Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release Thursday, 8 September 2016

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au

MPs targeted in propaganda war against Silk Road project

Australia is experiencing a sharp increase in anti-China rhetoric, which is clearly intended to stymie any independent moves towards increased economic cooperation with our biggest trading partner and its BRICS partners—Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa. This has included hysteria over Chinese investment in Australia, even though China’s $75 billion worth of investment is dwarfed by the USA’s $860 billion and the UK’s $500 billion. It has also included paranoia over China being a threat to national security, such as the ridiculous accusation that China “hacked” the online census, and the decision to deny Chinese firms the right to buy privatised electricity assets on grounds of national security (the CEC’s position is that these assets should not be privatised at all, but to single out Chinese companies is wrong).

The latest instance, however, is straight up propaganda targeted at elected MPs in Canberra. Arriving in Canberra for the opening of the new parliament, all Members and Senators were presented with the current issue of the Parliamentary Library’s Briefing Book, which featured a blatant distortion of China’s world-spanning “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiative. This is an infrastructure vision, comprising two integrated projects: the “Silk Road Economic Belt”, a network of developmental corridors linking East Asia to Western Europe, the Middle East and North Africa with high-speed rail; and the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road”, the development of new ports, canals and shipping lanes throughout Southeast Asia and all the way to sub-Saharan Africa.

The Briefing Book’s four-page analysis of OBOR was written by ANU academic Dr Geoff Wade, a career anti-China propagandist who often writes for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s The Strategist and the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter. Last year, Wade whipped up the “national security” clamour that erupted over the lease of the Port of Darwin to Chinese company Landbridge Group, despite the deal having twice passed scrutiny by ASIO and the Department of Defence.

Wade delivers the message to MPs that they should not be caught up in the enthusiasm for OBOR emanating from the business community, but should rather “adopt a more economically and strategically prudent attitude” (emphasis added) in dealing with China. OBOR, he effectively warns, is less about economics and trade than about China’s plans for world domination.

Wade postulates “the possibility that the OBOR agenda is aimed at creating a Eurasia-wide, China-led bloc to counter the [United States]”; i.e. OBOR is a geopolitical ploy, intended to draw us into an alliance against the USA. MPs who are assessing this possibility should consider this: Ever since China’s President Xi Jinping announced OBOR in 2013, he and many other Chinese officials have repeatedly invited the whole world, including the United States, to participate—both in the development projects themselves, and in the creation of a new financial architecture to fund them. That new architecture is already coalescing around institutions like the China-founded Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which counts as its foundation members some 57 nations—including the UK and Australia. It is the USA, by contrast, which is using economic agreements for geopolitical purposes. The Obama White House has put heavy pressure on nations not to join the AIIB, and has excluded China from its own trade deal, the Trans Pacific Partnership (actually to China’s benefit, since the TPP is a power grab by Wall Street and the City of London).

Wade’s other false claims calculated to spook MPs about China’s intentions include:

“China clearly portrays OBOR as both being premised on and further validating China’s claims to the islands of the South China Sea”, he declares. However, to support this assertion he cites an article in the Diplomat which says nothing of the sort. Rather, the paper by three Chinese academics from Renmin University of China touts OBOR as a means to creatively resolve tensions in the region and suggests it is “high time for China and the United States to hold substantive strategic dialogues” on the subject.
Wade says “the future role of the People’s Liberation Army in protecting China’s OBOR facilities abroad has been widely discussed”, i.e. OBOR is a way for China to deploy its huge army all over the world. His source is an article published by neoconservative-leaning US think tank the Jamestown Foundation, which analyses the difference of opinions between four professors at China’s National Defence University. The article includes the caveats that as yet no legal framework exists in China for deploying its army abroad, and that “there are limitations on what can be gained from such commentators” in any case. Besides, the musings of four officers hardly constitutes “wide discussion”.

Of course, there is an economic power that deploys its military all over the world, but it’s not China. It is the USA, which, following in the imperial tradition of the British Empire, with the modern UK providing guidance and support for its fateful interventions and regime change wars, deploys its military might not for the security of the American people, but to secure the interests of Wall Street and the City of London.

And that is the choice for Australia: stick with the collapsing Wall Street-City of London system of financial looting, which has bankrupted our once great agro-industrial economy; or embrace the unprecedented opportunity OBOR offers for cooperative economic development. Australia is in a crucial location to become a key hub in the Maritime Silk Road. We should build the high-speed rail infrastructure required to move resources and products rapidly to our northern ports; develop new industrial and manufacturing capacity supported by new cities along those routes; and upgrade to modern power and water infrastructure to supply the newly created industries. Such projects will require not only immense amounts of raw materials, but also inputs like steel and concrete, high-technology products, and components and parts—all of which should be manufactured here. Once built, this infrastructure will be a permanent platform for international trade and growth, transforming our prospects for the future.

Australians should demand our MPs seize this historic opportunity.

Click here for a free copy of the latest issue of the CEC’s weekly Australian Alert Service, which features extensive coverage of the One Belt, One Road project, and how it would transform Australia’s economy.

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