Businesses Holding Onto False Hope Regarding China

People walk along Nanjing Pedestrian Road, a main shopping area, in Shanghai on May 5, 2021. Aly Song/Reuters

Commentary

How naïve. It was reported last week that the Business Council of Australia (BCA) and the Australian Industry Group (Ai Group) were open to China joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

The CPTTP is a trade agreement established in 2018 between 11 Pacific nations including Australia.

China is the next application to be considered after Britain ­became the first new member to join the trading bloc, lifting its membership to 12.

A unanimous Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee report has already recommended that Australia not support China’s accession until it ended coercive trade measures. It also supported the inclusion of Taiwan in the agreement.

Yet Ai Group CEO Innes Willox said expanding the CPTPP to include Australia’s largest trading partner “would be welcome,” but Beijing would need to demonstrate compliance with CPTPP rules, particularly on digital and data transparency.

“As things stand, this is potentially the biggest impediment to China’s possible accession,” Willox said.

“Should China change its domestic regulatory environment for digital and data, it could improve transparency and make it a more attractive market for our technology companies, as well as for ­industry more broadly.”

Jennifer Westacott, CEO of the BCA (which largely represents service providers) said Beijing needed to demonstrate it was ready to ­embrace the global order to be ­admitted to the CPTPP.

“China will need to convince member states that it can meet the agreement’s standards,” she said.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is currently imposing bans on Australian trade, despite a Free Trade Agreement and other international obligations.

Yet business leaders still believe that somehow the CCP will change its ways.

They seem to be cognitively stuck in the era of Deng Xiaoping’s opening up, oblivious to the ideological path that Xi Jinping has pursued relentlessly since becoming general secretary of the CCP.

Xi’s Ideology

In January 2013, Xi clearly rejected the embrace of capitalism, proclaiming that the “victory” of socialism, along with the decline of capitalism, would take time. He added that while the process was underway, the CCP needed to “diligently prepare” for a long period of cooperation and conflict between the two systems.

Xi’s rejection of capitalism was also reflected in the April 2013 Communique on the Current State of Ideological Sphere which outlined seven ideas to be rejected, including “promoting neoliberalism [and] attempting to change China’s Basic Economic System.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping applauds during the opening of the 3rd Session of the 12th National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on March 5, 2015. Lintao Zhang/Getty Images

It is this ideological focus that determines Xi’s attitude to international affairs including both security and economic relations. He is committed to a conception of global relations in which the CCP regularly breaches international agreements and norms not to its liking.

As he said in 2014, ultimately the CCP envisages “constructing international playgrounds” and “creating the rules” for the games played in them.

He has stated that there is a global contest between democracy and authoritarianism that the latter will win.

When will business leaders finally believe what Xi and the CCP leadership repeatedly state?

The CCP’s Attitude

While business leaders were contemplating China’s accession to the CPTTP, Beijing was asking the Australian government to instill more confidence into economic cooperation instead of creating obstacles to it.

Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen said during a meeting with Tim Yeend, associate secretary of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade that the CCP was concerned about Australia’s “accelerated scrutiny” of the investment and operation of Chinese businesses in Australia.

He added that the CCP hoped Australia would handle cases “objectively and impartially,” according to the CCP mouthpiece, the Global Times.

The latest Chinese demands follow the decision by the Australian government to ban the use of TikTok on the phones of employees following adverse security assessments. The bans have been implemented in other nations.

A sign up page for the application TikTok is shown on a cell phone in front of a screen with logos for the company in Sydney on April 4, 2023. Rick Rycroft/AP Photo

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said that they had made solemn demarches to the Australian side in response to its ban on TikTok.

“China always believes that digital security should not be used as a tool to suppress foreign companies in an over-stretch of the concept of national security and abuse of state power. We urge Australia to earnestly observe the rules of the market economy and the principle of fair competition, and provide a fair, transparent, and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies,” Mao said.

This statement neatly captures the CCP attitude. Other nations must strictly adhere to international agreements and rules, while the CCP blatantly breaches them.

The BCA and Ai Group are naïve if they believe that the CCP will somehow change its behaviour.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.