@mcgregorrichard enunciates the Lowry Institute hard line, on China, in the Financial Times. Political Cynic comments.
Anti-Chinese propaganda has become ubiquitous in the Corporate Media:
Headline; Australia can teach the UK a lesson in Chinese wrath
Sub-headline: London may have to learn the hard way that it cannot have its cake and eat it with Beijing
The author is a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute
An internet search on the Lowy Institute yields this revelatory essay of October 2013 essay by Antony Loewenstein:
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The Lowy Institute sees itself as Australia’s leading foreign affairs thinktank. Its fellows and staff routinely appear in the media pontificating about global affairs, including a push for greater defence spending that would allow countless contractors to earn billions of dollars. Its head Michael Fullilove, who’s also a non-resident senior fellow in foreign affairs at the Brookings Institution, writes longingly about former US national security advisor Henry Kissinger as a “realist”, despite there being questions over Kissinger’s record of foreign policy. Kissinger endorsed Fullilove’s recent book, a love letter to Franklin D Roosevelt. Fullilove has also been an outspoken critic of the release of the Wikileaks cables.
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I asked the Lowy Institute a range of questions about Campbell’s possible conflicts of interest. They sent me a statement that ignored these issues:Dr Campbell has long been one of the United States’ foremost policymakers on Asia. As assistant secretary of state for east Asian and Pacific affairs, he played a leading role on issues such at the US “rebalance” towards Asia, US-China relations, and efforts to promote democratic change in Burma. This fellowship will provide the international policy community in Australia with an opportunity to draw upon Dr Campbell’s experience and insights on the defining political, economic and strategic issues in Asia at a time of great change in the region. It will also be an opportunity to expose Dr Campbell to Australian perspectives on these issues.
Business and politics rarely mix without controversy; the media needs to be careful not to be seduced by smooth thinktank talkers.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/18/thinktanks-kurt-campbell-lowy-institute
The reader just might ask Mr. McGregor about the sanctions that America has placed on Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela and an embargo on Cuba. As America’s staunch ally, Britain follows the policy that America sets. In sum, Britain lives in the long shadow of the American Imperium. But on the question of China and America there is a vexing question: should America take any precipitous action against a country that hold so much of its debt?
Here is Mr. McGregor on Britain’s defense review, yet he elides the fact that Britain is now just America’s political lap dog. With the Tory buffoon Boris in charge
Britain’s defence review was remarkably blunt, calling China “a systemic challenge” to British values and prosperity and “the biggest state-based threat” to the country’s economic security. But the UK may be about to find out what Australia already knows, that it is no easy thing to change China policy, and, given Beijing’s sensitivities, there is a steep price to be paid in doing so.
Mr. McGregor follows with a long potted history of how China conducted itself ,within the parameters of Trade. Yet the closing two paragraphs is demonstrative of the Lowy Institute’s hardline on the not just emerging World Power , but a Power that has supplanted a Hegemon, in an advanced state of political collapse. Given this World Historical frame Boris and Britain look to be what?
The next, harder step is economic co-operation among democracies such as the US, the UK and Australia to help nations singled out by Beijing for punishment. Kurt Campbell, who heads Indo-Pacific policy in the US National Security Council, said this month that Washington had told Beijing there would no improvement in ties while an ally is under “economic coercion”.
Beijing rails at such co-ordination. A party paper lashed out at the Five Eyes intelligence partnership, calling it an “axis of white supremacy”. But China’s behaviour is pushing friends and allies together, as the US made clear in a diplomatic confrontation in Alaska on Friday. Australia values their support. So too, soon, might the UK.
Political Cynic