The Thrill Is Gone

In 2007 China overtook Japan as Australia's largest trading partner. Australia has been selling raw materials to China as fast as it can dig them up and load them onto ships, generating jobs and revenue. More recently, demand from China has cushioned Australia from the worst effects of the global economic downturn. Just last week state-owned PetroChina signed up to buy around $41 billion of liquefied natural gas--the biggest resources deal in Australian history.

No surprise then that Aussies developed something of a crush on China. The 2005 Lowy Institute Poll of Australians' views on foreign policy found that 69 percent had "positive feelings" towards China (while 58 percent had "positive feelings" for the United States). A year earlier former foreign minister Alexander Downer sent a tremor through U.S. defense circles when, visiting Beijing, he seemed to question whether Australia's alliance obligations would apply in the event of a U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan. There was palpable concern in Washington that a moonstruck Australia had succumbed to Beijing's "smile diplomacy" and was drifting into China's arms. The advent in Australia of a Mandarin-speaking prime minister must have looked like consummation of these fears.

Suddenly, however, this budding romance is in trouble. A massive resources grab by Chinese government-owned giant Chinalco ended in mutual recriminations and the arrest of mining giant Rio Tinto's senior Australian executive in China on unspecified and still unexplained espionage charges. Chinese officials brushed off requests for consular access and dismissed Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's public statements of concern as "noise." Beijing reacted sharply to the Rudd government's defense blueprint, which questioned the intent behind China's rapid military modernization and committed, quite reasonably, to a build-up of Australia's maritime capabilities.

More recently, Chinese diplomats have tried to intimidate organizers into canceling appearances by Uighur exile Rebiya Kadeer at an international film festival in Melbourne and Australia's National Press Club in Canberra. Mysteriously, untraced hackers managed to take down the film festival's website. Beijing's diplomats were less successful. Both events went ahead, with vastly more media attention than they would have received otherwise. Beijing retaliated by canceling a high-level visit and sanctioning a wave of criticism of Australia in China's state-controlled media.

Previous ham-fisted attempts by Beijing to constrain freedom of speech in Australia have backfired badly. In 2007, Chinese diplomats in Canberra were warned that Australians took a dim view of being lectured by another country--any country--about who their elected leaders could and couldn't see. They were specifically advised against publicly calling on former prime minister John Howard to boycott a meeting with the Dalai Lama. Sure enough, the Chinese foreign ministry did just that, guaranteeing high-profile meetings took place not only with Howard but also with then opposition leader Rudd. During 2008, Chinese diplomats organized massive, threatening counterdemonstrations in support of Beijing's indefensible policies in Tibet, triggering serious unease in the wider Australian community and concern inside government security agencies.

China-boosters like to laud the Middle Kingdom's soft power, contrasting it with barely disguised glee with America's supposed loss of "moral authority" and fading influence. But what China is exercising vis-à-vis Australia looks much more like old-fashioned authoritarian hard power.

And it's clear that Aussies don't much like Beijing's thuggery. Lowy Institute polling in 2008 showed that while Australians continue to acknowledge China's importance to the Australian economy, they are increasingly aware of, and concerned about, the darker side of China's rise. Nearly 90 percent of Australians believed that China will become the leading power in Asia; almost 60 percent of these people expressed discomfort with the prospect. Just over half of all Australians agreed that Australia should join with other countries to limit China's influence.

So is this a passing lovers' tiff or something more serious?