Chinese imperialism and future Australian sovereignty

[stui magpie]

No. If you don't know, try reading a bit. Andrews was a Chinese stooge and should never have signed up for it.

[eddiesmith]

The Federal Opposition and Victorian Government Jobs departments both opposed the deal yet Dan did what Dan always does, his own thing.

[David]

Absolute rubbish.
Name one country where a “left” revolution has done anything other than redistribute wealth to those that then gain power. The useful idiots that supported those revolutions have always missed out.

A bit of goalpost-shifting there, as Tannin wasn’t talking solely about communist revolutionaries; of course you know as well as anyone that plenty of democratically elected left-leaning governments have made reducing inequality one of their first orders of business. But even putting that to one side, I’m not aware of any serious political scientist who would claim that communist revolutions solely entail the transfer of wealth from an existing aristocracy/oligarchy to a new leadership class. I think you know as well as I do that it’s not nearly so simple (I’m currently listening to a podcast about the Cuban revolution that discusses a lot of this stuff in detail, incidentally).

[Tannin]

The United Kingdom (1688)
The United States (1776)
France (1789)
Russia (1917)

All four of those were fights for greater freedom and greater equality. By definition, leftist revolutions. All four were eventually derailed by vested interests, but all four has lasting positive effects for the vast majority of citizens.

But it is not usually about revolution. It is usually about gradual, contested but nevertheless consensual, negotiated change. This is where, for example, Australia's wealth came from: a healthy, growing economy fuelled by improved welfare for everyone through increased profits, better skills, higher real wages, efficient, competitive companies kept honest by publicly-owned best-practice benchmark organisations (the Commonwealth and various state banks, TAA, many others), natural monopolies regulated and mostly operated by public bodies in the public interest. These were Australia's Golden Years when not only our international standing and our standard of living grew faster and more consistently than at any time before or since. Curtin and Chifley brought these far-sighted policies in, and to his great credit, Menzies continued them - and reaped the political reward of his economic success. Sadly since about 1980 the country, like much of the rest of the world, had lurched to the right and under the dead hand of neoliberalism, has stagneted.

[stui magpie]

Russia and China getting more comfortable in bed together.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/arres ... 57m5w.html

Si vis pacem, para bellum

[watt price tully]

No. If you don't know, try reading a bit. Andrews was a Chinese stooge and should never have signed up for it.

The side effects have truly kicked it. Australia couldn’t get enough of China. The closest supporters of China were in the Abbott Government: Andrew Robb Member for Goldstein who approved the Port of Darwin being sold to the highest bidder (clue: the Chinese)

There were mixed messages from Coalition Gov’t including from Minister Payne. It’s only when the political tides combined with the racist rednecks and some xenophobics became more persuasive and the advent of Trump did the anti Sino environment take over and deals with China became less attractive. Morrison never liked such deals with China ( yet the c*nt is happy to sell off the Tasmanian (& other) dairy industries to the Chinese) I know you like simple answers but what you wrote is sheer nonsense and revisionism.

If you want to use the term Chinese stooge it would be far more accurate to apply this to the Coalition former Trade Minister Andrew Robb.

Belt and Road is bad for 3rd world countries but I’m not so sure it’s so bad in the Victorian version as we can afford to pay the debt whereas......

I wonder what a cold hard examination of the deal actually meant in terms of pluses and minuses (consequences) ( no not from your hero Terry McCrann) but from someone with a shred of integrity.

The question that I do need to learn about concerns the legislation that Morrison has used to f*ck over the states. This especially needs examination and exploration.

[David]

Russia and China getting more comfortable in bed together.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/arres ... 57m5w.html

Si vis pacem, para bellum

Wrong link?

(Btw, I think a more apt saying would be "If you want war, prepare for war". No reason why Russia and China shouldn’t form a tactical bloc, and no reason why we can’t engage with them diplomatically.)

[watt price tully]

The United Kingdom (1688)
The United States (1776)
France (1789)
Russia (1917)

All four of those were fights for greater freedom and greater equality. By definition, leftist revolutions. All four were eventually derailed by vested interests, but all four has lasting positive effects for the vast majority of citizens.

But it is not usually about revolution. It is usually about gradual, contested but nevertheless consensual, negotiated change. This is where, for example, Australia's wealth came from: a healthy, growing economy fuelled by improved welfare for everyone through increased profits, better skills, higher real wages, efficient, competitive companies kept honest by publicly-owned best-practice benchmark organisations (the Commonwealth and various state banks, TAA, many others), natural monopolies regulated and mostly operated by public bodies in the public interest. These were Australia's Golden Years when not only our international standing and our standard of living grew faster and more consistently than at any time before or since. Curtin and Chifley brought these far-sighted policies in, and to his great credit, Menzies continued them - and reaped the political reward of his economic success. Sadly since about 1980 the country, like much of the rest of the world, had lurched to the right and under the dead hand of neoliberalism, has stagneted.

Correct weight

[stui magpie]

Russia and China getting more comfortable in bed together.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/arres ... 57m5w.html

Si vis pacem, para bellum

Wrong link?

(Btw, I think a more apt saying would be "If you want war, prepare for war". No reason why Russia and China shouldn’t form a tactical bloc, and no reason why we can’t engage with them diplomatically.)

Dunno how that link fail happened.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/inno ... d44863c62a

[5 from the wing on debut]

Russia and China getting more comfortable in bed together.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/arres ... 57m5w.html

Si vis pacem, para bellum

Wrong link?

(Btw, I think a more apt saying would be "If you want war, prepare for war". No reason why Russia and China shouldn’t form a tactical bloc, and no reason why we can’t engage with them diplomatically.)

No reason?
How do you suggest that we engage with China in relation to the current tariffs being applied to Australian products, when they refuse to respond at all?

[David]

[David]

No reason?
How do you suggest that we engage with China in relation to the current tariffs being applied to Australian products, when they refuse to respond at all?

I don’t support escalation at all, and nor do I think we should go back cap in hand and grovel. Instead, we should maintain the current trade relationships we do have with China, and otherwise take the tariffs as an opportunity to 1) free ourselves of our economic dependence on them and 2) seek business elsewhere.

[Tannin]

How do you suggest that we engage with China in relation to the current tariffs being applied to Australian products, when they refuse to respond at all?

We need to transition away from the China-facing economy. Yes, that means change and some hardship. But we are going to get both of those things anyway, much, much better to decide for ourselves (for example) that we will de-emphasise Chinese students as a cash cow for the "education" industry; that we will slow down on iron ore exports to China; that we will go full-steam-ahead on rare earth refining; that our agricultural focus will be redirected to export to many different places (not just bloody China every time) and sell much more to our domestic market.

An example: here in Tasmania, it has for a long time been impossible to buy local crayfish, despite this being one of the best crayfish fisheries in the world. Why? Because they used to export the whole bloody lot, mostly to China.
Along came the double whammy of Covid and Chinese belligerence: no exports. And all the crayfish fishermen were suddenly crying out to us for our help to support them, to get behind local business, by buying crays to take home. Dunno about the rest of the state, here we said "To hell with you, you went out of your way to screw us over and deny us the chance to eat fresh local seafood because you thought you could get rich selling Australian marine life to China. So tough luck: you made your bed, now you can sleep in it." We carried on buying chops and bacon and so on. The cray fishers can bloody starve for all I care. They certainly have not earned my charity.

OK, that is perhaps not the most rational of responses, but the reality is that those stupid bastards will go straight back to selling to China if (and ONLY if) China wants them to. As a nation, we need to kick the China habit.

[5 from the wing on debut]

I agree with the transitioning away from China sentiment. It seems that most of us have taken that view. Short term pain for hopefully long term gain.

It's always a massive risk in business to have all of your eggs in one basket, but it's hard to knock it back when that basket is paying more than other baskets.

My comment in my last post was really more about how can you deal with a country diplomatically when there is no possibility of talking to them about the issue because their stated reason for doing something isn't the actual reason for doing it. China wants to punish us and to make us comply, pure and simple. Nothing to talk about there.

I knew of the troubles the southern crayfish fishermen were having but I had never considered it from the angle that you mentioned Tannin. I guess that you are not eating the crayfish rolls for lunch every day. Personally, I love seafood, but crays have always been a bit blah for me, even when I have dived down and caught them myself. Prawns and oysters are another story though.

[Pies4shaw]

https://twitter.com/ScottyFromMktg/stat ... 2611007489