A leading US expert on China has urged Australia to be bolder in its dealings with Beijing and less afraid of upsetting the ruling Chinese Communist Party — or risk the political consequences of perceived weakness.
Oriana Skylar Mastro, assistant professor of political science at Stanford University and a United States Air Force reservist who serves as a strategic planner at Indo-Pacific Command, wrote one of the most definitive books of 2024 on the economic and military rise of China and its future strategy.
‘Upstart: How China Became a Great Power’, offers unique insights into Beijing’s rapid emergence from poverty to wealth and its current global ambitions as it challenges an international order that has long been based on the dominance of US military and financial might.
Plumbing authoritative Chinese sources, Ms Mastro charts Beijing’s leap over just three decades from having about 3 per cent of global GDP to becoming the second largest economy in the world and the biggest manufacturer and exporter.
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In an interview in Canberra, Ms Mastro urged the Australian Government to maintain a firm tone with Beijing.
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Moving forward, Australia should not be too “risk averse” over actions or opinions that could “provoke” China in an effort to pre-empt retaliatory measures, she said.
“The one thing I think is really important is deterring Chinese aggression,” she said, adding that Canberra was too unwilling to take necessary steps to protect itself out of fear of goading China’s leadership.
“If you deter China, you are restricting their options. They’re going to be unhappy. So, you can either have a China that is deterred from aggression and problematic behaviour, but is unhappy, or one that is happy and gets to do whatever it wants. You can’t really have both,” Ms Mastro argued.
“In Canberra, I see a lot of recognising that China is unhappy about something, and thinking and assuming that that is then going to lead to China to take unfavourable policies towards Australia,” she said.
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“And what that means is the strategy is, ‘let’s just make sure we don’t do something that upsets China’.”
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"So, every country has to make a decision — in Australia, too, about the degree of sovereignty that they’re willing to give up in order to avoid conflict with China.”
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“I think we don’t even have the imagination to realise the degree to which our government sovereignty protects our everyday existence,” she said.
“Having a country like China be able to reach that deeply and touch our everyday lives is something that, while we don’t physically see a PLA (People’s Liberation Army) person in front of us enforcing some sort of law, the outcome is exactly the same.”
Shortly after the interview, a review calling for a funding cut to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), raised alarm in Canberra that it was being targeted for its hawkish analysis of the operations of the Chinese Communist Party.
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