Bazz,

If they don't obey China and lower the price to what China wants to pay then I guess China will just have to invade Australia in order to protect the supply of its natural resources.

Japan justified its invasion of SE Asia on that grounds so why shouldn't China do the same.

"Run for the hills folks! The Chiners are comin'"

When I was learning English, I heard that "I told you so" was a taboo phrase. So I won't say it but "Haven't you heard so?"
The Sino-Japanese relations have a much longer history. You might not believe it but "They (the Japanese) avoid criticism of China and accept meekly Chinese criticism of Japan, no matter how harsh or unfair...the Chinese have never reciprocated the warm feelings of the Japanese, viewing them with distrust and more than a little contempt. The Japanese nostalgia for China has been a classic case of unrequited love (Edwin O. Reischauer, The Japanese, 1978, p. 417.)"
I'll give a few out of million lies below.

The Senkaku Isles were Japanese for thousands of years. For a few instances of a Chinese thousand lies , Chinese envoys needed Japanese pilots on their way to and back home from Okinawa. Then ex-President Grant of the US went to Beijing on a sight-seeing trip. He was asked by Li Hongzhang to mediate between Japan and China, He came to Tokyo in July ,1879. He said that Japan could easily take Taiwan, that Taiwan, the Okinawan Islands and the Japanese Archipelago would encircle China and suggested that Japan cede some of the Okinawan Islands, After much deliberation Tokyo leaders agreed that Japan cede two island group, Yaejima including the now so-called Senkaku and Miyako. The Chinese were pleased and the two governments consulted about the treaty. Both agreed to a draft. The treaty waited for being signed. Then Cheb Baochen opposeed, saying that Japan was seriously concerned about the advancement of Russian imperialism and that China should wait because Japan would back down in time.
An international conference for peace with Japan was in the air. The Chinese expected to be invited. They thought what stance to take about the islands at the conference of "the Islands belonged to Japan or Taiwan" and met to discuss it in May, 1950, barely eight months after the establishment of their government. A ten-page document was prepared for it, throughout which pages the Japanese words Senkaku were used.
To be continued.

ECQFE announced in 1969 that billions of barrels of oil lay under the seabed of the Senkaku. In 1970 the US returned Okinawa, including the Senkaku, to Japan. Taiwan and China made no protest. In 1971 they started to say that the Senkaku Islands belonged to Taiwan or China.
Zhou Enlai said in July, 1972 to the chairman of a Japanese political party that Chinese historians got interested at the ECAFE's report, etc.

You might well think that postwar China was filled with enmity against the Japanese. No, the 1950s and 1960s were filled with vitriolic anti-American animosity; as strong anti-Russian hatred filled China in the 1960s and 1970s. Throughout these decades no anti-Japanese feelings were found in China. On the contrary, the CCP wanted contact , particularly economic contact, with Japan. Japan and China signed a peace treaty in 1978, which started floods of grants, low-interest loans and transfers of technology from Japan to China. The Chinese economy that had been utterly ruined began to rise in a sharp, almost vertical curve. China was internationally isolated after the Tiananmen Protest. To make a big hole in the encirclement they wanted a visit of the Japanese emperor, Hirohito's son. Miyazawa, a liberal prime minister, sent the emperor and empress in 1992. In 1992 the CCP started the irrational anti-Japanese campaign or two reasons that they wanted to divert the people's wide spread frustration with its governance. Another reason was that it could cover up its anti -status quo rise, clothing it in a peaceful rise attire.

Onya Bronwyn

Some good points by you.

Its no coincidence that almost all who criticised you have been, up until this week, rabid Trump supporters.

Just started reading a book, The Coming Collapse of China by Gordon G Chang.
Reading the foreword he indicates that China is keeping out of
internal trouble by just pushing money into the economy.
He says that the rules that govern the rest of the worlds economy will
eventually exert their fundamental rules on China.
Chang says this collapse is only a few years away.

As I read it I might report on some of the points.

Bazz: We could start by banning export to China.
China had been an autarkical society, in a nutshell. But today it is heavily and inexorably dependent on foreign trade. We should take a discriminatory trade policy toward China. There is much wisdom and circumspection in the French woman who said, "I'll buy French pork, not Chinese pork, though I have to pay extra." Why should we engage in free trade with China when it wishes to impose its authoritarian Chinese values on the world?

Chris Lewis: I expect that the US and UK will among the leading players that can uphold western leadership and what it offers to the world.
I agree. But I don't think that the Western values will always attract many non-Western parts of the world. The so-called free world needs to walk delicately. F. Fukuyama's The End of History meant that history would end in victory of liberalism. It will not. The world is culturally deeply divided, and the cultural, political and religious divide will go on. I don't mean to say by this that the West is on the losing side. The West has more than enough to preserve its values and defend itself from intrusion of aliens and enough to help those who are suffering in many non-free parts of the world.

Browny: China is not interested in invading Australia. Its long history clearly demonstrates it to be a peaceful nation.
diver dan: China have recently achieved, without firing a shot, what the Japanese failed to do in 1943....
True, China is not interested in invading Australia. If it were, it would not attempt it because of the US's military might. But it is not and will not be respectful of Australian values and those of the free world. It will disregard them any time if it finds fit or necessary.
To be continued.