The Foreign minister Penny Wong should recall Kevin Rudd as Australia’s ambassador to Washington.

Australia badly needs an ambassador who performs the traditional diplomatic role of trying to prevent a war: in this case, one involving Australia, China and the US. Instead, Rudd is promoting a new book in the US, “On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism Is Shaping China and the World”. He has also been performing his many other ambassadorial roles. In his book he argues that the Chinese President’s concept of “struggle” is one that need not always be peaceful. Writing in Pearls and Irritations recently the highly regarded Chinese scholar Jocelyn Chey notes that Rudd has well established anti-China views.

Although Xi has been China’s paramount leader since 2012, he can’t be understood solely through an analysis of his presumed ideology, as Rudd does. Chey says Wang Huning is the most influential advisor to Xi. He’s been involved in the development of Communist Party ideology since the 1980s, but is not referenced in Rudd’s book.

Regardless of ideology, Xi has not resorted to military force, unlike one of his more highly praised predecessors Deng Xiaoping who approved the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. In 1979, Deng ordered a brief but brutal military incursion into Vietnam to teach it a lesson for removing the genocidal Pol Pot as leader of Cambodia.

In contrast to 1989, under Xi protesters in Hong Kong threw Molotov cocktails at police without being arrested immediately, as would have happened in Australia. Xi did not call in the military and the situation was resolved without major blood-shed.

While Rudd wants to focus on the alleged China, “threat”, a lot more attention needs to be given to how the newly elected Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto will govern. As Duncan Graham noted in P&I, “Even Deputy PM Richard Marles must now acknowledge that the nation next door he praises for its moderation and democracy is now a military........

© Pearls and Irritations