Australia will not give in to pressure from China, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.
Canberra, Australia:
Australia will not give in to pressure from China, Prime Minister Scott Morrison insisted on Thursday after Beijing published a long list of complaints about the country.
A Chinese official handed over a dossier to Australian media containing 14 complaints, highlighting the increasingly contentious relationship between the two nations.
“If you make China the enemy, China will be the enemy,” a Chinese government official told three major media outlets on Wednesday.
Among the complaints are Australia’s strict foreign interference laws, the country’s ban on Huawei’s participation in its 5G network, and decisions that blocked Chinese investment projects on “national security grounds.”
Morrison said the “unofficial document” came from the Chinese embassy and will not prevent Australia from establishing “our own laws and our own rules in accordance with our national interest.”
“We are not going to compromise the fact that we will establish what our foreign investment laws are or how we build our 5G telecommunications networks or how we handle our interference protection systems the way Australia runs our country,” he told Channel Nine . .
The document also claimed that Canberra had engaged in “relentless senseless interference” in China’s affairs, while highlighting Australia’s call for an independent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus.
He accused Australia of “siding with America’s anti-China campaign and spreading disinformation” about where the virus originated, a particularly sore spot for Beijing.
The United States intervened in the diplomatic breakdown on Thursday, with the White House National Security Council saying on Twitter that “Beijing is upset that Australia took steps to expose and thwart Chinese espionage and protect Australian sovereignty.”
“It is encouraging to see a growing number of countries following Canberra’s lead in taking such steps,” the tweet continued.
Relations between Canberra and Beijing have reached a new low in recent months, leaving Australian government ministers unable to persuade their Chinese counterparts to accept their phone calls.
The rift has left Australian exporters exposed as their biggest trading partner imposes a series of retaliatory bans on agricultural products, including beef, barley and timber.
The latest diplomatic salvo comes just days after Morrison reached an agreement in principle to strengthen defense relations with Japanese leader Yoshihide Suga, a move widely seen as aimed at countering Chinese influence in the region.
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