Opinion | Why Australia is on its own in its trade conflict with China

While some in Australia have suggested that the country should form an economic alliance with like-minded democracies, in the world of international commerce, democratic and strategic friends are often the fiercest rivals

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The national flags of Australia and China are displayed in front of a portrait of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, during a visit by Australia’s then prime minister Julia Gillard to China on April 26, 2011. Photo: AFP

Published: 5:45am, 2 Dec 2020Updated: 11:05am, 2 Dec 2020

As China piles on the trade pressure, the reality of Australia’s economic place in the world has been laid bare: it is on its own.

In a 2017 book, Allan Gyngell, a former director general of the Australian Office of National Assessments, wrote that a “fear of abandonment” drives how Australia acts in the world. This probably explains some of the ideas now being heard.

One is to seek protection by taking Australia’s security treaty with the United States and moving it “beyond the military realm and into the economic arena”: an “economic alliance”.

Another is to enlist Anglosphere friends in the so-called “five eyes” intelligence arrangement and confront China with a “shared approach”. Or recruit “like-minded democracies” more broadly.

Supporters of these views were probably excited this past week when an unnamed “senior official” in the outgoing Trump administration told The Wall Street Journal: “The West needs to create a system of absorbing collectively the economic punishment from China’s coercive diplomacy and offset the cost.”

But there’s a problem: in the world of international commerce, democratic and strategic friends are often the fiercest rivals.