China's demand that Australia tremble and obey brings Canzuk from the back-burner to the fore
 With China taking a "tremble and obey" attitude to Australia, after Canberra sought an impartial inquiry into Beijing's handling of the Covid crisis, a still unlikely, but increasingly popular proposal moves from the back-burner to the fore - namely "Canzuk". That is, the contraction of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, which would start with the free movement of peoples and perhaps full political union one day.
What makes the development plausible, buoyed as it is by positive opinion polling in the four would-be member states, is the difficulty the United States has supporting Australia because it has much to lose in doing so.
China's wheat ban, will add to a host of other Australian commodities and products, including coal, barley and wine that China has imposed, as relations between the two countries move from fridge to freezer. "Australian wheat exports to China had already faced a threat in September when China customs said it would increase checks and carry out tests on shipments," reported Hong Kong's South China Morning Post.
This has little if anything to do with trade issues. Rather it is Canberra's decision to push for an independent international investigation around the novel coronavirus has particularly aroused Beijing's ire. Australia has also doubled down on the need for a continued rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific, recommitting itself to its alliance with the United States and partnerships with key regional powers such as Japan and India as well as ramping up its defence budget commitments.
An Australian Broadcasting Corporation report around increasing Chinese pressure on Australian imports had noted that while China has officially halted trade around key goods from Australia - such as lobster - due to ostensible biosecurity and other commercial concerns, "the mounting list of Chinese trade punishments has reinforced suspicions in Canberra that Beijing remains intent on using trade sanctions to damage Australia's economy".
China is Australia's largest trading partner. In 2019, Australia's exports accounted for 34.3 per cent of the country's total, valued at more than A$169 billion (US$21.7 billion). The Perth USAsia Centre, a think tank with the University of Western Australia, has estimated that the exports worth A$47.7 billion to China stood to be affected by the growing trade tussle between the two countries. But Australian commodities and goods are not the only exports that China has sought to punitively curb. Tourism and education for Chinese citizens in Australia also stand to be affected if Beijing continues to use trade and economics as a hammer to secure geopolitical compliance from Canberra.
Robert Blackwill and Jennifer Harris in their 2016 book on geoeconomics formally defined it as the use of economic and financial tools by a state to advance its foreign policy goals. They described China as the "world's leading practitioner of geoeconomics," quoting an observer who noted that "nations do not fear China's military might; they fear its ability to give or withhold trade and investments". What is interesting is how China's economic statecraft has grown more sophisticated since, where Beijing is also using trade as means to drive a wedge between allies and pitch one against the other.
The situation is complicated by the fact that under the Trump administration, the United States has China committed to buying US$32 billion of American agricultural products, including wheat rather than from its usual Australian suppliers. This is not helped by the fact that Canada has been a traditional supplier of wheat to the communist bloc, but has since been displaced by Russia, now heralded as the "wheat king" with the departure of communism and the return of the kulaks. Thus, Chinese wheat imports have established a rivalry between American allies with US gains directly translating into Australian losses.
Adding to the confusion, which again puts China ahead at American expense, is that the trade war has induced US manufacturers to move out of China to other countries such as Vietnam. But attempts to depress China's trade surplus with the US have served to inflate Vietnam's, which in turn has the US launching a currency-manipulation investigation, thus turning the US against Vietnam just when Washington is seeking closer political-military ties with Hanoi to challenge the Chinese take-over of islands and building of naval bases in the South China Sea.
Given what's at play in regards living with a new and more aggressive Chinese trade policy, it will be difficult for a new Biden administration to take over where Trump has left off. The US has now conducted US Marine landings on Taiwan, reported the Taipei-based Taiwan News, which if true, can only be interpreted overt support for American support for the defence of the independent Chinese province. The Marine Corps Times denies such reports. If true, would Joe Biden pull back from such activity. Most likely. Biden has long backed a strong China as a benefit to all, and his acolytes, upon whom he is likely to become increasingly reliant as his cognitive abilities decline, who favour a weaker more supine social welfare-led America. His party's ascent to power has given every indication of willingness to scrap veneration of traditional American values, and a willingness to introduce Marxist critical theory into doctrine of the civil service. Thus, one can expect a more Beijing-friendly attitude, and not indulge in the gratuitous criticism of communists, many of whose principles are shared by Biden supporters, who have increasingly dominate today's western media, academic, bureaucratic complex since the 1960s.
Against this, are arrayed the people, that is, 50 per cent of the electorate, who voted for populist causes and are staunchly opposed by the establishment. And it is in these perilous times that Canzuk rears its head, undoubtedly to be opposed by those who fly the international gravy planes.
But the four musketeers, Canada, Australia, New Zealand in the UK, with a common head of state, Queen Elizabeth, have stood together facing common dangers in at least four wars, may yet stand again in a more meaningful trading bloc that may one day become a country. And if opinion polls are anything to go by, it looks like an alliance of the willing. And with Australia off on its own, the time may well be ripe to commence exploratory talks in the interests of trade.
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