Australia has urged legislators to take a more cautious approach in backing China’s pursuit of “legitimate interests” and stay alert to the motives guiding its investments, in a briefing book published by the non-partisan Australian Parliamentary Library.
Authored by government officials and distributed ahead of Tuesday’s opening of parliament, the booklet raises concerns that “creating a Eurasia-wide, China-led bloc to counter the United States” is the long-term aim of China’s “One Belt, One Road” project, including its investments in northern Australia.
“Some see this initiative as a profound challenge to the current global political and economic status quo,” a parliamentary library researcher wrote in the booklet, designed to guide lawmakers on issues likely to come before them.
“Australia needs to adopt a more economically and strategically prudent attitude in determining how the Australia-China economic relationship is to further develop,” the researcher said.
In Beijing, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) told reporters she was not familiar with the booklet, but cooperation between Chinese and Australia companies was based on market principles and was mutually beneficial.
“We hope the government of the relevant country can create a just, fair and transparent environment for Chinese enterprises investing abroad,” she said.
The caution comes after Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison this month blocked the sale of electricity network Ausgrid to China and Hong Kong buyers, citing undefined national security concerns.
That followed his rejection of a Chinese consortium’s bid for Australia’s largest pastoral holding, S. Kidman & Co.
Meanwhile, a decision to lease a commercial and military port in northern Australia to a Chinese firm last year stirred concerns in the US.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema