China had planned out sophisticated colonisation of Australia, which was going perfectly as per its plans till recently. However, in the past one year particularly, China-Australia relations have come under tremendous strain. The deep freeze in relations has not been caused simply due to China’s frustration, as it increasingly finds it difficult to execute its devious plans of running over Australia completely and making it a colony of the CCP. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has played a pivotal role in ensuring the same, and his only determination is to keep the Chinese at bay, which is protecting Australia from further Chinese exposure.
China has entered almost every sector of Australia. Real estate, agriculture, farmland, education, water, infrastructure, power; you name it, and China is involved in that particular sector down under. The times were rosy for the intrusive CCP all this while until Scott Morrison decided to hammer the life out of such neo-colonial plans. China has been in Australia for 200 years now if one were to consider the first Chinese settlers in the Island-continent. Of course, there was no political front called the Chinese Communist Party back then. However, the CCP for the past many years has indeed been working towards the takeover of Australia.
China owns strategic airports (Merredin airport) and also seaports (Darwin port) in Australia. Infrastructurally, China has heavily invested down under, and its humongous appetite for Australian land, too, knows no bounds. China is the second-largest foreign owner of land in Australia with Chinese companies in control of 2.3 per cent of the nation’s soil. Owning a total of 9.1 million hectares of Australian land, between 2017 and 2018, Chinese companies added 50,000 hectares to their Australian property portfolio. When it comes to the corporate sector of Australia, China has poured more than $150 billion down under by investing in or acquiring Aussie companies.
China is the largest foreign stakeholder of Australian water. Chinese investors own 732 gigalitres or 1.89 per cent of the water in the market. Many believe that the Chinese are buying excessive water in Australia as part of a secret ‘state strategy’. China has also heavily involved itself in the proliferation of CCP soft power via schools and Confucius institutes. Also, in 2016 alone, Chinese investment in Australia’s overall agricultural sector had skyrocketed threefold, from $300 million to $1 billion. Two years prior to such an investment boom, Dakang, a private Chinese agricultural company, offered to buy Australia’s largest cattle ranch (Kidman ranch) which makes up 2 per cent of Australia’s farmland.
More recently, as reported by TFI, China has already colonised Australia’s Keswick Island. Now, Keswick Island has almost become a no-go zone for ordinary Australians, and tourism-related prices have been made to skyrocket in order to prevent all non-Chinese people from visiting it, and if it may be said, settling there.
Scott Morrison, however, has made life hell for China. Morrison’s anti-China philosophy has followed the trajectory of the Chinese pandemic and has only grown from strength to strength. His policies for China have remained stern even in the face of the paper dragon trying to flex its muscles by launching an economic offensive against Australia. Scott Morrison’s government had already announced earlier this year that it will bring a Foreign Relations Bill, which would give Australia’s Federal government the power to review, prevent or terminate all agreements signed by the State and Territory governments, Local Councils and even Public Universities with foreign governments (China).
Read more: Scott Morrison – The man who became China’s arch nemesis and saved Australia
Under Morrison, Australia’s relations with countries like the US, Japan and India have strengthened, to the point that the four countries now collectively face China with a military alliance of sorts, called Quad. In fact, Australia even got invited by India to participate in the annual Malabar naval exercise this year, in a clear signal to China to behave itself.
Nationally, Scott Morrison has tightened the grip over pro-Beijing voices and political forces, leading to a soft power projection deficit for the CCP. Take, for example, the state of Victoria, which, led by Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews has been handed over to China on a silver platter. However, Morrison’s government called Andrews for an inquiry by the Federal Committee, to explain why he shook hands with his Chinese counterparts in such haste when the rest of the country is running away from the clutches of Beijing. Similarly, China’s other friends too are being dealt with an iron fist by the Morrison administration.
Australia has already changed its foreign investment rules which give greater approval powers to the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) to curtail opportunistic takeovers of struggling businesses amid increasing national security risk, another move which had devastating consequences for Chinese interests down under. Additionally, the Morrison government had announced that foreign journalists working in Australia will come under the scrutiny of federal agencies if they present a “slanted view” of the country.
Scott Morrison, undoubtedly, has turned the tables on China and ensured that their seamless endeavour to colonise Australia is spectacularly foiled. The best part really is that the Australian Prime Minister has just begun hammering China, and has four more years to completely obliterate Chinese interests in his country.