into consideration is the power of alliances. Countries that support the rule-based liberal world order and share similar democratic values with Australia, including G7, NATO members, South Korea and Taiwan, have a combined military and economy many times of China’s. The only ideology shared by Xi, Putin and Kim Jong Un is keeping their grip on power at all costs, and they will gladly stab each other in the back if it suits their own interest.
Fourth, Keating is simply ignorant of history with his claim that China’s rise is peaceful and it doesn’t seek to export competing ideology against the liberal west. Chairman Mao sent Chinese troops to protect communist dictator Kim Il Sung after his bloody invasion of South Korea, and China has been propping up the Kim family’s most brutal and evil regime ever since. Mao was convinced that China, rather than the corrupt Soviets, was the global engine for proletariat revolution and lent support to left wing guerillas around the world. It was only after the disastrous Cultural Revolution which brought China to the brink of economic collapse that Deng Xiaoping changed the posture to “biding time, hiding talent, building energy”. With Xi locking himself in permanent power and revitalizing many aspects of Mao’s personality cult, what assurance can Keating give us that Xi won’t retread Mao’s path?
Fifth, Keating’s casual dismissal of Taiwan as a “so-called democracy”, “a bunch of municipal elections”, is the most disgraceful insult uttered by a western leader towards the island of 24 million self-governing freedom loving people, who against all odds built a vibrant democracy, an economic, technological and culture powerhouse from the ashes of a military dictatorship. Its population is the same size as Australia's, for God’s sake.
Keating’s framing of our current national security debate as “war on China” is misleading, or even worse, dishonest. No country, not even the US, is going to invade or even threaten China, a nuclear state with the largest armed forces on earth. At the core, the question we try to answer is how to prevent war on Taiwan and defend its freedom,when Beijing finally decides to use force to take over Taiwan, a task Xi hinted to be completed by 2049, the centenary of the People’s Republic.
With a united front of allied countries, led by the US, through deterrence of military and economic strength, the West should make clear to China that the only acceptable way for the international community to resolve the status of Taiwan is by listening to the will of the Taiwanese people and through negotiation between the two sides. Unlike Russia, a glorified petrol state, China’s economy is deeply dependent on trading with the West. A total trade sanction by the combined West would cripple the Chinese economy and possibly the Communist Party’s grip on power. Does Xi really want to take that risk?
It would be naive to trust Beijing’s promise of “One Country, Two Systems” for Taiwan. Xi’s recent brutal crackdown of dissidents in Hong Kong has once again revealed the nature of the Leninist regime: its power relies on complete subordination of its people and zero tolerance of any dissent, because the Politburo knows full well they can’t win any augment on merit.
If the US and allies couldn’t come to the aid of the Taiwanese facing existential threat, what hope would the other countries in the region in need for security assurance? Why would Washington help defend Australia if we are under threat?
The lesson of Ukraine is this: if NATO had been resolute, loud and clear on 23 Feb 2022 that it would pour in weaponry the equivalent worth of Russian annual military budget to help defend Ukraine and keep the supply flowing as long as Kyiv needs, Putin would have chickened out, the war would have been prevented, tens of thousands of Ukrainians (and Russian conscripts) would not have died, millions of refugees would not have fled homes.
As President Reagan said in his address marking the 40th anniversary of D-Day: “We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent”.
Very thorough takedown of Keating who is a propaganda gift to the CCP. Would love a few links to the Chinese media coverage of him you refer to. He is a tool of information warfare and countering him is hard.