The Threat from China

Sir: While the intemperate and self-justifying attack by Clive Palmer on a business partner (China’s Citic Pacific) deserves complete rejection, his and Senator Lambie’s outbursts (a “Chinese invasion” and “enslavement of our grandchildren”) do contain a kernel of justifiable concern and warning for all Australians.

First, we need to be aware of the accelerating dependence of our economy, evident in a rapid increase in reliance on Chinese purchase of minerals; also, capital investment (that is, ownership and control) of Australian real estate, mineral resources, agricultural land, and more, all overseen by an ineffectual Foreign Investment Review Board and a government seeking a “free trade” agreement of some kind. Second is the accelerating resultant influence within Australian politics, with our need to kowtow to (or appease) any demand from China’s single-party autocracy and its commercial arms, which do not share this nation’s democratic or taken-for-granted human rights. Do we recall how former Prime Minister Gillard couldn’t even meet the Dalai Lama because the Chinese government would take offence?

Why be concerned? Well, for years, in Africa and elsewhere, agricultural assets from some of the world’s most impoverished countries have passed into Chinese ownership; now, we see expanding acquisition of large assets (Cubbie station and its water rights, for example) in Australia, because, having wasted so much of our own capital, we now have to sell vital assets. Purchase of Australian homes is increasingly unavailable to Australians, due to concealed advertising and manipulation of sales (rorting?) by entities based in China, or local front companies. A growing aggression towards (so far) neighbouring countries is evident in unilateral imposition of an air control zone, the installation of a naval-escorted oil drilling platform in offshore Vietnamese waters, assertion of territorial rights over Philippine and Japanese offshore islands, and plenty more.

One can only hope that, in prioritising our immediate commercial interests, we are not placing ourselves in thrall to an unaccountable autocracy which may well regard us as an infantile self-indulgent nation, ripe for exploitation.

John O’Connor
Cottles Bridge, Vic

Man and women

Sir: I was saddened to read Christopher Akehurst’s declaration (September 2014) that “no one in his right mind” ever thought the use of the word man collectively meant only male individuals. I remember very well watching the BBC series Civilisation by Kenneth Clark all those years ago—I would have been about twenty—and I also remember feeling excluded, over and over again, at that time (and since, of course) by the use of language that seemed to leave me out. I understood that mankind was me too, but it didn’t quite feel like it. It is telling that in the article Christopher Akehurst wrote, “in his right mind”.

Jennifer Compton
Carrum, Vic

Correction

SIR: In an article on Ray Evans in the September Quadrant I wrote that he joined no other party after he left the ALP. I have since been informed that he stood as a DLP candidate for Bellarine in the 1973 Victorian election.

Patrick Morgan
Boolarra, Vic