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There has been an ice front between China and Australia since last spring, when Australia joined in a proposal by the United States to conduct a comprehensive investigation into how the coronavirus originated. A year ago, China first identified the virus in a market in the city of Wuhan.
– Completely outrageous
The conflict escalated for the time being when a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry shared a fake photo of an Australian soldier with a knife to the neck of an Afghan boy this weekend.
– It is completely outrageous and cannot be justified in any way. The Chinese authorities should be ashamed of the message. It makes them smaller in the eyes of the world, said Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who characterizes the false image as “disgusting, outrageous and terrible.”
Australia investigates a group of special forces in relation to war crimes committed in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.
China refuses to apologize and believes that it is Australia that should apologize.
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– Why has Australia reacted to this? Do you think that the ruthless killings of Afghan civilians are justified, but that the condemnation of such ruthless brutality is not? Afghan lives are important, spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a news conference on Monday.
The Australian Prime Minister demands that Twitter remove the post. This has not happened. Twitter has posted a warning in the post. Twitter is banned in China, but the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ambassadors and other representatives are often very active in the service.
Australians want a dialogue with China, but ministers have been rebuffed when they tried to contact Chinese colleagues.
– Ridiculous
China has responded with punitive measures to penalize Australian exports. China is Australia’s largest and most important trading partner; about a third of the country’s exports ended up in the Chinese market in 2019.
This is everything from raw materials like coal and iron ore to build infrastructure, to steaks and wine for Chinese palates. In recent months, Chinese customs have detained Australian products. This weekend, punitive tariffs of up to 212 percent were introduced on Australian wine.
Australian wineries deny having dumped wine on the Chinese market. About half of Australia’s wine exports traditionally end up on the Chinese market in the last four months of the year and 39 percent throughout the year.
– It is ridiculous that they say that we threw wine and we do not understand why they can say something like that. We have higher margins in China than elsewhere, so it’s obvious that we don’t dump wine there. If we do anything, it’s make as much profit as we can, Australian Grape and Wine manager Tony Battaglene tells CNBC.
There are wine containers in Chinese ports. The share price of wine producer Treasury Wine Estate, which is behind the Penfolds, Wolf Blass and Lindeman wine brands, has been in “free fall” through the corona pandemic.
“This is the worst it can get,” writes the Sydney Morning Herald.
“Anti-Kinesian Alliance”
Several Australian citizens have been arrested in China on suspicion of espionage, including author Yang Jun and journalist Cheng Lai. Cheng has been in custody for several months without being able to meet with Australian diplomats.
Other Australian journalists have fled China this fall after being summoned for questioning and possibly jailed. Accusations of espionage have also been launched here.
China is very dissatisfied with the fact that the technology company Huawei is banned from participating in the construction of 5G mobile networks in Australia. The Chinese communist leadership believes that Western countries are collaborating to weaken China.
– It is natural that China wants to warn countries to form an anti-China alliance. After all, a confrontation is the last thing the world needs right now, Professor Zhu Feng of Nanjing University in China told Bloomberg News.(Terms)Copyright Dagens Næringsliv AS and / or our suppliers. We would like you to share our cases via a link, which leads directly to our pages. Copying or other use of all or part of the content can only be done with written permission or as permitted by law. For more terms, see here.
