Paul Keating pushes for Australia to join

ASEAN

Speaking just a few days before China hosts a summit of the G-20 countries, Mr Keating said "I think the shift is happening and has happened. The bi-polarity of the Cold War was is over." Mick Tsikas

by Andrew Clark

Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating has forecast China will become up to "twice as big as the US", and said Australia should respond by joining ASEAN and avoid any involvement in a potential US-China conflict in the South China Sea.

Addressing a packed audience at an Australia-China Relations Institute gathering at the University of Technology of Sydney (UTS) on Tuesday night, Mr Keating said the world was witnessing a "change in the economic make-up of the international order".

Speaking just a few days before China hosts a summit of the G-20 countries, including Australia, Mr Keating said "I think the shift is happening and has happened. The bi-polarity of the Cold War was is over."

China's economic strength is generating a new, emerging "pan-Pacific architecture" while the US "is fundamentally an Atlantic power".

He did not advocate Australian withdrawal from the ANZUS Alliance with the US but lambasted the Malcolm Turnbull-led Coalition government, claiming it lacked a "foreign policy" for dealing with current great power shifts.

Australia's Labor Prime Minister from 1991-96, and Treasurer for eight years before that, Mr Keating enjoys a ring-side seat to observe China's dramatic economic transformation as chairman of the advisory board of the China Development Bank, and late last year had a one-on-one meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

He said after the meeting with Xi Jinping that China was engaged in a "seminal strategic shift".

Elaborating on what he meant, Mr Keating told ABC broadcaster and author Kerry O'Brien at the ACRI gathering in Sydney that China was now returning to its old place as the world's leading power – a position it held up until the late 18th century, when a British economy transformed by the Industrial Revolution leapt into pre-eminence.

From the 1880's the US took over from Britain as the leading world power. For some time after China entered a four-decade-long period of astonishing growth, which was launched in 1978, it held back from asserting a world role.

However, that began changing this century, particularly after the advent of the Global Financial Crisis. "The GFC in 08-09 de-mystified for the Chinese the mystifications of the US management of the world economy."

Mr Keating said that under his government in the early 90's Australia helped to bring China and the US into closer contact by upgrading the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation grouping, which included China and the US.

Before that he claimed APEC was more like an international mechanism for exchanging economic information, or "you show me your statistics and I'll show you ours".

Unprecedented transformation

A year after APEC was upgraded, the atmosphere between the two countries relaxed. "I had (US President Bill) Clinton playing the saxophone and (then Chinese leader) Jiang Zemin doing karaoke," Mr Keating said.

However, since then China has emerged as a global economic giant, only lagging behind the US in GDP. "Never before in the economic history of the world" has there been such a transformation. "It's unique."

China "will have the biggest economic show in the 21st century", Mr Keating said, and wants a "multi-polar" UN-style system, with its five permanent members of the Security Council, including China.

Referring to China-US tensions in the South China Sea, Mr Keating said "we can't afford a world war". The tensions are over China's upgrading of disputed islands in the region into effective military bases, complete with air-strips, and aircraft.

The Chinese approach to the South China Sea issue meant it was "achieving its strategic power in a cheap kind of way". It was also a "messy" process.

But "China will once again be a great state in the world. Through its population and GDP, China will end up being one and a half or twice as big as the US", Mr Keating said.

Turning to Australia, he warned it was "becoming a much more marginal power with less influence" and needed to pursue a policy "that takers account of the shifts in the world order".

Australia "should become a member of ASEAN", a membership that would "help Australia and help ASEAN".

He said China was planning to reduce steel consumption by 100 million tons as part of its transition to a more hi-tech economy, and it would cut coal use by 400 million tons a year. Australia should be prepared for the "new economy" in China.

Nevertheless, "we have a very great opportunity with China and we should go for it", Mr Keating said.

realpolitikasia

Saturday, September 3, 2016