Impossible to Negotiate Away the Ambitions of the CCP: Former Australian PM Tells Congress
Udumbara
Former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has warned a U.S. Congress Committee that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ambition for global hegemony and a new world order cannot be changed or negotiated away.
During a hearing of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the CCP on July 23 (Washington time), Morrison, who was invited as a witness, noted that the United States and Australia, as long-standing allies, saw the world through the same lens.
“It is through that lens that we have both been able to identify the rising threat from authoritarian states who are not content with absolute control over their own populations to preserve their own regimes, [and] seek hegemonic control over their own regions and recast the world order to accommodate their illiberal objectives,” he said.
CCP Has Taken Advantage of Free Trade Privileges
Contrary to the initial intentions and expectations of Western countries, the CCP did not open up Chinese society after joining global free trade. It has instead used the newfound privileges and wealth to advance its own agenda.“The CCP [has] used China’s newly granted access to global trade, capital markets and legitimacy in international forums to build the economic, diplomatic, technological and military capacity to one day challenge the global order in an attempt to make it more favourable to their regime security,” he said.
Morrison then shared his experience as a first-hand witness to the escalation of the CCP’s aggressive behaviour towards the countries in the Indo-Pacific region in the past decade and the regime’s coercion and bullying against Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The list outlined various things that Australia had done that drew the ire of the CCP, including the ban of Chinese state-run Huawei Technologies and ZTE from Australia’s 5G network, stricter laws targeting foreign investments and interference on national security grounds, and the request for an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID-19.
Shortly after the Morrison government publicly called for an investigation into the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, the CCP began to impose trade sanctions on a wide range of Australian export products.
“I have no doubt that the primary objective of the PRC targeting of Australia during this time was to make an example of Australia as a key U.S. ally in the region, to punish Australia as a warning to others,” Morrison said.
“I am pleased that our government provided the example of resistance and resilience by standing firm rather than acquiescence and appeasement.”
Morrison’s views were shared by Dan Ryan, a former board member of the Australia-China Council and a commercial lawyer, who previously told The Epoch Times that the Western belief that increasing trade with China would lead to its democratisation was a failed idea.
Differences Can’t Be Resolved Through Discussion
The former prime minister also stressed that Western democracies need to wake up to the reality that there are irreconcilable differences between them and the CCP, which cannot be resolved through discussion.“I think we have to be clear-eyed about this, and not pretend that there is somehow that this is going to be resolved through discussion,” he said.
“Discussion is fine. Engagement is good. It’s better than the alternative.
“But if we think that that is going to produce a change in the mindset in Beijing about what their objectives are, then we’re frankly kidding ourselves.”
Morrison further stated that the CCP had always viewed the West as a hostile force that threatened its existence.
“At every point, even the most moderate of their leaders … were very clear about the fact that even when they entered most favoured nation status, they still said amongst their officials that the West, and particularly the United States, is still looking to see us destroy our socialist system,” he said.
“They won’t change. So we have to deal with that reality.”
.
