By Justin Bassi*
This month’s Chinese embassy press conference was a further effort to corral Australia into compliance and compromise with Beijing’s views. Remarks by Chinese ambassador Xiao Qian and other embassy officials confirm what many national security observers have been worried about for months. Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The Strategist.
If we pull our punches, if we subordinate our values and long-term interests to a short-term effort to orchestrate a trouble-free diplomatic relationship, we won’t actually buy stability. Rather we’ll find ourselves on a slope where nothing we do is good enough, and we will be eternally tempted to find unilateral compromises.
