Bannon is no longer in the administration or the campaign team. And he's long held the view that America's confrontation with China is "the geopolitical contest of our time." Could he be out of touch, guilty of wishful thinking? Australia's ambassador to the court of Trump, Joe Hockey, doesn't seem to think so. He told a two-day gathering of Australian ambassadors from around the world in Canberra this week pretty much the same thing. Hockey told the group that the clash was just getting started and was about to get much more serious, according to people present at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Global Heads of Mission meeting. Incidentally, that meeting was wide-ranging but a participant told me it was essentially about one thing – "China, China, China". It's a sign of the times. Illustration: Jim Pavlidis Credit: Indeed, if you look a little further, beyond the most visible centre ring of gladiatorial combat where the tariffs are being wielded, there is plenty of evidence the US is girding for a long, broad, deep struggle with China.

If anything, Bannon understates the scale of the contest. It's not limited to an economic clash. US Defence Secretary Mark Esper describes dealing with China as the "number one priority". Recall that the US National Defence Strategy and also the US National Security Strategy have named China as America's strategic rival. The Financial Times reports that the Pentagon is compiling a list of all Chinese companies with links to the Chinese military in an effort to root them out to "stop Beijing from obtaining sensitive technologies and protect US defence supply chains". Loading This, in other words, is much more than a Trumpish tweet-storm. The Washington Post's John Pomfret says "the tectonic plates that have undergirded US-China relations for decades are shifting now, as they did in the middle of the 19th century". Scott Morrison is about to walk into the middle of all this. He is to visit Washington next week for a state visit. And while he will find the gladiators apparently pausing to wipe their brows, he should expect the Americans to want to know one thing above all else: Whose side is Australia on?

The Australian professor of strategic studies Hugh White has some advice for Morrison. When the question comes up, Morrison should not give an unqualified commitment to America. White, former head of strategy at Australia's Defence Department, says the Australian Prime Minister "should make clear to his hosts that we will support America only if it has a viable model for a new order in Asia with a strong US role" that also "accommodates, at least to some extent, China's power and ambition". It's a nice idea. But this is akin to Morrison telling Trump that Australia will only continue living in America's house if it builds us a new neighbourhood. To our specifications. The chances, as White concedes, are low. In truth, Australia has already chosen. Australia has chosen America. And it was not Washington that forced the choice. It was China. Malcolm Turnbull didn't draft a new law against foreign interference because the US asked him to. He did it because China has been pushing Australia harder and harder, mostly covertly, to establish Beijing's sway here.

It's the same reason that the outgoing head of ASIO, Duncan Lewis, last month described malign foreign interference in Australia as an "existential threat to the state". Lewis, a retired general and former national security adviser, didn't name any particular country. But let me give you the tip – he's not referring to Tuvalu. Or even Russia or North Korea. There is only one foreign power successfully waging intensifying cyber attacks, penetrating state and federal politics, establishing influence cells on university campuses. It is, of course, China. Loading ASIO has said repeatedly that it is being "overwhelmed" by the intensity of foreign espionage and foreign interference activity. That is a big word – it's an admission that it is failing in its task. It's also a plea for more resources from the Morrison government. Australia would prefer a quiet life, selling exports to China and taking Chinese investment, and not having to confront its greatest source of foreign income. Australian governments are intensely uncomfortable in telling China to respect the sovereign rights of its neighbours in the South China Sea. Or operating naval freedom-of-navigation operations in a challenge to China's ambitions.

The Turnbull government certainly didn't want to confront China's intrusions, or ban Huawei from the 5G mobile network. The Morrison government doesn't really enjoy having to wage a South Pacific vigil against China's efforts to establish dominance in Australia's strategic hinterland. Or to keep asking Beijing to release the writer and Australian citizen Yang Hengjun. In trying to fend off Chinese covert influence operations at home and in the region, Australia, to use Duncan Lewis's word, is overwhelmed. Who can it turn to for help? China is big, ambitious, cashed-up and relentless. It has world-class military and technology assets. Loading Who has the capacity and the will to help Australia fend off such a country? The question answers itself. And that is why Australia has chosen America. Not because Australia loves Trump but because he happens to lead the only power available to answer Australia's need. But of course Australia has to do most of the work itself. And that includes countering Beijing's covert influence operations in Australia's politics. One of its known channels is the United Front Work Department, one of the original departments of the Chinese Communist Party.

We have to take it seriously – no less a figure than Chinese President Xi Jinping has described it as one of China's three "magic weapons", together with the People's Liberation Army and the Communist Party's own party-building activities.

As the former chief secretary of Hong Kong, Anson Chan, who served London and Beijing, told me three years ago: "No one should be under any illusions about the objective of the Communist Party leadership – it's long-term, systematic infiltration of social organisations, media and government. By the time China's infiltration of Australia is readily apparent, it will be too late." In NSW, the Independent Commission Against Corruption is examining one small example of this – the billionaire Huang Xiangmo's illegal $100,000 cash donation to NSW Labor. Huang has since been banned from Australia. ASIO ruled him to be a covert agent of foreign influence. Loading But Australia has no federal ICAC, of course, so at the federal level the media and the politicians, with some invisible help from the "overwhelmed" intelligence agencies, have to figure it out for themselves. Labor senator Sam Dastyari, another recipient of Huang's largesse, was drummed out of Parliament in disgrace. And this week suspicion fell on a new Liberal MP, Gladys Liu. Fair enough. She didn't seem to know which Chinese friendship groups she had been involved with, contradicting herself from one day to the next.

And there are unanswered questions about the big flows of money she marshalled for the Liberal Party – more than $1 million by her own account. Labor demanded she explain herself to the Parliament to clear things up. Morrison rushed to defend his MP, which is perfectly natural. But he over-reached by pushing the "race" button. Labor, according to Morrison, was "smearing" all of Australia's 1.2 million Chinese Australians with its "grubby undertone". He was accusing Labor of racism. Was Labor guilty? "Questioning by Labor and the crossbench members of Parliament on this is legitimate and reasonable," Australia's former Race Discrimination Commissioner, Tim Soutphommasane, tells me. Loading ASIO didn't raise a red flag about Liu with either Malcolm Turnbull or Scott Morrison, I'm reliably informed, a fact that the government can't make public. That doesn't mean she's fit and proper to sit in Parliament. ASIO doesn't screen for poor judgment or stupidity, for instance, something that most members of the House and Senate must be profoundly grateful for. Morrison himself was the first and only one to suggest there was any race element to the pursuit of Liu. And in doing so, he has done Beijing's work for it. To claim that any scrutiny of an ethnically Chinese person is racist is exactly the tactic of the Global Times and the other mouthpieces of the Chinese Communist Party.