Now we see the big picture
My bet is the response will be *crickets*
Sadly, Australia and Australians are realising that the wholesale auction of virtually all it's assets, coal,iron ore, food production, timber and water plus all future drilling and mining rights onshore and off for the next 1000 years to China was a BIG mistake. Passports, universities all up for sale and grabbed by a nation thirsty to expand.
Walk around any Australian city and the dominance of the Chinese people is obvious. It's too late to change. You must accept you are now just another "province" and tow the line. Good luck.
Walk around any Australian city and the dominance of the Chinese people is obvious. It's too late to change. You must accept you are now just another "province" and tow the line. Good luck.
Stop reading that Daily Mail rag.
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Hmmm... And some people out there (& it would seem they really are "out there") actually wear tin foil hats & think 'The X Files' is a historically accurate documentary series. 
By the way, as of the 2016 census of the top 10 ethnic ancestries of Australians, the only Asian ones were Chinese at 5% and Indian at 2%. Quite a fair way behind English at 30%, Australian at 29%, Irish at 9%, Scottish at 8%.
Maybe it is appropriate for more Asian influence in Australia, given that’s where we are located, last time I checked China is closer than England or Scotland.....
That comment’s a step away from “You’ve got to play spot the Aussie these days....”
By the way, as of the 2016 census of the top 10 ethnic ancestries of Australians, the only Asian ones were Chinese at 5% and Indian at 2%. Quite a fair way behind English at 30%, Australian at 29%, Irish at 9%, Scottish at 8%.
Maybe it is appropriate for more Asian influence in Australia, given that’s where we are located, last time I checked China is closer than England or Scotland.....
By the way, as of the 2016 census of the top 10 ethnic ancestries of Australians, the only Asian ones were Chinese at 5% and Indian at 2%. Quite a fair way behind English at 30%, Australian at 29%, Irish at 9%, Scottish at 8%.
Maybe it is appropriate for more Asian influence in Australia, given that’s where we are located, last time I checked China is closer than England or Scotland.....
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When China did tell the world definitely about Covid-19 on January 7.
If all other countries had been prepared for a pandemic (which has happened in the past and was highly likely to repeat with increased international travel), prepared with supplies of PPE, medical wards, border airports & ports designed and equipped to commence health checking at very short notice.
and then shortly after January 7 closed borders and health checked and segregated all arrivals. In that scenario even allowing for arrivals not showing symptoms transmission would have died out and the crisis outside China would have been all over before the end of March.
We should not ignore that more than twice as many people arrived in Australia infected from USA than China. At least China warned us that had a problem. USA had a huge infection problem and did not tell us for what appears to be 6 weeks. That failure on the part of USA for more than a month was far more significant in regard to infection rates in Australia than the delay of 2 or 3 weeks from China at the very beginning, because transmission was much wider later on when USA was not telling us.
The Key reason why our economy is shutdown is because we were not prepared for a pandemic and we should have been, and we are still shutdown even though community transmission is almost non existent because we will not be properly prepared for a pandemic for at least another month. It will have taken us 4 to 5 months after January 7 to get to the level of pandemic preparation we should have been at in December 2019.
We cannot blame China that we ignored the need to be properly prepared for a pandemic that was likely to happen sometime.
If we can justifiably point the finger at China for being tardy at the very beginning and warning the world there is a much bigger question to ask the USA for its much longer delay which is where the overall majority of our infections have come from.
I am particularly pissed because I was in the USA from Jan through to early March. I was clearly being potentially exposed I realise now in hindsight, but there was no attention to the issue while I was there. In the USA all attention was on the election. I was shocked to arrive back in Australia and find people social distancing.
If all other countries had been prepared for a pandemic (which has happened in the past and was highly likely to repeat with increased international travel), prepared with supplies of PPE, medical wards, border airports & ports designed and equipped to commence health checking at very short notice.
and then shortly after January 7 closed borders and health checked and segregated all arrivals. In that scenario even allowing for arrivals not showing symptoms transmission would have died out and the crisis outside China would have been all over before the end of March.
We should not ignore that more than twice as many people arrived in Australia infected from USA than China. At least China warned us that had a problem. USA had a huge infection problem and did not tell us for what appears to be 6 weeks. That failure on the part of USA for more than a month was far more significant in regard to infection rates in Australia than the delay of 2 or 3 weeks from China at the very beginning, because transmission was much wider later on when USA was not telling us.
The Key reason why our economy is shutdown is because we were not prepared for a pandemic and we should have been, and we are still shutdown even though community transmission is almost non existent because we will not be properly prepared for a pandemic for at least another month. It will have taken us 4 to 5 months after January 7 to get to the level of pandemic preparation we should have been at in December 2019.
We cannot blame China that we ignored the need to be properly prepared for a pandemic that was likely to happen sometime.
If we can justifiably point the finger at China for being tardy at the very beginning and warning the world there is a much bigger question to ask the USA for its much longer delay which is where the overall majority of our infections have come from.
I am particularly pissed because I was in the USA from Jan through to early March. I was clearly being potentially exposed I realise now in hindsight, but there was no attention to the issue while I was there. In the USA all attention was on the election. I was shocked to arrive back in Australia and find people social distancing.
When China did tell the world definitely about Covid-19 on January 7.
If all other countries had been prepared for a pandemic (which has happened in the past and was highly likely to repeat with increased international travel), prepared with supplies of PPE, medical wards, border airports & ports designed and equipped to commence health checking at very short notice.
and then shortly after January 7 closed borders and health checked and segregated all arrivals. In that scenario even allowing for arrivals not showing symptoms transmission would have died out and the crisis outside China would have been all over before the end of March.
We should not ignore that more than twice as many people arrived in Australia infected from USA than China. At least China warned us that had a problem. USA had a huge infection problem and did not tell us for what appears to be 6 weeks. That failure on the part of USA for more than a month was far more significant in regard to infection rates in Australia than the delay of 2 or 3 weeks from China at the very beginning, because transmission was much wider later on when USA was not telling us.
The Key reason why our economy is shutdown is because we were not prepared for a pandemic and we should have been, and we are still shutdown even though community transmission is almost non existent because we will not be properly prepared for a pandemic for at least another month. It will have taken us 4 to 5 months after January 7 to get to the level of pandemic preparation we should have been at in December 2019.
We cannot blame China that we ignored the need to be properly prepared for a pandemic that was likely to happen sometime.
If we can justifiably point the finger at China for being tardy at the very beginning and warning the world there is a much bigger question to ask the USA for its much longer delay which is where the overall majority of our infections have come from.
If all other countries had been prepared for a pandemic (which has happened in the past and was highly likely to repeat with increased international travel), prepared with supplies of PPE, medical wards, border airports & ports designed and equipped to commence health checking at very short notice.
and then shortly after January 7 closed borders and health checked and segregated all arrivals. In that scenario even allowing for arrivals not showing symptoms transmission would have died out and the crisis outside China would have been all over before the end of March.
We should not ignore that more than twice as many people arrived in Australia infected from USA than China. At least China warned us that had a problem. USA had a huge infection problem and did not tell us for what appears to be 6 weeks. That failure on the part of USA for more than a month was far more significant in regard to infection rates in Australia than the delay of 2 or 3 weeks from China at the very beginning, because transmission was much wider later on when USA was not telling us.
The Key reason why our economy is shutdown is because we were not prepared for a pandemic and we should have been, and we are still shutdown even though community transmission is almost non existent because we will not be properly prepared for a pandemic for at least another month. It will have taken us 4 to 5 months after January 7 to get to the level of pandemic preparation we should have been at in December 2019.
We cannot blame China that we ignored the need to be properly prepared for a pandemic that was likely to happen sometime.
If we can justifiably point the finger at China for being tardy at the very beginning and warning the world there is a much bigger question to ask the USA for its much longer delay which is where the overall majority of our infections have come from.
There were only 30 cases in Australia 6 weeks after Wuhan was locked down. The Chinese bought us time. Australia (and the West) squandered it.
It was the next 2-3 weeks when we let thousands of infected people return without monitoring into the country, the main source being the USA. But I guess our current government didn’t want to piss off the Donald in those crucial few weeks, nor are they willing to admit their own errors, so better to play up the “Yellow Peril” fears. It’s worked in Australia for over 100 years, why stop now?
When you buy or sell from/to any Chinese company, you are dealing directly or indirectly with the Chinese state, which of course runs the Chinese military. You can be sure that every time you buy a Chinese product, you are funding their military and their quest to dominate the world. It's called economic colonialism. And it's working because we (the West) are too PC to stop it.
China is clearly setting itself up for global domination, anyone who reads a newspaper can connect the dots. The half decent leaders have known for over a decade.
China operates under a system that Western countries have fought to avoid.
There’s really only one way this is sorted out, it’s just a matter of when.
My 2cents.
PS I don’t believe Covid has anything to do with the above.
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There’s really only one way this is sorted out, it’s just a matter of when
China can not be allowed to pursue a policy of takeover by stealth. If governments can't or won't stop this, nothing can prevent a very major conflict in the near to medium future.
That's exactly right - another world war is about the only way this will be sorted out, one way or the other.
China can not be allowed to pursue a policy of takeover by stealth. If governments can't or won't stop this, nothing can prevent a very major conflict in the near to medium future.
China can not be allowed to pursue a policy of takeover by stealth. If governments can't or won't stop this, nothing can prevent a very major conflict in the near to medium future.
If anyone has forgotten the 20th century already and thinks that’s a good idea a movie to watch:
The rest of us will live in a civilised world thanks
A major conflict with a nuclear armed power?
If anyone has forgotten the 20th century already and thinks that’s a good idea a movie to watch:
The Day After (Attack Segment
If anyone has forgotten the 20th century already and thinks that’s a good idea a movie to watch:
The Day After (Attack Segment
I really don't get the China bought us time line of thought.
They called Australia xenophobic for shutting down flights from China at the outset.
Didn't stop the Chinese folk from coming in via anywhere else though.
And those saying the Chinese are not buying up assets in Oz may need reminding:
How many assets do foreigners, let alone Australians, own in China?
Maybe small businesses, but sure as the proverbial, can be shut down or nationalized by the stroke of a pen.
The Communist Party are the biggest mafia thugs on the planet.
We are writing here without fear, where as our comrades in China can not.
And they use our free speech, media, PC to say what they want.
Also the idea of Chinese taking over VA.
Sound like a joke: Two Chinese, a Singaporean, an Arab and a Pom walk into a bar....
halas
They called Australia xenophobic for shutting down flights from China at the outset.
Didn't stop the Chinese folk from coming in via anywhere else though.
And those saying the Chinese are not buying up assets in Oz may need reminding:
How many assets do foreigners, let alone Australians, own in China?
Maybe small businesses, but sure as the proverbial, can be shut down or nationalized by the stroke of a pen.
The Communist Party are the biggest mafia thugs on the planet.
We are writing here without fear, where as our comrades in China can not.
And they use our free speech, media, PC to say what they want.
Also the idea of Chinese taking over VA.
Sound like a joke: Two Chinese, a Singaporean, an Arab and a Pom walk into a bar....
halas
The bottom line is this. The Chinese manufacture goods for Australian and German and English and American companies at incredibly low cost because they have such low incomes and poor health and safety standards.
We benefit from these poor wages and conditions and in fact demand that they continue. We have adopted a neo-liberal economic principal the core of which is price stabilization and the only way to achieve this is with off shore manufacturing in low wage countries.
On one hand we've got dr Dre extolling the virtues of embracing China's growth but you say we need (indeed demand!) to make sure their low wages and conditions continue - so we can sustain our lifestyle. Which side of this equation do you expect will more likely give? And once we run out of Cambodias, Laos, Saipans, African States etc, - assuming China hasn't got there first- where do we turn to next?
Belt and Road? More like Noose and Shackles
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Cut to the chase, you're told you have to live the rest of your life in China or the USA.
Which would you choose??
Maybe simple - but sometimes things ARE that simple.
Nice to live in a country where you could make the choice yourself - and not the state make it on your behalf!
Cheers.
Which would you choose??
Maybe simple - but sometimes things ARE that simple.
Nice to live in a country where you could make the choice yourself - and not the state make it on your behalf!
Cheers.
On an Australian domestic front we were bound to be in trouble sooner or later anyway. Before corona retail was in recession, GDP was in per capita recession, wage growth had flat lined, employment figures were masked by high levels of casualisation and underemployment, interest rates were on a path towards zero, personal debt was almost the world’s highest paying off millions for poorly built shoebox apartments, the bushfires harmed the economy and now corona will officially put it in a recession.
I have noticed a lot of government figures are starting to play up the “China lied, our countries suffered” position, IMO to distract from what was their poor handling of the economy to begin with.
From VA’s point of view was their ever any need for two full service airline groups in a nation of 25 million when plenty of much larger nations only have one? Especially when one hasn’t been profitable for a decade?
I have noticed a lot of government figures are starting to play up the “China lied, our countries suffered” position, IMO to distract from what was their poor handling of the economy to begin with.
From VA’s point of view was their ever any need for two full service airline groups in a nation of 25 million when plenty of much larger nations only have one? Especially when one hasn’t been profitable for a decade?
Q1. Was China slow in telling the truth about the virus?
Ans. Yes.
Q2. Did the west still have enough time to respond?
Ans. Yes.
Most of the west stuffed around, because as usual, pollies WILL.NOT.LISTEN to experts in whatever field you can think of, with a few exceptions. Imo, Australia was lucky, Morrison was initially dragged kicking to introducing the social distancing, closing business down etc, but then appeared to awaken to what we were facing and now is staring down the likes of the Murdoch press and organisations like the IPA who are spouting all the bs about the cure being worse than the disease etc and that we should open back up to business as usual, NOW! Better late than never, but overall I think he has turned around to doing a pretty reasonable job.
Galdian, I don't believe that question is relevant to what's happened.
Ans. Yes.
Q2. Did the west still have enough time to respond?
Ans. Yes.
Most of the west stuffed around, because as usual, pollies WILL.NOT.LISTEN to experts in whatever field you can think of, with a few exceptions. Imo, Australia was lucky, Morrison was initially dragged kicking to introducing the social distancing, closing business down etc, but then appeared to awaken to what we were facing and now is staring down the likes of the Murdoch press and organisations like the IPA who are spouting all the bs about the cure being worse than the disease etc and that we should open back up to business as usual, NOW! Better late than never, but overall I think he has turned around to doing a pretty reasonable job.
Galdian, I don't believe that question is relevant to what's happened.
On the first day of February, a sunny Saturday morning in Balnarring on the Mornington Peninsula, Greg Hunt was at his son’s cricket match when he received a call from Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy.
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt and Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy address the media on January 31. The following day would prove pivotal.CREDIT:AAP
“I think it’s time,” Murphy told the Health Minister.
Over the previous week, Murphy, Hunt and Prime Minister Scott Morrison had been talking about the possibility of some kind of travel ban from China to stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
The Australian government had already shown a willingness to get ahead of the World Health Organisation, declaring COVID-19 to be a “disease of pandemic potential" on January 21, more than a month before the global body belatedly followed. But the travel ban would be a drastic move; it was against the advice of the WHO and would likely draw the ire of the Chinese government.
Murphy was growing increasingly concerned about the potential for a major outbreak in Australia, and he and the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee were now of the belief there had been a sustained human-to-human spread outside of China's Hubei province, the epicentre of the virus.Hunt knew he had to act fast. After his conversation with Murphy, he rang the Prime Minister to deliver the recommendation. A hastily convened teleconference of the national security committee of cabinet was set for 2pm.
By 9pm, a travel ban was in place stopping all foreign nationals who were in mainland China from entering Australia for 14 days from the time they left the country.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says Australia will not follow Donald Trump in cutting funding to the World Health Organisation
February 1 would prove to be a fateful day: it was when Australia truly decided to move ahead of the WHO and never look back.
Other measures that would follow - such as the worldwide travel ban, declaring a global pandemic, the creation of the national cabinet and social-distancing measures - all stemmed from this day.
Announcing the ban, Morrison was questioned by a journalist over why Australia was doing it against the advice of the WHO. “Because our medical advice is it’s in the interest of Australians to do so,” Morrison said.
Two days later, the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, hit out at Australia and the United States for putting in place travel restrictions from China, saying there was no need for measures that “unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade”. If anything, this reinforced the Australian government’s decision.
For a number of weeks, the government was growing increasingly concerned about the advice coming out of the WHO’s global headquarters in Geneva about the situation in China. Senior Australian health officials still valued the work of the WHO’s Western Pacific division, headquartered in the Philippines, and respected its regional director, Takeshi Kasai. A distinction was already being formed in Canberra between “Geneva and Manila”.
Fast-forward more than two months, and the extent of the WHO’s failings are obvious. Meanwhile, Australia hasn't just flattened the curve, but is now pursuing a policy of containment - and perhaps in a few weeks, outright suppression - of the virus.
But there are growing fears that US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw funding from the WHO pending a review will only serve to further place the United Nations body under Beijing’s control.
As Trump’s America withdraws from the world, ravaged by COVID-19 and deflecting blame onto the WHO and China for its own mishandling of the pandemic, Chinese President Xi Jinping is looking to fulfil his long-held goal of “reforming and developing the global governance system” to build “a community with a shared future for mankind”.
So where did the WHO, a specialised agency of the UN established in 1948, go so wrong? Firstly, it spent all of January and most of February parroting lines from the Chinese government. The most glaring example was on January 14, when Chinese authorities were still trying to cover up the initial outbreak, and the WHO uncritically repeated China’s assertions that there was no “clear evidence of human-to-human transmission”.
WHO didn’t send experts on a field visit to Wuhan, the city where the outbreak began, until six days later on January 20. Two days after that, the WHO finally declared there was evidence of human-to-human transmission, but praised China’s efforts in containing the virus. Tedros, through all of February, was applauding the “transparency” of the Chinese response, applauding the Chinese president’s “detailed knowledge” and “personal involvement in the outbreak”.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation, with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on January 28.CREDIT:AP
When former Hong Kong health minister Margaret Chan was appointed director-general of the WHO in 2006, she was very much Beijing's choice. At the end of her term in 2017, the Chinese government knew they couldn’t install one of their own again, so they went for the next best thing, using their voting bloc at the organisation to elect Tedros over British candidate Dr David Nabarro. Tedros, formerly Ethiopia’s health minister and foreign minister, trained as a microbiologist but is the first director-general who is not a medical doctor.
Taiwan - which has been a model case in its response to the coronavirus - has been sidelined by the WHO at the behest of Beijing. Taiwan was previously granted observer status in the WHO’s governing body, the World Health Assembly, but was ousted in 2016 after the election of Democratic Progressive Party leader Tsai Ing-wen, a critic of Beijing, as president. The mere mention of Taiwan from a Hong Kong reporter last month saw a senior WHO official pretend to not hear the question and shut down the interview.
There is now a bipartisan push within Australia for Canberra to change its position on Taiwanese membership. While Australia has campaigned behind the scenes for the WHO to engage more with Taiwan, it has not endorsed the country’s bid for membership of the world health body.
Australian MPs from both sides of politics have also this week called for a review into the WHO in the wake of the virus, including its relationship with Beijing.
But the problem extends beyond the WHO. For more than a decade, China has been quietly gaining more influence over UN bodies. Four of the 15 UN specialised agencies are headed by Chinese nationals. China now contributes 12 per cent of the UN's regular budget, the second-largest monetary contributor after the US.
Beijing has also co-opted the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by using them to promote the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi’s signature program to bankroll infrastructure around the world which often directly benefits Chinese firms.
There is growing evidence that Beijing has used the BRI in developing nations to create “debt traps” by funding white-elephant projects and then wiping the debt for favours. The moulding of the UN's development goals to China's infrastructure plans has been helped by the fact that a Chinese national has been in the position of undersecretary-general of the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs since 2007.
Michael Shoebridge, director of the defence program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, says China has used the BRI to sway more votes at the UN, and then legitimised the program by promoting it under the UN banner.
While some analysts say China is using its leverage at the UN just as any emerging or great power has in the past, Shoebridge says China is fundamentally different because of its “Leninist roots”.
“The US State Department has a public diplomacy role, but it doesn’t have a United Front Work Department agenda subverting or co-opting any source of opposition to its state power,” Shoebridge says. "But you have to be in it to win it; nature abhors a vacuum. Given the Chinese state is defined by opportunism, it is a very bad strategic policy by the United States to gift them the opportunity to have even more influence in UN agencies.”
Donald Trump's decision to stop US funding for the WHO plays into Beijing's hands.CREDIT:AP
The US is the biggest financial contributor to the WHO, last year forking out $US553 million ($877 million) to its $US6 billion budget. Australia is set to give $5.3 million in membership dues this year, on top of voluntary contributions, while China will give about $28.7 million. Trump's decision to halt funding will play right into the hands of Beijing, which wants to model itself as a global health leader in the wake of the pandemic.
In some ways, Western countries are reaping what they have sown: for years, the international community called on China to engage more with global institutions, and that's exactly what Beijing has done.
Dr Benjamin Zala, research fellow at the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific, says the Chinese government has increased its UN funding “because we effectively asked Beijing to do so”.
“China looks for greater influence at the UN for exactly the same reason that the US or any other great power does: it is a useful way to advance its interest,” Zala says. “Any greater influence that Chinese money buys within the UN system will be amplified by the Trump administration’s disengagement from things like the UN Human Rights Council or the World Health Organisation.
"Generally speaking, in these arenas power and influence matters in relative terms. So the more the US withdraws, the more influence China will be able to exert.”
UN bodies are inherently flawed, but they are only as good as their member states. Stuck between a rising authoritarian power and a transactional US President, it may be up to middle powers like Australia to chart a way forward.
According to senior sources within the Australian government, the challenge will now be to work out how to encourage the WHO to reform in a way that doesn't further play into Beijing's hands.
One way to do this could be to team up with other middle powers to review its handling of the global pandemic, though it will likely wait for the US to complete its review.
At Prime Minister Morrison's request, senior bureaucrats within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have been reviewing Australia's commitments to global institutions, including the WHO, since late last year. A report is due to be handed to the Prime Minister in the coming months. There is no serious talk within the senior ranks of the Australian government about following Trump in defunding the WHO, with the consensus that the the UN body must be improved from within.
After all, Australia doesn't want to go it alone again. But since the first day of February, it has left no one in doubt that it can.
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt and Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy address the media on January 31. The following day would prove pivotal.CREDIT:AAP
“I think it’s time,” Murphy told the Health Minister.
Over the previous week, Murphy, Hunt and Prime Minister Scott Morrison had been talking about the possibility of some kind of travel ban from China to stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
The Australian government had already shown a willingness to get ahead of the World Health Organisation, declaring COVID-19 to be a “disease of pandemic potential" on January 21, more than a month before the global body belatedly followed. But the travel ban would be a drastic move; it was against the advice of the WHO and would likely draw the ire of the Chinese government.
Murphy was growing increasingly concerned about the potential for a major outbreak in Australia, and he and the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee were now of the belief there had been a sustained human-to-human spread outside of China's Hubei province, the epicentre of the virus.Hunt knew he had to act fast. After his conversation with Murphy, he rang the Prime Minister to deliver the recommendation. A hastily convened teleconference of the national security committee of cabinet was set for 2pm.
By 9pm, a travel ban was in place stopping all foreign nationals who were in mainland China from entering Australia for 14 days from the time they left the country.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says Australia will not follow Donald Trump in cutting funding to the World Health Organisation
February 1 would prove to be a fateful day: it was when Australia truly decided to move ahead of the WHO and never look back.
Other measures that would follow - such as the worldwide travel ban, declaring a global pandemic, the creation of the national cabinet and social-distancing measures - all stemmed from this day.
Announcing the ban, Morrison was questioned by a journalist over why Australia was doing it against the advice of the WHO. “Because our medical advice is it’s in the interest of Australians to do so,” Morrison said.
Two days later, the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, hit out at Australia and the United States for putting in place travel restrictions from China, saying there was no need for measures that “unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade”. If anything, this reinforced the Australian government’s decision.
For a number of weeks, the government was growing increasingly concerned about the advice coming out of the WHO’s global headquarters in Geneva about the situation in China. Senior Australian health officials still valued the work of the WHO’s Western Pacific division, headquartered in the Philippines, and respected its regional director, Takeshi Kasai. A distinction was already being formed in Canberra between “Geneva and Manila”.
Fast-forward more than two months, and the extent of the WHO’s failings are obvious. Meanwhile, Australia hasn't just flattened the curve, but is now pursuing a policy of containment - and perhaps in a few weeks, outright suppression - of the virus.
But there are growing fears that US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw funding from the WHO pending a review will only serve to further place the United Nations body under Beijing’s control.
As Trump’s America withdraws from the world, ravaged by COVID-19 and deflecting blame onto the WHO and China for its own mishandling of the pandemic, Chinese President Xi Jinping is looking to fulfil his long-held goal of “reforming and developing the global governance system” to build “a community with a shared future for mankind”.
So where did the WHO, a specialised agency of the UN established in 1948, go so wrong? Firstly, it spent all of January and most of February parroting lines from the Chinese government. The most glaring example was on January 14, when Chinese authorities were still trying to cover up the initial outbreak, and the WHO uncritically repeated China’s assertions that there was no “clear evidence of human-to-human transmission”.
WHO didn’t send experts on a field visit to Wuhan, the city where the outbreak began, until six days later on January 20. Two days after that, the WHO finally declared there was evidence of human-to-human transmission, but praised China’s efforts in containing the virus. Tedros, through all of February, was applauding the “transparency” of the Chinese response, applauding the Chinese president’s “detailed knowledge” and “personal involvement in the outbreak”.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation, with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on January 28.CREDIT:APWhen former Hong Kong health minister Margaret Chan was appointed director-general of the WHO in 2006, she was very much Beijing's choice. At the end of her term in 2017, the Chinese government knew they couldn’t install one of their own again, so they went for the next best thing, using their voting bloc at the organisation to elect Tedros over British candidate Dr David Nabarro. Tedros, formerly Ethiopia’s health minister and foreign minister, trained as a microbiologist but is the first director-general who is not a medical doctor.
Taiwan - which has been a model case in its response to the coronavirus - has been sidelined by the WHO at the behest of Beijing. Taiwan was previously granted observer status in the WHO’s governing body, the World Health Assembly, but was ousted in 2016 after the election of Democratic Progressive Party leader Tsai Ing-wen, a critic of Beijing, as president. The mere mention of Taiwan from a Hong Kong reporter last month saw a senior WHO official pretend to not hear the question and shut down the interview.
There is now a bipartisan push within Australia for Canberra to change its position on Taiwanese membership. While Australia has campaigned behind the scenes for the WHO to engage more with Taiwan, it has not endorsed the country’s bid for membership of the world health body.
Australian MPs from both sides of politics have also this week called for a review into the WHO in the wake of the virus, including its relationship with Beijing.
But the problem extends beyond the WHO. For more than a decade, China has been quietly gaining more influence over UN bodies. Four of the 15 UN specialised agencies are headed by Chinese nationals. China now contributes 12 per cent of the UN's regular budget, the second-largest monetary contributor after the US.
Beijing has also co-opted the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by using them to promote the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi’s signature program to bankroll infrastructure around the world which often directly benefits Chinese firms.
There is growing evidence that Beijing has used the BRI in developing nations to create “debt traps” by funding white-elephant projects and then wiping the debt for favours. The moulding of the UN's development goals to China's infrastructure plans has been helped by the fact that a Chinese national has been in the position of undersecretary-general of the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs since 2007.
Michael Shoebridge, director of the defence program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, says China has used the BRI to sway more votes at the UN, and then legitimised the program by promoting it under the UN banner.
While some analysts say China is using its leverage at the UN just as any emerging or great power has in the past, Shoebridge says China is fundamentally different because of its “Leninist roots”.
“The US State Department has a public diplomacy role, but it doesn’t have a United Front Work Department agenda subverting or co-opting any source of opposition to its state power,” Shoebridge says. "But you have to be in it to win it; nature abhors a vacuum. Given the Chinese state is defined by opportunism, it is a very bad strategic policy by the United States to gift them the opportunity to have even more influence in UN agencies.”
Donald Trump's decision to stop US funding for the WHO plays into Beijing's hands.CREDIT:AP
The US is the biggest financial contributor to the WHO, last year forking out $US553 million ($877 million) to its $US6 billion budget. Australia is set to give $5.3 million in membership dues this year, on top of voluntary contributions, while China will give about $28.7 million. Trump's decision to halt funding will play right into the hands of Beijing, which wants to model itself as a global health leader in the wake of the pandemic.
In some ways, Western countries are reaping what they have sown: for years, the international community called on China to engage more with global institutions, and that's exactly what Beijing has done.
Dr Benjamin Zala, research fellow at the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific, says the Chinese government has increased its UN funding “because we effectively asked Beijing to do so”.
“China looks for greater influence at the UN for exactly the same reason that the US or any other great power does: it is a useful way to advance its interest,” Zala says. “Any greater influence that Chinese money buys within the UN system will be amplified by the Trump administration’s disengagement from things like the UN Human Rights Council or the World Health Organisation.
"Generally speaking, in these arenas power and influence matters in relative terms. So the more the US withdraws, the more influence China will be able to exert.”
UN bodies are inherently flawed, but they are only as good as their member states. Stuck between a rising authoritarian power and a transactional US President, it may be up to middle powers like Australia to chart a way forward.
According to senior sources within the Australian government, the challenge will now be to work out how to encourage the WHO to reform in a way that doesn't further play into Beijing's hands.
One way to do this could be to team up with other middle powers to review its handling of the global pandemic, though it will likely wait for the US to complete its review.
At Prime Minister Morrison's request, senior bureaucrats within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have been reviewing Australia's commitments to global institutions, including the WHO, since late last year. A report is due to be handed to the Prime Minister in the coming months. There is no serious talk within the senior ranks of the Australian government about following Trump in defunding the WHO, with the consensus that the the UN body must be improved from within.
After all, Australia doesn't want to go it alone again. But since the first day of February, it has left no one in doubt that it can.
