Australia against China: a face-off which must be avoided

It may be a statement of the bleeding obvious, but a face-off with the People’s Republic of China would not be a good idea.

From any perspective – military, economic, political, simple weight of numbers – Australia cannot hope to compete on a level playing field with our dominant neighbour.

And to pretend that somehow we should be seen as equal partners, as Scott Morrison is apparently urging, is a dangerous delusion. At best, we can never be more than a client trader – keen to deal with whatever China is willing to buy from us and what we are desperate to buy from it.

So when our deputy prime minister Michael McCormack trots out the old line about “China needs us as much as we need them” it is not only silly but…