BRISBANE, Australia—The recent high-profile visit by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Premier Li Qiang to Australia aims to divide and conquer the major political parties, says a retired major general.
“The reason that Premier Li is here right now, is they’ve chosen to make a distinction from the Morrison government to the Labor [government],” said Major General Adam Findlay, now a professor at Griffith University.
“The lifting of sanctions and the red wine going to China, and all that lobster going to China. That’s [happening] because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has said, ‘We’re going to let [Prime Minister] Albanese have his moment in the sun,’” Mr. Findlay told a luncheon hosted by the Australian Institute of Progress.
The major general has served in the Australian Defence Force for nearly 40 years and served tours in East Timor, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He also holds a PhD in Military History and is a fellow at the Harvard Business School.
Mr. Findlay warned that Beijing’s visit would come with conditions.
“Don’t bring up things like Taiwan, do not talk about the Uyghurs, do not talk about Australian journalists being excluded from the press conference yesterday,” he said on June 18.
Mr. Findlay was referring to an incident a day earlier where Premier Li’s entourage tried to block former political prisoner Cheng Lei from being caught on camera in the same room as the CCP leader.
“So the worry for Australia is we will slowly become less assertive as a world-leading democracy [towards] kowtowing to China to keep our trade going,” he added.
Since the accession of the Labor government in 2022, relations between Canberra and Beijing have entered a “thawing” period.
Trade sanctions have been removed from Australian exports, high-level dialogue has resumed between leaders, and prisoner and journalist Ms. Cheng was released from arbitrary detention.
The relationship had been in a deep freeze mainly from 2020 after the Morrison government called for a global investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
Premier Li’s current visit aimed to stimulate the trade relationship between Australia and China again. Currently, China accounts for 27 percent of Australia’s two-way trade, and is by far its largest trading partner.
The diplomatic tour has been handled carefully by the political leadership by both Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.
“Trade remains the cornerstone of our relationship and my government’s steady engagement has resulted in the removal of almost all trade impediments on Australian exports to China, but there is still more work to do.”
“He also changed the fate of the Chinese people with hundreds-of-millions of citizens lifted out of poverty,” he said.
“In the decades that followed—as nations witnessed and welcomed China’s economic emergence—the Australian and Chinese people created many new pipelines of business, trade, and migration.”
Yet Premier Li’s visit has also been marked by numerous protests across every city he has visited.
Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, Uyghurs, and pro-Hong Kong democracy activists have taken to the streets to raise concerns about human rights abuses under the CCP—many lasting decades.
