Author: Hugh White, ANU

Donald Trump is not the cause of the United States’ problems with China, but he makes them worse. His failings as President make it a lot less likely that over the next few years the United States will reach some kind of stable accommodation with the plain reality of Beijing’s power and ambition. Instead, the United States will likely stumble thoughtlessly into a war with China or ignominiously retreat from the region — or both.

This has big implications for how Australia and others in Asia think about future relations [1] with China. Even if the United States does manage to reach the kind of arrangement necessary for it to stay constructively engaged as a major power in Asia, China will loom much larger — exercising more power and asserting more influence than any Asian power has ever done before.

It is increasingly likely that US influence will dwindle and China will take its place as the region’s primary power — at least in East Asia. So how should Australia respond to China’s growing capacity to interfere in its affairs and curtail its sovereign independence?

Part of the answer is to get closer to China. Some influential voices have argued that Australia needs to ‘get real’ about China’s growing power — if Australia can deepen and strengthen its relationship with China, it will be able to influence China’s policies on Australia and limit their impact on its independence and interests. These voices accept — reluctantly — that this might mean stepping back somewhat from its relationship with the United States.

Australia must get more engaged with China as Chinese power and influence grow. That means Australia must learn a lot more about how decisions are made in China, and how to shape them to its advantage. Canberra’s priority ought to be shaping policies to maximise its leverage in Beijing.

But to be coldly realistic, history tells us plainly how hard it has been for Australia to do more than simply nudge the policies of its allies. Moreover, Australia will never have the kind access in Beijing that it has enjoyed with its allies.

No matter how well it does, Australia’s capacity to shield itself from Beijing’s power by better diplomacy is going to be very limited. China will be able to shape Australia’s actions and decisions with carrots and sticks to a degree that no country has ever been able to do before, except the United States and Britain. And China will likely be less generous with the carrots and more ruthless with the sticks.

Indeed, China can already shape Australia’s policies. It is sometimes argued that Beijing cannot pressure Australia by threatening its export markets because it depends on Australia’s exports to fuel its own economy. That is true for trade now, but that is not China’s best means of exerting economic pressure. Australia’s real vulnerability is its expectation that future trade with China is the key to its economic prospects.

China can play on that very easily. Consider the consequences for Canberra of a Chinese threat to direct future investments and trade opportunities — in minerals, energy, education, tourism or agriculture — away from Australia. That would cost China nothing, but send the Australian share market crashing.

Nor should Australia underestimate the political costs that Beijing can already impose on an Australian government. A Chinese threat to suspend high-level meetings would freeze the blood of any Australian prime minister and induce all kinds of accommodations.

It was, after all, just this kind of pressure that nudged former Australian prime minister John Howard to reach his understanding with Beijing, and that was in 1996 when China’s wealth and power had hardly begun to take off. Though Australia is mercifully far from China, it should not entirely dismiss the weight of China’s military power as a factor in its future influence on Australia. Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam can all attest to China’s willingness to use carefully calibrated military threats to amplify its influence. It would be delusional to assume that this is necessarily counterproductive for China.

Moreover, Japan and the Philippines are US allies. Australia needs to recognise that its alliance won’t necessarily shield it completely — even if the United States preserves a strong role in Asia. As China’s power grows, it becomes both a more important partner and a more dangerous adversary for the United States, so the threshold for US intervention to deflect Chinese military pressure on its allies must go up.

All of this is very disconcerting. Australia takes great pride in its sovereign independence of policy and action. This feeling is particularly strong in Australia because it has no experience of making its way in the world without the support and protection of great and powerful friends. It feels that something must be going very badly wrong if it finds itself subject to pressure by others.

But this is the way the world always works, because that is what powerful states do. Might does not equal right, but it does determine how much you have to pay to maintain your view of what is right in the face of superior power. Weaker countries must get used to calculating such things. Australia’s task is to recognise this reality, and recognise that it is going to be its reality over the coming decades. Only then can Australia work out how best to deal with it.

Hugh White is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University.

This piece is an extract from this year’s China in the World Lecture at the Australian National University, delivered on 11 April and titled China’s Power and the Future of Australia.