China and human rights | Anastasia Lin | Tom Switzer

in 2015 a Chinese born Canadian actor and classical pianist was crowned Miss World Canada she was a vocal human rights advocate in the pageant after her victory her father in Hunan province told her she had to stop speaking ill of the Chinese government or stop speaking to him you see the police had threatened him this lady did not back down speaking out in support of human rights in communist China as a result the regime in Beijing denied her entry to compete in that year's Miss World pageant held in China the denial represented what many people have come to regard as China's increasing brazenness in extending its censorship and repression within and beyond its borders suddenly the name Anastasia Lin became a name she was almost overnight a front-page story in The New York Times she was soon widely praised for her courage including in no less than four editorials in The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal published several laudatory op-ed articles my favorite headline published shortly after the 2016 presidential election quote a beauty queen Trump should meet throughout the controversies anastasia has held herself in good grace she told the New York Times quote I'm just an acting student and a beauty queen what could they possibly be afraid of Anastasia is young and unafraid we at CIS are proud to say she's one of us please welcome Anna ster today I want to speak about why China is a threat to Australia because in the past week being in Australia I have been feeling a little uneasy not sure where the debates stand in opposed to let's say America and I realized that that debate is whether we should choose China over the u.s. well I hope my insight as that I have been educated in a communist country for 13 years could offer you some insight to the mentality of the region now before we start I want to tell you that I am NOT anti China and I'm not against the Chinese people I was born there lived 13 years there most of my family are still there except for my mother even though the communist regime have threatened my father and threatened my grandparents and routinely visit them intimidate them I'm still in love with the country because I know that Chinese 5000 years traditional culture is not represented by the political slogan of Communist Party and I also know that China's philosophical and cultural tradition does not necessarily set it in opposition with Western value and in fact there had been historical precedent that china is Confucius in word oriented Empire and is mostly peaceful toward outside if anything it was in the 19th centuries that the Western civilization has at China not the other way around but what we're dealing with today is a one-party authoritarian mercantilist state that had been trying to target the West and for them you're having a cold war one of my friend Andrew hasty has published an article recently and I'm sure you have probably all read it because there was big news here and he has been accused of having Cold War mentality now today I want to present to you why that is true not his Cold War mentality but China's now when I was in China I was a student leader so part of my job I was a communist student leader and part of my job was to indoctrinate my fellow classmates about the so-called government's enemy so I have spread fake news about Falun Gong Tibetans we Gers democratic activists and also it was part of my job to organize students group discussion in a class and after the discussion they all have to vote which side they're on now why are they doing that if we trace it back to MAOIs and Stalin's way of organizing communism now Lenin won't the revolution for the Russians it's Stalin job to stay in power right now communism is utopia will never happen we all know that but in order to legitimize their regime they have to come up with some reason why they can deliver what they promised so Stalin and Mao found this interpretation of the communist text and decided that internal if they continue the struggle the perpetual struggle with an imagining eternal enemy that is supposedly working with an imagined Western enemy that constantly trying to undermine the stability of the system they can finally excuse to somehow justify the corruption within the party does that make sense to anyone okay so sperm stalling this time they have been going through internal purging and that is the way for them to solidify power and animus are not just internally they are also in the West there's this imaginary black hen from the West that constantly tried to undermine China's sovereignty and we see it in their rhetorics why do we always hear Chinese leader saying you guys are trying to undermine our sovereignty why now I want to take it from a novel approach could we see how does China see us how do they do they see us as a partner do they see us as a threat why do they constantly see us as someone who's trying to undermine their sovereignty perhaps they are trying to do the same to us now that is a political science mirror imaging the internal struggle is the reason why communists can stay in power because they are doing it for the benefit of the mass the people don't know better the the the state is responsible to think and to benefit for the people has anyone of you watched Chernobyl on HB / recently Chernobyl I strongly recommend it and it's worth HBO subscription in that TV series it actively very accurately depicted what people's mentality are like under a communist reaching you lie you protect themselves your self and you can pretend that the truth is not there until something like Chernobyl blows up that is the way they try to solidify their own power so the Western liberalisation the enemy has to be there in order to for them to legit legitimize that their rule so no matter what you do no matter how some of the Western official kowtow its to China no matter what they say you're gonna offend them you are going to be their enemy and they are going to think that you're targeting them all the time now let's talk about the us-china trade war first we have to understand what China is doing globally one belt one road everyone's heard of it right it's disguised as investment everywhere in the world but what it really is is predatory capitalism they will they'll buy off the local elites and joying ventures and them start projects and partner with them and lend them the amount of money that they can possibly pay back and then they do the foreclosure and they seize control of the entire project they use this way to control trade routes and you just have to ask Sri Lanka Africa everywhere in the world now even Italy port Venice is Chinese now people leave that and that is being used as a base for a railway all the way through Europe mating China 2025 they wanted they clear declare that they want to be the dominant advanced manufacturer of the world with the technology that they stole from us that the US the Western civilization have used the innovation is the heart of capitalism why and this is what I want to tell you this is why I told you about my communist education because starting from kindergarten all they asked you to do is to obey to obey to never challenge not to challenge your predecessor not to challenge the knowledge that you learned and in order to innovate to be a scientist you need to have a quality of the human being that is daring to challenge your predecessor to make mistake to fail and that amount of knowledge is actually more valuable than when you actually succeed and that is why China only have one Nobel Prize winner and in Madison that is why our heart the crystal of Western capitalism is being so land by China and they are then using that chief technology to promote 5g everywhere because the rest of the country cannot afford to develop it on their own and that's their information warfare now what is Donald Trump doing after China joined the WTO since 2001 they have been undermining the rules they made many many empty promises they said that they're going to stop currency manipulation there they said they're going to remove the non trade barriers they said that they're going to do many many other things especially stop the intellectual property theft but they didn't and they got away with it over and over again why because in Obama Clinton's time the Chinese only have to offer them a few billion dollar of trade and the president go back to their country oh we made some kind of deal there's a bit of compromise and we're fine let's move on so they got away with it over and over again this time we saw that the Chinese came to the table and they were desperate why because they're a trade based economy their export means everything to them there are domestic consumption only 39% do you know where that is on the world stage is that bottom with those African state your domestic assumptions not enough to support the growth that a garment the government is trying to target so after trading with the West with so much trade deficit they earned so much money for us then they used that money to buy off our corn or soil being just to put us off even further how is that there and at the same time the u.s. worker the Japanese worker the manufacturing worker lost their job and the money that US government had to pay for these worker only employment is way more than the benefit that they got those cheap products from China and at the same time why does China has that production advantage forced labor camps 600 of them all over China these people they are not criminals the people who are locked inside these camps are usually political or prisoners of conscience they can be Christians follow moon practitioners Tibetans and the government they have an incentive to lock these people up because these forced labor camps often disguise themselves as factories to the outside world if you're worrying a mating china shirt chances are the raw material might be producing these labor camps these people are subject to routine torture they work long hours reading really inhumane conditions that's how they get their cheap production costs lowered and then they come back with those product and destroy our manufacturing jobs in the West I want to stop here right now because I really want to open up the conversation with you I want to hear your thought because China is a threat and easing Australia's national interest to do something about it right now we cannot stand on the sidelines anymore thank you very much Paul anastagia as you know one of our intellectual heroes here at CIS is the Great British liberal John Stuart Mill who famously said he who knows only his own position knows little of that and I think I can speak for many Australians and many Westerners many people in this room who have had a different view about China for a long time and our argument and this was an argument that many liberals and conservatives alike often made is that the more china became capitalist the more likely it was going to become not just more prosperous but more democratic and peace-loving why were we in the West so naive has that worked at all no well in fairness can I just put this too though before dings reforms to mark to open up the economy there was something like 90% of mainland China was in abject poverty today thanks to market reforms only 1 in 10 are living in abject poverty so no question that China has become more prosperous correct but why were they in poverty in the first place the Great Famine the Great Leap Forward all those things brought turmoil onto the Chinese population many of them died and Communist Party has killed 85 million Chinese citizens in Keis time that's more than the - world war work world war combined and so to say that they liberated us from poverty I heard this Chinese commentator he used to say that to say that someone has liberated you someone has to capture you first well they did that first and then they did the reverse now you're thanking them for what they have done but but clearly China in the last 10 to 15 years as you make very clear has become more authoritarian at home and more aggressive abroad how why is this happened why were we in the West knife about this sir well they're having a Cold War they have this Cold War mentality forever and they do look at the West like an enemy I know this because it was taught to me for 13 years in my life and if we look at different fronts in the media in education they are infiltrating everything they're having Confucius Institute here to broadcast their propaganda there have they are buying off Hollywood studios can you believe that AMC is China now DreamWorks Lionsgate these are all Chinese owned the company it's more and more unlikely that we're gonna see a Hollywood movie that's produced about Tiananmen Square or Cultural Revolution or the persecution of Tibetans and Falun Gong the self-censorship is encouraged by the Chinese money and this is in the cultural front now if we look at in NGO China recently has been for an NGO from operating in China because they say that you guys are going to have some subversive submerse of motive to operate here to undermine our society and why are they saying that because they are all organizations student professional association we see it all on Australian campuses Walter well right that they are going out to be the extended arm of Chinese propaganda and to target those Hong Kong students and the universities are turn a blind eye on it and this is their cold war they have been engaging economic warfare and the reason why you feel like there's nothing you can really do about it because you're too engaged is part is the result of this warfare now many western china watches over these on both left and right if you like I think of Henry Kissinger the Republican national security adviser to presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford zebras in ski is passed away a couple of years ago but he was a national security adviser to Jimmy Carter here in Australia Stephen Fitzgerald who was Gough Whitlam senior advisor Owen Harry's former senior advisor to Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser also a CIS fellow he they would say what you're saying is true about this repressive authoritarian regime but that would come back to you and say that surely contexts matters and then make the point that in the past century China has experienced the collapse of a traditional regime warlordism civil war invasion a famine that killed millions millions and mass terror in the form of the Cultural Revolution and of course the dramatic socio-economic upheavals of recent times from Beijing's perspective this is their argument fear of things getting out of hand and a return to the chaos and the mass violence of the relatively recent past their very real concern so if they're right isn't any country with that kind of history likely to put an unusually high premium on stability and order at home as you said very right that is their rhetoric that's what they have been using to justify their control over Chinese people if we want to look at a massive country with different language different religion and different ideas of people we look at India their democracy and they have gone through terrible stuff in the past - but their government is not saying yeah because of our people are too complex and it's hard to control so we need to crack down on them in the Washington Post just recently many high-profile former government officials intellectuals journalists assigned a joint letter was 150 prominent China watchers and among other points they made was don't assume that China is a monolith or that the views of its leadership are set in stone are we placing too much emphasis on the views of one man here Xi Jinping it's not a monolith but that's why they go through the purging process since the beginning of their establishment every time when there's internal conflict the internal fight theory is going to be a group that's going to be sacrifice and it's not like you lose election here you lose your family your reputation your everything that's the way they solidify so if they do have internal split outside to the outside world they're going to be in unity because their interests the same is to remain the communist regime in power a mutual friend Andrew hasty who will be a speaker at this year's Concilium on this very subject he had this opinion piece in The Sydney Morning Herald which you mentioned and his argument was that we in Australia were not being alive enough to the dangers of an ever more powerful China and John Mearsheimer our guest last week said more or less the same thing and I put this question to Professor Mearsheimer and I'll put it to you is there a danger that people like you Andrew hasty John Mearsheimer the so called nutters as Paul Keating called them in the security establishment on the eve of the election is there a danger you're overlooking China's weaknesses and limitations we all talk about demography John Howard's fond of saying that China will grow old before it grows rich but even if they sort out those long term demographic challenges they've got pervasive air and water pollution corruption which you mentioned high levels of debt are we exaggerating China's strength here I don't think we're exaggerating China strength but we're also shouldn't exaggerate China's weaknesses and that is why I think it's a very good argument that why Australia should not choose China over the States because China's economy the financial scheme is a Ponzi scheme I know this because my father is a businessman in China and was before the Communist Party destroyed his company with a few hundred employees after my scandal so he told me the businesses cannot survive without bank loans all they do is loaning more money and this is the bubble economy right the bigger the business the more money they owe so how is an economy going to survive like that and they just keep printing RMB the thing is they also do something else that so we haven't seen the bubble burst yet at the beginning of Communist China all the our state-owned right now they're selling part of the land to get back some of the cash so that's why we are not seeing like the bubble bursting right away but when's the real-estate price the real estate bubble started burst then we're gonna see something completely different I see many people in this city especially would say that China is our largest trade partner by far it's helped Australia weather the global financial storm more than a decade ago let me put these views to you this is Linda Jacobson from China matters and she says quote whatever you think about China financially and economically there is no market that will replace China for decades as far as Australia is concerned she goes on to say we can quibble over how we got here and how we can all agree this kind of dependency is very unhealthy the fact of the matter is Australia is hugely dependent on China for its prosperity your response I like the response respond to that with a Chinese quote in China we have a saying it's called don't drink the poison to stop your thirst because there is going to be an eventual result if you keep doing that now Australia is a blast country you're blessed with abundant resources and you have now going through an economic recession for a while yes but the freedom you have here was fought by your forebears your father's generation your grandfather's generation not father in the World War two freedom is something that is deserving of being preserved you don't know it until you're about to lose it just ask the people in Hong Kong hmm well talking about Hong Kong before we go to questions seven million people they're there in the frontline the fight for liberty we're all with them but they have very little margin of error I heard someone on the BBC World Service this morning make the point that there was a danger that these protesters and demonstrators might be overstepping the mark here with the vandalization vandalism of the Legislative Council a few weeks ago and with these Airport shutdowns is there a danger that might overplay their hand and the China intervenes and that could just crush the whole thing well there are two things that's in play here first the missing for me war the China always dehumanized and spread false information about its enemy so how escalated the violence is that's the first question and so far from if we observe all the reports most of the violence are perpetrated from the police to the civilian and secondly what are these people fighting they're witnessing their civil order going down the drain on July 21st there was something that happening during long it's called the UN long incident and night there were about a hundred people gangsters dressed in white shirt they went to the subway to start attack civilians and the civilians called called the police the police just said stay off the street so these people continue to beat civilians for an hour as soon as they left a minute after the police arrived in the scene no arrest was made on sight later on their speculations about and and their people saw that elected official who are pro China has shaken hand with the people who are beating up the civilians this is a coordinated act of the police the gangster and the government to put terror on these people they're just like us they grew up in democracy they know the rule of law just imagine if one day your police stopped - you're like a call to robbery or something and you're just there to defend for yourself a how scary would that be so the anxiety that's felt by the Hong Kong people is imminent hmm okay now questions yeah rife champion look you remind me of Arthur Koestler in 1948 when the Hopf the Cold War was just hotting up during the blockade of Berlin he said the future of civilisation depends on the conflict between the Communists and ex-communists because only the X communists know what prop against and that's your story yeah well I I guess so because there's no way that I will want to return to the life the way of life that I had in China no way and it's not just about the economic prosperity it's about the way that they have been telling you what you cannot be since you are a king their garden the way they tell you that there's a perfect way which is the ideal of Communists and you have to constantly strive to be that way to earn your love to be their model student to be their model daughter and you're behaving a way that's so outwardly oriented now we all know that compassion that Shakespeare put this perfectly the quality of Mercy is not strained it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath mercy come from within it's not being taught or obligated by the outside world that's what the social credit system is making Chinese people do they're monitoring every the social credit system we all know about that the Chinese new digital digital overseeing God so they're watching Chinese people's every single move they will give you a score if you help elderly across the street that's considered a good deed for them so what start happening is that we see maids hired workers setting a house on fire and going inside to rescue the baby out so that they can increase their social credit score this is how they try to make everybody as robot as styling famously said the engineering of the soul is way more than important than the production of the tanks so cheers to you the engineer of soul which is the writers and the artists they use that also as a tool there's no way I want to return to that yes next question yes thank you I'm Marie from vision China Times and welcome to Australia it's always really good to hear you speak every time just all right my question is you've been around the world to different countries to raise awareness about human rights situation in China but there has been really limited international practical solutions or practical measures to help improve the human rights the human rights situation in China what are your comments around the actual reasons behind this well China's economic warfare which has been planned for a very long time is a huge factor in that people don't feel like they can speak up because of money and engagement and we all saw the result of that so that's why I feel like what Trump is doing right now even though he's not a values guy he's not a human rights guy but it's for the first time that a u.s. leader actually has the backbone to confront China in the way he does and so I think the solution to that is we need to help ourselves and see who our true ally is and it's not about choosing us over China it's not about oh if we got in trouble with Chinese got us going to come to our aid if not then we joined China it's not about that it's about protecting the way you want to live and your grandchildren wants to live and not become a tributary state of China talk about Trump and human rights though I was listening to a Wall Street Journal podcast this morning on the way to work on the bus and Paul Gigot and the editorial team were saying that they'll criticizing Trump for his equivocal response to the situation in Hong Kong and they said that if indeed the PLA moves into Hong Kong which is obviously conceivable the Democrats will destroy him next year that he lost Hong Hong I think Trump's reaction partly is because that is not his focus and Hong Kong by name is a sovereign part of China and he's not playing up the human rights rhetoric very much and we have seen it in the past with many different countries but it doesn't mean that what he does his main focus is not going to have an effect on the general human rights situation and it's conceivable he might be talking to XI privately we just don't know yeah Jim James Penniston thanks for your great courage and conviction it's great to have you with us there were many reports in Australia I think last week of China's government agents are officials using tools such as facial recognition software in respect of Australian students protesting over what was happening in Hong Kong and do you think that's true and what should the Australian government be doing about it it's a pretty alarming notion for Australian citizens like me that that should be happening in our country mm-hmm well I wouldn't be surprised because they have been doing that in other part of the world too and we have many examples of that Australian government needs to use this chance to just show the Chinese government that we are not going to compromise because China actually need us more than we need them its collective if we show that we're not going to compromise and this is communist sort of mo that they don't respect strengths no they don't respect anything but they fear strength when you show that you're not going to be compromised they can threaten you they can try again but eventually they were back off and that is also the reverse example is very good in you know Canada recently arrested a CFO of Huawei so in retaliate that was on us request by in retaliation the Chinese arrested two Canadian citizen and sentence another to jail why is that why don't they arrest the Americans because they asked hard to be arrested it's because Canada is the weak link our prime minister Justin Trudeau has shown no courage to confronting China even when like there's a dozen of Canadians who are in China in jail right now and two of them are in there because of this reason so we need to show them we're not gonna compromise South York Anastacia thank you very much this is just music to my ears I've been following it for a few years I lecture in public international law from time to time I'm just concerned though because what you're saying rings true to me just from what I've picked up over the years but we have a situation where our ports show at the port of Darwin port of Newcastle Port of Melbourne under state controlled corporations controlled by China taking over these strategic ports and our representatives in the parliaments don't seem to mind that there's no reciprocity and that this is foolhardy behavior we also have a foreign influence transparency scheme that you look up the register and it doesn't seem to net anyone not not the corporations that are busy gobbling up our assets and things like that so I'm just curious what do you recommend to our parliamentarians do you speak to them what's their response I hear everything you're saying and I agree with it but unless we actually have people in power in Australia who are willing to actually do something tangible then all we're doing is having very engaging talk fests at different venues buts your view on that that is the good thing of having a democracy right your parliamentarians actually listen to you because they want to get elected and you did have and you did have someone that's very courageous who spoke up last week but what did he get he got come the condemnation from his own party and from his opposition in situations like this that's when the public comes in we need to use whatever chance we have to bring this topic to the table until they listen to us in my cell a little grass root but I guess that's really powerful so the push back will come from a lot of people who obviously acknowledge that our prosperity in the last decade has been underwritten by China's bull run and a massive appetite for our raw materials so this is a very complicated issue for a lot of Australians and indeed many people in the region that do rely on the China market they do rely on the China market but you always have to seek plan B right to read to rely yourself completely on tilt élitaire in reaching and they are going to you with every single chance they have to attack your sovereignty and this is only going to intensify it's not gonna lessen down they're not going to change as long as they're communists so you need to think of a plan B Suey and I should say you can't you left China though you were born in China in 1990 and you left China to move to Canada in 2003 so he was from mainland China and you left in 1991 to come to Australia great to have you here question I'm glad to hear your compassion for human rights in China that woman's question given the fact that human right movement has had a limited impact on Chinese politics what might be the practical solution and also you acknowledge that in the West because economic solution more important than human rights right so what do you think what kind of solution you can think that can have a real impact on Chinese politics this first question and second question is you think that don't ok China's a threat and what do you expect Australian government should do and one thing is okay you said Chinese always regards Western country as enemy in propaganda can be true but in the real life they all regard the Westerners either the real friends the cult or that even koto to Westerners look at what happened through the chance coming now they sent top officials to return to Washington DC to Qatar to travel that's what they do now and now's as good a time as any is to say in the 2016 election I think Trump was pretty popular with the Chinese people they're very popular and the reason is kind of out it's very out of the blue is very random because Chinese was the traditional value we have that's still not being smeared by the Communist Party we have very good work ethic and we respect people who are very disciplined and successful in their way that they work hard Trump's entire family is been praised by the Chinese nationals because he had very few very successful children they all went to grade school they all built themselves up to be successful people and that's one reason it's really random it's not for political reason that's he's very successful yeah just trying to started completely light last year you were on ABC television in this country and your interview was was cancelled during the live television interview and they cited concerns about your affiliations tell us about that controversy mm-hmm so my local contact got a phone call from the ABC the world producer saying that the decision comes from higher up that because my affiliations I cannot be on air live and I was like I be on BBC Ebbinghaus yeah having everywhere live and I didn't say anything all that extraordinary right and then when the Australian confronted them they say no this didn't happen now my guess is that probably someone I wouldn't assume that directly from the Chinese consulate because someone has connection I've decided that my speaking up for Falun Gong for Tibetans these are very sensitive topics and when they use the word affiliation you know is a Chinese rhetoric because no way in the West would use that kind of term when to associate me with a human rights group you also said I think after this controversy erupted the China had used the Confucius Institutes education programs to extend its soft power as detailed in the Canadian documentary in the name of Confucius tell us about that mm-hmm so in Toronto School Board something really exciting happened Toronto had a lot of Confucius Institute and then the parents they got really worried because they actually teach you communist propaganda songs in those we saw footage of Caucasian students singing I love the Communist Party and the great leader Mao's gonna lead us to glory that ridiculous so the parents got really concerned so they went on the street they protested and they worked Toronto School Board banned Confucius Institute and that is something you can do as well next question hi my name is Catherine Varga I was born and brought up in a communist country so all this is deja vu and what I what what I've noticed and really pains me because I have grandchildren here as well is it these are we are talking a lot about tactic tactic or situation what should we do now we now opened our eyes and suddenly we see nobody thinks about strategical situation is the most important strategic tools that we have is education in schools and what happens with a media nobody teaches anybody about what upon digital in what happened to Ceausescu what happened with chavez nobody nobody teaches children about liberty and this concept so they are taught is not it's not enough to have Confucius they are taught in schools in private school and in kindergarten communist terminology and criteria and what and if nobody attaches that we are just going to chase and run after our I think that is a really valid point it's the same situation everywhere they teach diversity training but they don't teach what communism actually does so there are some NGOs in u.s. that is actually working on this bringing speakers like me into university campuses and it's amazing how these Millennials or generations ears when I have heard of a communist survivor for the first time is as if they have never even heard of what communism is actually about you explain to them your actual experiences and they're like oh my god and I was just wearing a maltese shirt yesterday so this information is crucial and I think we need to take it to ourselves as a task to bring these information to the younger generation thank you next question my name is Thomas Russell in Australia as you probably know in our recent political history we've had a politician or somebody approximating a politician rise to fame through a largely anti Asian immigration platform and as a nation this led to a debate and as a nation we ultimately agreed that racism is a bad thing and we mustn't be anti Asian and that's led now to extra sensitivity at all levels within Australia when it comes to criticizing China so how do we break through the barrier of criticizing China on its merits in an appropriate way at the same time as distinguishing ourselves either individually or through our platform as being anti China or China bashing as a culture and a nation well you can tell them that the Chinese Communist Party is the biggest racist against Chinese people they say that our people are not intelligent enough to receive free information we're not responsible enough to have hold freedom election we're not even responsible enough for our own voices if they believe that about my people how they're not racist now that saying that and speaking up against the China is racist that rhetoric is used by Chinese government everywhere and I have journalists friends who try to write about China who are being accused of that but we need to separate a Chinese government with the Chinese people when you speak up against the Chinese government you are actually speaking on behalf of the Chinese people the people who never had their voice heard I've decided when I get into cabs and I often have ethnic Chinese cab drivers that when we get onto this subject they also often denounce the Chinese government back back from where they came so this very there's a very strong energy Beijing view among the Chinese jaspera at least in my experience in Sydney and Brisbane and there is a very good point in there that there's gonna be communist sponsored groups here now are going to say we represent the Chinese community but actually they don't they overstate their membership and push for hominis agenda here in Australian soil it happens everywhere in the world so you need to be very careful where the membership really comes from who they actually represent and what their connections are Bruce McCain Anastacia I'd like to just continue with this discussion of the distinction between the party and the people and I think Australia has to find a way to gradually disassociate itself with China as its main economic partner as Linda Jacobson that's something pretty difficult to do but you spoke of China 2045 and you spoke of the one belt one road plan Australia has really distant itself from both of those initiatives following us concerns valid concerns but on the other side if you look at China's concerns leave the party out of it for the moment think about China as an economic entity China wants to become able to innovate in its own way without dependency on foreign technology it doesn't want to have dependency on Intel computer chips etc and it's easier to see that as a kind of dark conspiracy but on the other hand if you think about China as an economic entity and there's not a political entity it's a valid concern the one world one Road likewise is an expansion of China into the middle middle middle east and sorry middle europe and further beyond but the point I'm trying to make I think here is that we have to find a way to understand in some depth these initiatives see where we can take advantage of them Australian firms have been discouraged from involving themselves in the one belt one road yet American firms are doing quite well in there by supplying materials so I think we have to be able to be careful about understanding China in depth and while I applaud you for what you're doing and raising the concern about the party I do believe we also what attract it to understand where we where our interest economically can be enhanced mm-hmm that's a good question one that a lot of people in the business community will raise that US has really engaged in one that was making the point last week that the business community in the United States is more divided about China than it is here because the high tech community is essentially joined forces with the Pentagon whereas here the high tech community is very much close with the financial community on shauna okay very important intervention next question Tony Berg Anastasia I'm interested in in one thing or more things but [Laughter] the there are millions of Chinese students around the world in Australia in Canada in the United States and and elsewhere and yes the the Confucius societies sort of you know take an interest in them as to you know etc but surely those students pick up things from the the societies that we live in and and I've got to imagine that they come back to you know China talk to their families talk to their friends and say it is different out there and there are these freedoms and so on that we don't enjoy I mean doesn't that happen and and and isn't that something that might over time develop in China well that's a really good point thank you very much the premise for that is that if your university actually teaches Western civilization but thank you I think people expect and I have one Australian friend who told me I usually just assume that he's Chinese people when they got off the plane immediately they breathe the air of freedom and they're gonna change their mind no it doesn't work like that to the islands for me because I was raised in Chinese Khammam elite communist family because my father was a communist member and my mother she was a professor in China so for me living there except for the indoctrination and the constantly you're being washed over all of that economically and everything else in your daily life it feels quite the same like there isn't going to be a drastic difference and as Tom said earlier yes the infrastructures in China right now for the people who live in big cities will feel like if not even better than living in the West but the thing is it takes a constant self-examination and an engagement to familiarize oneself with the Western democratic institution and process and that's not a self sort of initiated act that every Chinese are going to do and to be honest maybe 1020 percent of them would actually do that so that's why you see a lot of Chinese student they would defend communism like I did the first year in high school in their social economic classes in the West they didn't go through that detoxing process from communism so they're still going to keep that self censoring that's going on anything that you guys say that's against China is against Chinese anti-china that patriotic sentiment is going to filter everything out I probably thanks very much for your remarks it's very interesting I wanted to comment about so many people saying that china is Australia's most important economic partner I don't know if you've been here long enough to realize that there is a difference between the most important economic partner and the biggest trading partner China is Australia's biggest trading partner China is America's biggest trading partner there they buy a lot of stuff from a lot of countries but there is nine hundred and ninety three billion US dollars here in American foreign direct investment four hundred and twenty thousand people work for American companies American companies spend a billion dollars a year on R&D so there's a very long and deep economic relationship between the United States and Australia the trade to China could get cut off tomorrow through currency manipulation or tariffs or the ports aren't processing your coal right now we don't know why you know that that could change very quickly on the turn of a dime so I just want to point that out because I think there's a misconception even here among Australians about who the most important economic partner is but I'd like to challenge the collective firepower on the stage to come up with a new term I grew up in Washington DC in the 1980s with Ronald Reagan and cold war to me means something different than what's happening right now with China I'm not preparing to evacuate hiding under my desk it's a different kind of a threat we other than a few spies there weren't millions of Russians living in America that 2010 census said there are four million Chinese born Americans living in America we weren't buying anything from Russia in the 1980s it's a very diff relationship so I would challenge you to come up with a new term so that people can't debunk your argument by saying no no no it's not a cold war it's something different find a different term that we can use effectively to talk about what's happening in some way comparing to the Cold War thank you very much for a question compared to the Cold War the Soviets weren't engaged with the rest of the world economically and they failed in that front actually so what do you think well I I follow the advice of Professor John Mearsheimer and for those of you who missed me show me you can easily see him on our videos online and he makes the point this is his thesis in 2001 the tragedy of great power politics so scrape our politics at the end of the Cold War it was a unipolar world it was the United States that was really the top dog but now we're increasingly having a more bipolar moment and you're right it's not going to be like a Cold War but will be an increasingly intense strategic and economic competition between Washington and Beijing and that presents all sorts of problems and dilemmas for allies like Australia because we're wedged in many respects but I call a great power politics and in many respects what China is doing just thinking strategically is not all that odd all great powers as their definition of national interests rise and grow they'll start to spread their wings into areas on which their future prosperity and stability depend and that creating a sphere of influence just like the Americans did in the 19th century when they kicked out the European powers from the Western Hemisphere difference here is that the United States will go to great lengths to stop China dominating the region so I think it's this tragedy of great power politics that's happening that's what I'd say so you want to learn more about that I listen to press professor Michaud more on the CIA's okay you and that's about it for today I want to thank you all for being here in thinking Anastasia Lin that was great Anastasia very good and if you're interested please come here next Thursday night Anastasia will be debating Jason yat-sen Lee salvatore babones on the question of Australia's choice that'll be here and be moderated by my colleague sue windibank who heads our China program and then in early September I think it's September 9 in this room lunch for professor Simon heifer is a distinguished British conservative columnist and historian he'll be on brexit which he supports and Boris Johnson whom he detests you don't want to miss that see you then and thank you so much for being here [Music] you

Channel: Centre for Independent Studies

Views: 218,326

Keywords: Centre for Independent Studies, CIS, Auspol, China, Freespeech, HongKong, Human Rights, Communism, Xi Jinping, Democracy, Confucius Institute, Andrew Hastie, Liberal Party, Freedom, America, Donald Trump, freehk, social credit, Great Power Politics, Chins, Xhina, communist, regime, Anastasia, Lin, Miss Canada 2015, Miss World, 2015, world peace, humane, activist, what is china really like, china truths, chinese people talking about china, china from a chinese

Id: Wg0A89NpRsk

Length: 52min 53sec (3173 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 15 2019