Pinning the tail on the dragon: how China is seducing the world

However, Australian security policy planners should err on the side of caution, especially when continuing to interlink defence spending as some form of military power index on China's part. While analysts argue that a Chinese build up is responsive to US power, the other main threat is also that of China's expanding political influence through non-interference in domestic affairs, and in that international relations scenario, China is winning.

Prudence should also be applied to China's duplicitous behaviours in trade. While China feels it is entitled under free world trade practices to invest in other countries without restriction, China's recent implementation of a broad anti-monopoly law prohibiting foreign capital access to China's domestic market (unless compliant with China's own strict policies), suggests the opposite may be true for foreign investment in China. In yet another paradox in a country re-establishing itself as a global mercantile empire and rife with state-imposed monopolies, these actions suggest China's economic liberalism may only last as long as economic dynamism is required in consolidating its own greater market concentrations.

Perhaps Australian investors should also take note that there are no longer-term bets that investment reciprocity will become a major factor of China's international relationships in the immediate future.

Despite China's expanding international trade position, western interests need to remember that China's national security remains insular and focused around domestic control. China's pursuit of power remains tethered to its national security, and there is no way in the world that China would be selling off its assets to foreign interests, let alone foreign government-backed corporations.

While China's defence and security forces remain defensive in application, China's massive army and air force is not particularly mobile, nor does it have the capacity to mount large-scale deployable operations at this stage. China has set about modernising several maritime sub-sectors of commercial and military development. Maritime expansion programs are transferring focus from inshore to offshore interests, and along the way, China is successfully expanding its list of welcoming ports, for that other vitally important role of any nation's navy - waving the diplomatic flag.

The impetus for upgrading Chinese presence in global port infrastructures, accompanying other multi-pronged Chinese maritime interests, is obvious. Such port visits allow China to acquire some perceived regional power influence. An important and cost-effective concept especially when having a lack of credible force projection.

Conclusion

As national security can be divided between external and internal concerns, it appears in relation to China at least, that the Rudd government is more focused on the former, rather than the latter. While the preservation of Australian-Chinese international economic and trade relationships takes precedence, the parade of Chinese investment led by mining industries suggests other aspects potentially affecting the quality of Australian life, are slowly encroaching. As Australia's second largest trading partner, for Australia to create, gain and sustain its own influence with China, there are areas that must be developed alongside shifts in Australia’s own domestic psyche.

Strategists, policy makers and politicians, need to accept and realise more responsive rather than reactionary approaches, remembering that China is exponentially growing in areas that only matter to its geopolitical adolescence right now. That includes China taking advantage of depressed global asset valuations to secure supplies of raw materials, and using easily exploitable foreign investment loopholes including foreign ownership.

China is still pursuing self-reliance with a focus on gaining global geostrategic influences through its no-political-strings-attached investment resources and development projects, particularly in the Pacific, Africa, and South America. China's growing military, economic and particularly political influences, are increasingly undermining the concept for western strategists that the more things change the more they stay the same.

The extent of China's global reach recently hit home when the Chinese Premier remarked that in light of the current global financial crisis, China was most concerned about it's US assets, but did not make the same remark about Australian assets. How Canberra accommodates these and other facts that China is already a bargaining influence in South-East Asia and the Asia-Pacific, and may well become the dominant East Asian power, is important.

There are changes that cannot be ignored in the region, and how Australia responds to those changes is a key element of Australia's future survival. That in itself should remain a paramount issue of responsive government policy.