林中斌 部落格 / Blog Chong-Pin Lin

Australia Turns Toward China

Hugh White 

The New York Times, FED 9, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/opinion/trump-pushes-australia-toward-china.html

accessed Feb 13, 2017

● 作者曾任澳洲國防部副部長

● 川普甩澳洲總理電話使澳洲更向中國靠近

● 歐巴馬倡議 “轉向亞洲”叫得響，作的溫，澳洲已經對美國失望。

● 澳洲很不情願，但無法自處，只好向中國靠攏。

林中斌 2017.2.13

CANBERRA, Australia — The United States-Australia alliance faces a crucial test over how to deal with a powerful and increasingly assertive China. Under President Trump, it is already failing.

The phone call last week between Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in which the president denounced a refugee deal made between the United States and Australia under President Obama, showed Australians that they can no longer trust America. As a result of Mr. Trump’s approach, Australia will drift away from America and move closer to China.

Mr. Obama’s ineffectual “pivot to Asia” undermined confidence among Australians that Washington had the resolve to resist Beijing’s ambitions, or the finesse to do so without provoking a war. Mr. Trump is making that worse.

No one in Australia wants this to happen. Australia has benefited as much as any other country from the peace and stability that American leadership has brought to Asia. No country feels closer to America in its core values.

But China has become extraordinarily important to Australia economically. China is by far the biggest market for Australia, the destination for more than 30 percent of its exports, and the trade balance remains strongly in Australia’s favor. Sales to China are five times that to America.

As its economic clout has increased, China has become more assertive politically, seeking to displace the United States as Asia’s leading power. It has built China-centered regional economic institutions like the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, and challenged American military superiority with forays into the East and South China Seas and by bullying American allies in the region.

We Australians have looked to Washington to respond. We have hoped that a deft display of American resolve would deflect or deter China’s challenge to the regional order without provoking the kind of confrontation that would force Australia to choose between our biggest trading partner and our closest ally. doom it to failure.

These hopes began to erode with Mr. Obama’s attempts to contain China’s assertiveness. He discouraged countries from joining China’s infrastructure bank, but they signed up anyway. He looked weak when his administration talked tough about Chinese actions in the South China Sea but responded only with timid freedom-of-navigation operations that China ignored.

And worst of all, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, pitched by Mr. Obama as a showcase of America’s resolve to lead in Asia, ended up doing just the opposite when he couldn’t sell it to Congress.

No one doubts that, even at today’s slower rates of growth, China remains by far the most important source of future economic opportunities for Australia — and for every other country in Asia. A good relationship with China is essential for Australia’s future. And inevitably, China’s influence on regional affairs, even on Australia domestic politics, has expanded, too. Australians were shocked last year when a rising political star was found to be accepting funds from a Chinese businessman connected to the government in Beijing. For Australians, Beijing is everywhere.

There is real fear here that any diplomatic rupture with China would have swift and devastating economic consequences. That would dash hopes for Australian prosperity, and doom any government that allowed it to happen.

Balancing between Washington and Beijing was always going to be an immense challenge for Australia over the next few years no matter who had won the White House. But with Mr. Trump, the choices have become far starker, faster than anyone had imagined. While his apparent eagerness for confrontation with China raises fears that he will provoke a crisis, Mr. Trump’s “America First” nationalism suggests that he will not sustain United States leadership in Asia in the long term.

And Mr. Trump believes that allies are dispensable. A leader who would deal with a fellow leader the way Mr. Trump dealt with Mr. Turnbull cannot be trusted to handle China in a way that protects Australia’s interests.

Australia cannot risk supporting America at the expense of its relationship with China. Much against our will, we will move closer to China and further from America.

That does not mean we Australians will become Beijing’s ally, but it does mean we will begin tacitly to acquiesce to China’s claims to regional leadership. This is how America’s long era of leadership in Asia comes to an end.