Add Category
There are two very different ways to deal with China's President Xi Jinping — the smart way and the un-smart way.
Recently, Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese showed the smart way. Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau showed the other way.
Both examples were on display at the G20 meeting in Bali last month. It's instructive to examine both cases given that Australia's relationship with China is going to be important for many decades and we need to carefully manage this tricky but highly-consequential relationship.
In Australia, rhetoric about China has reached dangerously emotive and ideological levels. Both supporters and critics of China have escalated their language, often abusing those who disagree with their views of what form Australia's relationship with China should take.
The supporters of China often deride any mention of China's human rights abuses. The critics of China become enraged with any contact with China — even Albanese's recent meeting with Xi was seen as unacceptable. Many of the critics suggest a strange course: that if given a chance, Australia should not engage in dialogue with the leader of Australia's major customer.
The reality is that for 50 years, most Australian prime ministers have got the relationship with China basically right.
In 1972, Gough Whitlam, understanding the growing importance of China to the region, established diplomatic relations. He was ahead of most democratic countries, and was followed soon after when Washington did the same thing, exemplified by the famous visit to China by president Richard Nixon.
Rewinding back to Bob Hawke
Once Australia's diplomatic relations were established, Bob Hawke laid the foundations for Australia's economic relationship with China.
In 1985, when Hawke stood atop Mount Channar in Western Australia with Chinese premier Hu Yaobang, looking across the rich red dirt of the Pilbara, the two men made an agreement: China would get much of that iron ore to begin dramatic economic growth. It would lift hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty and Australia would get the abundant wealth that would underwrite 30 years of unbroken economic growth.
Two years after the meeting on Mount Channar, Australia and China signed Beijing's first foreign investment deal, heralding the beginning of Australia's resources boom and China's economic growth.
Australia was in on the ground floor of China's economic development. It was a relationship that served both countries well. As a result of the "China dividend" Australia was able to pay for universal health care for its citizens — Medicare. It was also able to pay for better roads, schools and hospitals than it would otherwise have been able to afford.
Nobody can accuse Bob Hawke of shirking human rights abuses when it came to China — his tears and anger over China's deliberate killing of civilians in Tiananmen Square in 1989 delivered one of the most direct international hits to Beijing.
Likewise, most of Hawke's successors also got the China relationship pretty right. John Howard never backed away from raising China's human rights abuses. Nor did Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott. Yet they all kept Australia's diplomatic and economic relationships with China on track.
In fact, Abbott achieved a free trade agreement with China — one of the most important ever concluded by Australia — while also pressuring China on human rights.
When things went off the rails
Australia's relationship with China began going off the rails in 2017. At that time, Xi Jinping became more aggressive in his approach to China's expansion, particularly the establishment of military bases on disputed islands in the South China Sea. And from Australia's side, Malcolm Turnbull responded to China's new assertiveness by dramatically changing the rhetoric Australia used towards China.
While the relationship became strained under Turnbull, it deteriorated to the point of dysfunction under Scott Morrison. So dysfunctional did it become that not a single Australian minister could reach by phone a single Chinese minister. Surely not desirable given China is Australia's biggest customer.
Morrison would have done well to have learned from the way more experienced — and successful — world leaders handled China. Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron were two cases in point — they, too, wanted an inquiry into the origins of COVID-19, but they studiously resisted using the sort of emotive language and tone Morrison and former US president Donald Trump used.
Those attacking Albanese for his recent meeting with Xi Jinping — suggesting that it was, somehow, "appeasement" — ignore one very important reality: Australian policy towards China has not changed one iota between Morrison and Albanese.
Only the language has changed. Anthony Albanese could have been following the rule book of Bob Hawke or John Howard when it came to his recent meeting with Xi Jinping at the G20 — the first meeting between an Australian and Chinese leader for five years.
Albanese covered all key human rights issues — including the appalling treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang province and the summary detentions of Australian-Chinese journalist Cheng Lei and academic Yang Hengjun, both Australian citizens who have been denied due process.
The Prime Minister also brought up Australia's position on Taiwan and Australia's desire that China prioritise battling climate change. He gave the example of the floods currently afflicting parts of Australia to illustrate the impact it was having. And in very clear terms he urged Xi Jinping to use his influence with Russia's Vladimir Putin to try to stop the war in Ukraine.
It was a textbook meeting between two leaders — it covered problem areas, it covered trade opportunities and it was respectful and cordial.
Turning to Trudeau
Now let's consider the meeting Justin Trudeau had with Xi. As with the Albanese meeting, it is believed to have covered both positive and negative aspects of the relationship. Like Australia, Canada has had some serious problems with China. These came up but, clearly, they were not the only issues.
While Albanese's post-meeting briefing was comprehensive, detailing the range of issues, the briefing by Trudeau's staff appeared to be anything but comprehensive. If you read the accounts that appeared in Canadian media, you would have thought Trudeau read the riot act to his Chinese counterpart about alleged Chinese interference in Canadian politics.
In the age of instant feedback, Chinese officials at the G20 informed Xi on how the meeting had been portrayed back in Canada.
Xi was livid. Many of his predecessors would have filed the matter away for future reference and put on a poker face when they ran into Trudeau the next day. Not Xi Jinping in 2022.
When he had the chance, he pounced. He confronted Trudeau on the floor of the conference, knowing full well that there were cameras everywhere.
"Everything we discussed has been leaked to the papers and that is not appropriate," Xi told him in mandarin, with a translator next to him. "And that was not how the conversation was conducted."
If the incomplete and slanted briefing was Trudeau's first mistake, he then made his second. Xi said something else, and while his translator was still translating it Trudeau cut him off, eager to make his own point for the cameras: "In Canada we believe in a free and open and frank dialogue."
What Xi had said before Trudeau waited for the translation was: "If there was sincerity on your part, then we shall conduct our discussion with an attitude of mutual respect, otherwise there might be unpredictable consequences."
Meanwhile, in Canada
Any professional diplomat — or good manager or polite person — would have realised that the first thing one should do when confronted with someone with a grievance, whether it's the president of China or the local shopkeeper, is to let them say what's on their mind.
One gets the clear impression from the video of the event that Xi realises that Trudeau has worked out the line he wants to deliver for his own audiences and is not even listening to what he's saying.
It's worth noting that there were concerns raised among the Canadian media and in Canada's own parliament about the way Trudeau conducted himself.
Back in Ottawa, the Canadian Press reported that Canada's chief electoral officer Stephane Perrault said he had not received any reports of specific Chinese interference in the 2019 federal election.
"I have no reason to believe the election overall was not a free and fair election," he said.
It reported that Alain Therrien, the leader of the Bloc Quebecois grouping, accused Trudeau of "running down the hallways" to catch Xi and discuss interference but of feigning ignorance at home and in parliament as to the specific details.
"Does he know all the details of Chinese interference and he's hiding it from us, or did he confront Xi Jinping based only on a news article?" Therrien asked.
The Canadian Press reported that Trudeau said the question was nonsense and his government always took allegations of interference by other countries seriously.
He said that in all the briefings he had received, the integrity of Canadian elections had never been in doubt.
What does this tale of two approaches mean?
There's no question that Canada, like Australia, has serious concerns about the growing influence of China. And that Canada has had concerns about the treatment of some of its citizens.
But Albanese showed Trudeau how it's done. Albanese raised all the key issues he needed to raise with Xi Jinping, from human rights, the treatment of Australian citizens and the trade relationship. And he relayed that faithfully and in full to the Australian media.
Trudeau may well have had a comprehensive conversation with Xi Jinping, but he or his advisers chose to present a slanted version to the Canadian media.
So what does this tale-of-two-diplomatic-approaches mean?
For Anthony Albanese, he now has access to the Chinese president and, in the way that China works, all his ministers now have access to their Chinese counterparts.
Albanese's new access significantly enhances the chances of him securing freedom for Cheng Lei and Yang Hengjun. He also now has a better chance of convincing Xi Jinping of ending Beijing's $20 billion of trade sanctions on Australian exports to China. And he made no compromise to Australia's policy towards China.
The net result for Justin Trudeau is that he probably won't get another meeting with Xi Jinping. Critics of China may well say, "So what? He stood up for Canada." But he achieved nothing, except a few seconds on Canadian TV in which he's seen to be "standing up" to the Chinese leader — whatever that means.
The realpolitik is that for the sake of "spinning" an important meeting — slanting the tone and substance of it to suit his desired political image back home — Trudeau now has no ability to intercede on behalf of any Canadians who find themselves in trouble in China. And he now has no ability to secure better trade arrangements for his country.
Two leaders made a choice about how to deal with a foreign leader. Now they will live with the consequences.