Rules, Bilateral Ties the Key to Dealing With Beijing Challenge: Australian Foreign Minister

Australia's Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Senator Penny Wong speaks to the media along side leader of the opposition, Anthony Albanese, in Melbourne, Australia, on May 18, 2021. (AAP Image/Daniel Pockett)

A strong rules-based order bound by bilateral ties is key to dealing with challenges from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and North Korea, says Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong.

Wong warned that the Indo-Pacific faced a critical test from powers wishing to create a “closed, hierarchical region where the rules are dictated by a single major power to suit its own interests.”

She said it was critical for Australia to understand that this competition was more than just a drive for military primacy over other countries.

“It is more than great power rivalry and is, in fact, nothing less than a contest over the way our region and our world work,” she told the National Press Club on April 17.

“Coercive trade measures; unsustainable lending; political interference; disinformation; and reshaping international rules, standards, and norms that have benefited smaller countries, from trade to human rights—these all encroach on the ability of countries to exercise their agency, contribute to regional balance and decide their own destinies.”

The CCP Will Not Change, Australia Must Adapt

The foreign minister said that Australia must accept that Beijing will not change its behaviour. Therefore, the country must adapt its foreign policy to secure the region.

“China uses every tool at its disposal to maximise its own resilience and influence—its domestic industry policy; its massive international investment in infrastructure, diplomacy, and military capability; access to its markets,” Wong said.

“Yet we need not waste energy with shock or outrage at China. Instead, we channel our energy in pressing for our own advantage.”

To do this, Wong said the Albanese government will use all branches of government to shape “a region that is open, stable and prosperous.”

“A predictable region operating by agreed rules, standards, and laws. Where no country dominates, and no country is dominated. A region where sovereignty is respected, and all countries benefit from a strategic equilibrium,” she said.

To facilitate this, Wong said the federal government will actively pursue bilateral, regional, and international partnerships within the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), the Association of South East Asian States (ASEAN), the QUAD, and AUKUS.

Minister Issues Veiled Warning on Pacific Incursion

Wong also issued a veiled warning to Beijing about interfering in the Pacific.

“Anyone who questions the strategic importance of Pacific Islands to Australia’s security needs only acquire the briefest familiarity with history,” she said. “While our strategic circumstances have changed in the last 50 years, our geography has not, and nor has the centrality of the Pacific to our own security.”

The Albanese government has, in the past 11 months, signed or is in the process of signing a tranche of new bilateral agreements with Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji.

They have also expanded pathways for Pacific worker migration to Australia and increased development aid by $900 billion (US$603 billion) to be spent over the next four years.

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Wong noted that Australia was focusing its foreign security policy on the Pacific region “to help the Pacific family stay united.”

“We make our concerns clear when countries don’t respect Pacific institutions, when they impose unsustainable debt burdens, or when announcements aren’t followed by a delivery that benefits communities.”

Beijing has engaged in a diplomatic offensive in the region in recent years. Notably in April 2022, the CCP signed a security deal with the government of the Solomon Islands—a deal described by Washington D.C. as alarming.

Following this, New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta expressed concern about infrastructure deals in the region funded by Beijing-linked organisations.

The Pacific Island Forum and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific have found (pdf) that most of the region’s debt is held by China and the Asian Development Bank—Pacific governments are estimated to owe China an estimated US$1.6 billion.

“There’s a level of indebtedness that sits across the whole of the Pacific to financial institutions, including the way in which China has funded into certain countries,” Mahuta said. “This is a key area of vulnerability that should be addressed.”

Wong Presses Beijing to Keep Communication Open

Meanwhile, Wong also called on Beijing to accept the Biden Administration’s accept conditions to maintain lines of communication between the two countries.

Previously utilised during the Cold War, “guardrails” are used to help keep strategic competition open between countries to prevent full-blown conflict through miscommunication.

U.S. President Joe Biden and CCP leader Xi Jinping did agree to establish high-level talks in Bali on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in 2022.

However, these meetings have been delayed after Beijing sent a surveillance balloon over American territory, forcing U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was then scheduled to visit China for guardrail talks, to cancel his trip.