From today’s Australian:
This might seem like a strange sentiment for a government that has been one of the Bush administration’s staunchest allies on matters of democracy promotion. But, according to THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s own Duncan Currie, this view of China runs deep in the Howard government, which has presided over an unprecedented economic boom that has been given a recent lift by increased trade with the Chinese mainland. Unlike the United States, which runs an enormous trade deficit with China, Australia’s deficit was only $3.5 billion last year, and exports rose 46.4 percent while imports climbed just 16.5 percent compared with the year before. Currie says the Australians see themselves as an honest broker between the Chinese and the United States, a mediator that both sides can trust. Still, it seems unbelievably naive to think that China’s Communist party is primarily driven by the desire to lift the country’s masses out of poverty…and to the extent that it is driven by such considerations, it’s unlikely that prosperity is, in and of itself, an end, but rather a means to greater stability and military power. Either way, helping the Chinese get rich, and helping oneself in the process, shouldn’t blind developed countries to the nature of the regime in Beijing. Currie says that Howard, for his part, has promoted a “calm and constructive dialogue” between the U.S. and China. But the Australian premier has also emphasized that he has “no illusions–that China remains an authoritarian country” and “no false illusions about the nature of China’s society.” He made those remarks at a press conference with Dick Cheney this past February in Sydney. And when Howard signed a security pact with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in March, he made it quite clear that Australia would not soon ink such a deal with Beijing. As he told a reporter: “There are a lot of things we have in common with China, but China is not a democracy. Japan is.” This speech offers a good distillation of Howard’s views on China (and on Asia generally).
