Originally Posted by
racedo
I believe duties on wines and targeting of Australian exports of natural resources, come down to China getting tired of Australia mouthing off while claiming China is an important trading partner.
China decided that Australia is quite free to abuse it.
However as Austalia has a AUS$70 billion trade surplus with China then perhaps abusing the country which is the lynchpin of your economy has its consequences. US has a AUS$19 billion trade surplus with Australia.
Australians will need to get used to the idea that political pronouncements have an economic impact.
Australia has the raw materials China needs. The idea that Australia's modest trade surplus is an issue when China runs a half trillion annual surplus with the US alone seems dubious.
China does seem to be becoming a lot more touchy about foreign opinions voiced elsewhere, but not very receptive to allowing similar sentiments to be articulated to their own people.
That will be a problem, getting every tweet cleared with Beijing.
Of course, having decided that 'hate speech' can be censored, can any government object to censoring anti Chinese news and comments if it becomes economically damaging??