http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9011631/The-shocking-level-Chinese-ownership-Australia-cattle-stations-ports-water.html

Above is a less than comprehensive list of Chinese incursions through legitimate loop holes in Australian FI rules.

Chinese stranglehold on Australia is the real elephant in the room here and not PNG or a s*h tropical island in the South Pacific.

Dan

China gifted $ 35?

Our Pacific neighbours have no confidence in Australia; that’s why some of them are flirting with China. We can't protect ourselves, let alone the Pacific islands.

Inadequate forces; a week's worth of fuel in reserve. The Coalition has done nothing but talk; the incoming Labor government won't even talk about defence. Whatever China decides to do is well beyond the ability of Australia to counteract.

Yup! A nuclear powered and nuclear armed China is doing just that! And the target they are eyeing off, is resource rich Australia! All while the fools on the hill America will spill American blood to defend us! While our leaders argue and squabble about policy direction and make announcements about the need to make announcements.

If they should try China has nuclear weapons parked in space above them that could all but annihilate them!

By the time their early warning system kicked in, the mushroom clouds would already be spouting all over the joint! And America knows it!

China will move in and take whatever she wants while our leaders roar and tremble their impotent outrage like and old male monkey being repeatedly raped by a younger and quicker male monkey!

This has been coming for years as our quisling leaders confiscated our weapons! Because just one uncontrolled nutter used one to shoot a few civilians, desperately sad as that was!

Given China will attack soon! Our only defense will be to replicate that used by Vietnam. Blend in and hit and run when and where they're least able to defend. With independent cells that that are small and blend in with the populace. And escape via booby trapped trails etc.

Given I know how to handload very special deadly ammo that'll make a fifty cal into a virtual field piece and make effective explosives from "made in china" materials including nitro, that one can buy from the super market. I might, should I live, be part of one?
Alan B.

Let's have a bit of perspective here, boys!

China has one military base in Africa and has shown little intention of amassing more. The US in contrast has around 800 military bases, several in Australia and plans for more to come. Throughout its long history China has rarely invaded another country and respecting the sovereignty of other nations is still very much central to its foreign policy. The US in its relatively short life has rarely had a period at all when it wasn't at war, most of these conflicts brought on if not started by itself. It has a long history of coups, assassinations and bombing, a history which China doesn't share.

Yes, China is becoming more militarily assertive in our region which is very sad, though not at all the alarming threat it's made out to be on these pages. The US has China surrounded with around 400 military bases and militarily patrols Chinese borders and seas in a way it absolutely would never tolerate China doing along US borders and in US waters. The US is spending billions every year on weaponry and defence personnel to threaten and militarily contain China.

AUKUS is just one of the latest manifestations of this warmongering policy. Australia's mindless pandering to the US on this and many other issues is quite rightly earning us China's disdain. It's Western aggression, including ours, which might eventually raise the levels of Chinese ire, but so far, despite all the fear-mongering on these pages, there are no real signs of any imminent threat. The Belt and Road initiative is a win-win for all involved. If we refuse to join it, then it has nothing to do with us. It's only natural that Pacific nations are now looking to China. Perhaps if the West had done more to aid their development long before now this would not be the case.

You need to calm down boys! Why not focus on the real threat to our way of life ... climate change.

Thanks Bronwyn, always good to get a reminder of how deranged the CCP apologists in our society can be. So it is the US which has a "long history of coups, assassinations and bombing, a history which China doesn't share".

Hard to know what you mean by the US having a long history of those things. A couple of presidents have been assassinated and there was a civil war, but nothing to compare to the civil war in China, which saw the Nationalists retreat to Taiwan (then Formosa), or the wholesale killing of people in the various Communist revolutions, still ongoing. Where is the US equivalent of Tianmen Square? Or the Cultural Revolution?

I could go on, but don't need to.

The biggest threat to the US is that lunatics like you have populated the universities and subverted the curriculums so that students have no idea what happened in the past, and then go out into the world to vote indoctrinated.

Quite so Bronwyn.

The USA is in decline in many areas and feels threatened by the rise of China as an economic power.
The term "Thucydides Trap" describes what is happening here.

A US general described those US bases surrounding China as "the perfect noose" which would sound somewhat aggressive and provocative if stated by another power. The last time another country tried to establish a military base near the USA was in Cuba (and was in response to the USA installing missile bases in Turkey) and imagine the outcry if China started performing naval maneuvers off the coast of California so it's obvious who the aggressor is in this case.

The media has been heavily involved in building anti-China sentiment and provocation and I suspect the next Federal election will be built around "who is tougher on China".

While the USA has had little internal conflict until now, they have a history of meddling in international affairs and overthrowing foreign democratic governments and installing despotic regimes when it suits their interests - Iraq, Iran, various South American interests for example.
Their legacy has been the death and displacement of millions of people. In fact the anniversary of the assassination of the Congo's Patrice Lumumba was just a few days ago and as well as Belgium and Britain, the CIA was heavily involved in his murder.

Well said, Graham. Only a 'lunatic' would think that the climate change scam was a bigger threat than Communist China.

Agree absolutely and entirely with Graham's comments on B!

This smacks of 1938 as Hitler took and took what he wanted. Until we were forced into a war!

All the reassurances back then made to buy more time for the madman to continue to build up his military machine and territorial gains.
Alan B.

Graham Young

For someone who runs and moderates an opinion column, your comments are very intemperate - maybe a wine too many last night?

<< Hard to know what you mean by the US having a long history of those things. A couple of presidents have been assassinated and there was a civil war, but nothing to compare to the civil war in China ... >>

I wasn't referring to civil history. I was referring to the broader geopolitical situation, which given the context of the paragraph in which the sentence was situated would have been clear to most readers. And besides, that is what this article is about ... the so-called threat of China to the rest of the world, not what China might have done within its own borders. And BTW, if I could be bothered to go so far off topic, which I won't, I could certainly compile a long list of atrocities committed by the US on its home soil.

As for the hard to know what I mean comment, let me clarify.

Coups – The US has endeavoured (and mostly succeeded) in overthrowing at least fifty foreign governments (most of them democratically-elected) from the end of WW2 up until the turn of the century. And it hasn’t stopped since.

Assassinations – There have been more than fifty assassination attempts, most of them successful, made by the US on world leaders from the end of WW2 up until 2011. And the pattern hasn’t changed over the last decade.

Bombing – The US and its allies have dropped an average of 46 bombs per day on at least thirty countries since 2001. It averaged one every twelve minutes in Trump's first year. And these were only the ones reported in the US Airpower Summaries which Trump ended in March 2020. The bombs are now dropped without public record.

China has no such history. It respects the sovereignty of other nations and expects others to reciprocate. If you're going to continue promulgating the fear-mongering that China is threatening to invade, you need to start putting forward some evidence.

Bronwyn.
What about Manchuria, Mongolia and Tibet.
David

DD: Above is a less than comprehensive list of Chinese incursions through legitimate loop holes in Australian FI rules.

Spot on.

Anywhere China goes is a Military Base. The Belt Road System is a device to get 3rd. World Countries indebted to China then take over.

The Chinese Government & the Military are the one entity. They are inseparable.

Many years ago I had a Sesawa (Seychelles) girlfriend. Her father escaped from the Island when it went Communist. The Seychelles Government imported Tanzanian Military to keep a watch on the Police. Then they employed Chinese Military to watch the Tanzanians. The Seychelles Government leased the Dock to the Chinese.

In Australia, Darwin is leased to the Chinese. I have it on good Authority that it is a Chinese listening Post for top Secret Base at Pine Gap. They know that. ;-)

Of course the Chinese want to get into the Pacific. Just like they claim All of the South China Sea they will start to claim No Fly Zones anywhere they set up Bases. That's what they do.

How is Darwin port a listening base for Pine Gap when Pine Gap itself is a listening base for global communications?
It's also a key component in the American early warning system of detecting missile launches and is thus a first-strike target in case of war. It also means our own capital cities would also be first strike targets to ensure alternative telemetry signalling is cut off from the US mainland.

It's interesting that people like Trump who publicly railed against the Chinese had no problem shafting his local steel and aluminium producers in favour of Chinese suppliers. Likewise his Trump brand line of executive clothing line (as well as Ivana's brand of shoes) are made in China.

Likewise it was our own country that happily outsourced our manufacturing, jobs (and emissions) to China and leased Darwin port as well as Newcastle port which is owned by The Infrastructure Fund and China Merchants Port Holdings Company.

China is trying to protect it's own vital shipping routes in the South China Sea. Maybe they remember how the USA used naval blockades against Japan in response to Japan's invasion of Manchuria and thereby provoked it into attacking Pearl Harbour?

Given events like the Nanjing massacre I would think China grateful for the US blockade of Japan. There are good and bad people the world over. Bad people are not confined to the United States.

Bronwyn.
What about Manchuria, Mongolia and Tibet.

Then, there's:

Pakistan, India, Arunachal Pradesh, Taiwan & various islands in the South China Sea.

Jayb

<< Anywhere China goes is a Military Base. The Belt Road System is a device to get 3rd. World Countries indebted to China then take over. >>

As stated previously, China has one military base situated outside its territory and that is in Djibouti in Africa. By comparison, the US has well over thirty military bases in Africa and many hundreds around the world. And while China builds infrastructure to help develop and empower Africa, the US has continued the British and European imperialist tradition of destabilising and exploiting the African continent through deploying sanctions, fomenting coups, militarising insurgencies and dropping bombs. The BRI has been welcomed by Africa in much the same measure the US AFRICOM has been resisted.

And yes, China has built several bases in the South China Sea area, close to its coastline and in an area it rightly or wrongly has always perceived historically to be its territory. If only the US had confined its massive network of military bases to its own coastline, the world would be a much safer place.

The Belt and Road initiative is not about loading up third world countries with debt. This is Western propaganda used to undermine and discredit China’s very successful development assistance. China has waived and restructured many of the loans to assist third world countries to manage them. The IMF rarely if ever made such concessions and has happily left third world countries mired in debt for decade after decade. Poor countries all around the world have welcomed the development assistance they’ve received from China. Yes, there have been some hiccups along the way, but in the end they've usually been sorted to the satisfaction of the parties involved. The indebtedness myth has been promulgated by the West in order to demonise China and jeopardise the success of the BRI, the likes of which the West has never managed to achieve.

Jayb

<< Bronwyn. What about Manchuria, Mongolia and Tibet. Then, there's: Pakistan, India, Arunachal Pradesh, Taiwan & various islands in the South China Sea. >>

Rightly or wrongly, a One China policy has always been important to China. As such, it has fought off incursions and invasions by Japan, India and Britain and now by the US over Taiwan. These are largely border and territorial disputes, many of them developing through an historical lack of clear boundaries. China has not invaded or bombed countries halfway across the world and with no connection to its own borders as has the US eg Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya ... all to control resources and all with ongoing disastrous consequences for the whole world.

Bronwyn

Do you live on the east or the west coast of La La Land?

Bronwyn: China has one military base situated outside its territory.

What you really meant to say was that China has only one recognized Base outside China. All the others are Clandestine. E.g. Darwin.

Not one body in the World recognises China's claim for the entire St. China Sea.

Only a blind fool with the IQ and attention span of a goldfish, would believe we are not threatened by China.

The continued bombing of terrorists that threaten us and America with mindless evil is justifiable. And an entirely different kettle of fish from the intentions of (Pure unadulterated evil) CCP, which has (insanity personified) ambitions to rule and enslave the world!

Just don't count the bombs, but the loss of life and freedom and in comparison!

For example, how many gulags and reeducation camps does America run and how much of other folks sovereign territory has she anexxed via armed force
Alan B.

Alan B.

<< Just don't count the bombs, but the loss of life and freedom and in comparison! For example, how many gulags and reeducation camps does America run and how much of other folks sovereign territory has she anexxed via armed force >>

Yes, counting the bombs is uncomfortable for someone like you, Alan, especially when we consider the numbers of innocent civilians whose lives they destroy or extinguish ... not to mention, the enemies they create each and every time. And as for loss of freedom, not sure how free anyone could feel with killer drones patrolling their skies, which is how millions in the Middle East and elsewhere live their lives day in day out.

The misinformation about so-called gulags and re-education camps in Xinjang comes from a single source, Adrian Zenz, a born-again rabid anti-communist with an obsessive agenda to demonise China. China has a terrorist problem in Xinjang, which it's quite correctly seeking to control. Yes, there has been some level of repression, but nothing to the extent that's been mindlessly repeated in the mainstream Western media. Certainly, there have been no invasions and bombing raids, which is how the US controls its perceived terrorism threats.

And as for the annexing claim, yes, China strongly believes Tibet, Xinjang and Taiwan to be part of China. It works tirelessly to achieve peaceful reunification and very rarely resorts to armed force. It does not invade and bomb sovereign nations situated miles away from its own borders as the US has done in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and elsewhere.

Xi Jinping at Davos this week has stated that ‘major economies should see the world as one community’, hardly the words of someone with 'ambitions to rule and enslave the world!' You really do need to calm down, Alan.

Bronwyn

Thanks for that. I am so relieved now that President Xi has uttered those words, for nobody with evil designs could ever be so banal. Shame on me for thinking otherwise.

I am curious about the University you attended, or are attending. Does it have a Confucius Institute on campus?

A quick question For you, Who would you like to rule the World if you only had a choice of two.

Vote:
1. China.
2. USA.