Our media reveals date for Taiwan war
Finally, the wait is almost over, ABC News (21/03/25) confidently tells us the Chinese invasion of Taiwan is set for 2027. It’s far less about China’s attempts at reunification and more a slap in the face for Australia as our national broadcaster informs us the firing will commence at least a decade before the first of our AUKUS submarines arrives.
Our national broadcaster relies on media announcements from the Taiwanese military in the run-up to its annual war games in July. Yes, there may be legitimate grievances on the part of Taiwan’s rulers but let’s not forget it is not a tiny little victim island. According to website Global Firepower, Taiwan is ranked 22nd among global military powers; it has almost three times as many aircraft as the RAAF, three times as many warships as the RAN, and 110,000 more active military personnel than Australia.
Meanwhile, Sky News after dark voice of reason, Andrew Bolt tells viewers “Australia is a sitting duck for war” during an interview with, former Labor federal cabinet minister, former Australian Strategic Policy Institute board member and now lobbyist, Stephen Conroy. The comments came in the wake of revelations that the Chinese navy has built a number of barges capable of facilitating the mobilization of troops, tanks and other military hardware on beachfronts.
The Australian (26/03/25) tells us that China now poses the biggest military threat to the United States. The story, sourced from a recently published US intelligence report, was republished from agencies (AFP) and told the same tired story of America good, China bad. There’s no proper analysis and no context, readers are simply corralled towards the conclusion that China is a bloodthirsty expansionist nation determined to tear down the West.
Does the mainstream media, and its cadre of China bashers, seriously consider China, with its solitary overseas military base, is a threat on anywhere near the scale of the US with its 800 bases?
The Hartcher Syndrome
It’s my opinion that Peter Hartcher comes across as one of the most erudite and polished China sceptics in the Australian media. However, the gravitas of his delivery belies the flimsy foundations of his arguments.
Writing in Nine Newspapers (25/03/25) he castigates Donald Trump in the best way he can, by comparing Trump to Xi Jinping. He writes, “China remains a repressive dictatorship. And America is becoming more like China. At a remarkable rate.” It’s classic Hartcher alarmism.
China is a one-party state, led by authoritarian rulers – more so in the Xi era. However, it is not an entirely repressive state. On the one hand, China bashers are setting off alarm bells over China’s giant leaps in technology and critical areas such as AI; on the other, they claim it is a repressive state. Repression does not give birth to innovation; China promotes innovation at many levels of business and society.
Hartcher goes on to list the groups persecuted by the Chinese Government, including “spiritual group” Falun Dafa. Anyone claiming to be a learned observer of China, who drags up Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, is clutching at straws. Former adherents characterise it as being a cult and it is currently facing a lawsuit in New York state for human trafficking and the use of child labor.
One of the main Falun Gong beliefs is that aliens inhabit Earth. In a 1999 interview, the group’s founder, Li Hongzhi told Time magazine, “The aliens come from other planets. The aliens have introduced modern machinery like computers and airplanes… Everyone thinks that scientists invent on their own when in fact their inspiration is manipulated by the aliens. The ultimate purpose is to replace humans. If cloning human beings succeeds, the aliens can officially replace humans.”
If Hartcher was serious about his criticism of the Trump presidency his story would have far greater legitimacy if he’d held up a mirror to US politics and society. Instead, he conflates everything bad about America with China.
Pushing the China aggression barrow
The Lowy Institute was notionally a voice of reason in the think-tank landscape; on China it’s revealing itself to be “ASPI lite”. It’s not gone as far down the anti-China road as ASPI (Australian Strategic Policy Institute), but its bias is clear.
Under the headline (25/03/25) “Awful but lawful: China’s Australia flotilla”, the Lowy Interpreter advanced the idea that “China wasn’t making a legal point. This was a show of force.”
The author, Thomas Shugart, is a former US Navy officer, who now works for Washington strategic policy think-tank, the Centre for a New American Security. He tells readers this is the thin end of the wedge and to expect more aggression from China’s naval forces, writing, “what China conducted was not a freedom of navigation operation. When the US Navy conducts a FONOP, it does so for a specific reason: to challenge excessive maritime claims made by other nations that are inconsistent with the international law of the sea.”
Basically, the Lowy Interpreter article argues that the US Navy can conduct operations anywhere in the world (particularly on China’s doorstep) based on its determination of what’s good for other nations. It is plainly obvious that the three Chinese naval vessels circumnavigating Australia was tit-for-tat for our numerous forays into the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. If the Lowy Institute wants to be taken seriously, it needs to engage far less biased contributors.
Kudos to Seven News
A fortnight ago, Seven’s Canberra Bureau chief, Mark Riley, sat down for an interview with Chinese Ambassador Xiao Qian whose answers on the Chinese warships formed the basis of a news story. The news package put rest to claims that the Chinese ships were firing off missiles into the path of aircraft, with Seven including the comment from the ambassador that it was close-range artillery fire from the ships’ decks aimed at floating targets deployed from those ships.
The following day, Seven published the unedited interview on its YouTube channel. Riley did an excellent job; he was respectful and canvassed a full range of issues from trade to Trump tariffs, Australia-China economic co-operation, Chinese warships navigating in the Tasman Sea making a point of Australian ships navigating in the South China Sea, Chinese foreign interference and potential for authorities from both countries to work together to combat transnational crime.
Given the tense relations caused by much of the media in Australia, it was the right thing to do for Seven to post the interview in full. Kudos to both Riley and news bosses at Seven.
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Marcus Reubenstein is an independent journalist with more than twenty-five years of media experience, having previously been a staffer with a federal Liberal Party senator from 1992 to 1994. He spent five years at Seven News in Sydney and seven years at SBS World News where he was a senior correspondent. As a print journalist he has contributed to most of Australia’s major news outlets. Internationally he has worked on assignments for CNN, Eurosport and the Olympic Games Broadcasting Service. He is the founder and editor of Asian business new website, APAC Business Review.
This is a republication from PEARLS & IRRITATIONS website at: https://johnmenadue.com/chinas-war-is-almost-here-anti-china-media-watch/
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
