Australia and China: Getting out of the hole

The Scottish Independent Labour Party leader in the 1930s, Jimmy Maxton, summed up the challenge of political leadership as well as anybody ever has: “If you can’t ride two bloody horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the bloody circus”. 

In getting out of the hole into which we have dug ourselves with China, the beginning of wisdom for Australia’s political leaders is to recognise that – as their Vietnamese counterparts are reportedly fond of saying – we have to both “get along with China, but stand up to it”.  Easier said than done, but it can be.

Our huge economic dependency on China gives us no choice but to get along: how long will it take us to find alternative markets for nearly 40 percent of our…