"It's a matter of who are we not seeing," Mattis told me regarding his visit to the capital.

For the State Department he's the perfect guy. As an insider he can publicly voice many of the government's broader concerns around China, while providing it with sufficient distance for deniability, as he no longer works in government.

This is a potent weapon for the US and one China simply can't match and on present form won't be able to for many years to come.

For Beijing this lack of a sales force is becoming even more critical as the battle for regional influence intensifies.

The US is winning the information war in spite of Donald Trump's "crazy town" administration. Zack Wittman

And Mattis is far from a lone voice. The US Studies Centre at Sydney University will this week welcome Madelyn Creedon, as a visiting fellow. She's a former Assistant Secretary of Defence for Global Strategic Affairs, who specialises in the US' nuclear deterrent.

Like Mattis she will be a sought-after voice in Canberra and someone highly quotable for the media.

The problem for China is not so much what these people say, but that their views largely go unchallenged, as Beijing simply can't put up anyone credible to argue its side.


This was evident at the height of the influence peddling scandal last year when the Chinese ambassador Cheng Jingye, simply dismissed the allegations made in an ABC 4 Corners program as "overnight cooked rice", which hardly amounted to a defence.

Huawei represents another clear failure of Chinese soft power, beyond the well-documented security concerns.

As the debate raged about whether to ban the telecommunications equipment provider from Australia's 5G network, not a single Chinese national was there arguing its case.

And so even at the lowest point for a US administration in recent history, America is still winning the information war.

It's US soft power versus Beijing's sharp power.

In the region this means the dominate foreign policy narrative is around China's "debt trap diplomacy" and its construction of "white elephant projects".

This might be the case, but no one from Beijing has ever effectively argued the other side or pointed out any benefits from Chinese foreign aid. Of course it's not easy to sell the virtues of a one party state, which is becoming increasingly totalitarian, but engaging in the debate would be a good start.

Beijing's lack of soft power is increasingly relevant as the way Mattis tells it, the fight has only just began. After a slow start the likes of Washington, Canberra and others are mobilising.


Mattis sees the university sector as the next battleground as the US and Australia undertake a thorough review of academic co-operation in areas which have both civilian and military uses.

Mattis says there's "barely a fig leaf covering" the involvement of the People's Liberation Army in some joint research projects.

"We need to ask who are we really dealing with and what are the risks around this engagement?" he said.

Mattis says there will inevitably be some collateral damage around academic co-operation and funding for research, but this is the necessary price after years of neglect.

This is a message he will be pushing in Canberra.

The first shot in this campaign has already been fired by Australia's Defence Department, which in July sought to tighten up the Defence Controls Act and how it applied to university partnerships.

It's a proposal which angered the university sector, but in the current climate there are sure to be added restrictions on how they operate.

More broadly the message being delivered by Mattis and others, brought out by the State Department, is that despite Trump's "crazy town" there are still plenty of serious people in and around the administration talking about foreign policy and the US' place in the region.