Australia’s federal ministers are back on talking terms with their PRC counterparts, visits to the PRC are resuming from Canberra and by state premiers, our longsuffering ambassador in Beijing, Graham Fletcher, is finally getting to meet appropriate Chinese peers, and some of the commodities that Beijing had barred are starting to reach PRC markets again.

Win.

The PRC’s ambassador Xiao Qian envisions a ‘new frontier’ of productive relations, as Chinese students return to Australian campuses, trade resumes on a broad basis, and Chinese investors succeed in taking over Australian targets.

Win.

At the same time, Canberra has been praised in both Western and regional countries for standing up for Australian and broadly liberal democratic values and interests in the face of PRC pressure, through a range of measures such as denying Huawei access to the 5G roll-out, and the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme.  The Economist has lauded how ‘Australia has stood up to Chinese bullying and thrived.’

Win.

Such a win-win-win presents a case for this being an especially brilliant hour for Australian foreign policy. But relating to the PRC continues to present unique challenges. And less widely discussed, are concomitant successes for the PRC’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA).

For instance, it is now more than a decade since Craig Emerson became the last Australian trade minister to visit Taiwan. Yet in the decade to 2002, under Labor and coalition administrations, twelve federal government visits took place—seven at the ministerial level and five at the level of assistant minister or parliamentary secretary. The decline coincides with the ramping-up by Beijing of its efforts to ‘reunify’ with Taiwan.

Australia can do a great deal with Taiwan short of diplomatic recognition, which Taipei – favouring the status quo – doesn’t seek, including building closer cultural and commercial connections. Yet except in Queensland (which has the highest population of Taiwan-born residents), Taiwan’s representatives or businesspeople are rarely granted a meeting with anyone senior in a state government. This is not a party issue – it’s no different in Tasmania, the sole Liberal administration, than in Labor-run states, Queensland excepted. State governments do not discuss openly why this is so. But pressure from Chinese consulates, which maintain substantial, routine contacts with state governments and officials, would be a factor.

Taiwan has recently become Australia’s fourth largest export market, but the only one in the top ten with which Australia lacks a free trade agreement. Tokyo has explicitly welcomed Taiwan’s application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), while Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says: ‘We will deal with applications that are dealt with by consensus for economies applying to join the CPTPP.’

Deakin University Associate Professor Lennon Chang, President of the Australasian Taiwan Studies Association, told the Australian parliamentary inquiry into expanding CPTPP membership that Taiwan, as a leading ICT developer in the Indo-Pacific region, would be a responsible partner, its membership aligning with Australia’s cyber strategy ‘for a safe, secure and prosperous Australia, Indo-Pacific and world, enabled by cyberspace and critical technology’.

The removal of space for Taiwan and Taiwanese companies and individuals to operate internationally is a key goal for PRC diplomats, and they have enjoyed considerable success with it.

Ambassador Xiao wrote in a widely-published commentary that ‘Taiwan is part of China’s territory. Taiwan has belonged to China since ancient times’ – which are both standard and historically disputable claims, the first dynasty to exercise any form of rule over the island being the Qing, in the 17^th century. Again, echoing the Communist Party’s longtime playbook Xiao called Taiwan one of China’s ‘core interests, which brooks no foreign interference and allows no political manipulation.’

In December 1972, within the core diplomatic statement that established formal ties with the PRC, Canberra said it ‘recognises the government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China, and acknowledges the position of the Chinese Government that Taiwan is a province of the PRC.’  The Taiwan government has long abandoned any pretence or interest to rule China, while Australia simply ‘acknowledges’ Beijing’s claim to rule Taiwan. These days, Taiwan is a vibrant democracy with a similar sized population to Australia, and a world-leading tech industry. It slid into technical recession in the first quarter of 2023 as global tech demand slowed, with semi-conductors comprising 38 per cent of all Taiwan’s exports. But a rebound into positive growth is widely forecast by analysts for the year as a whole. Most Taiwanese are fed up with being viewed through the lens of China’s ambitions or China-US rivalry. Polling by National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center in 2022 underlined the strength of Taiwanese desire to maintain the status quo. Only 1.3 percent of respondents wanted unification with the mainland ‘as soon as possible’, while just 5.1 percent desired immediate formal independence.

Canberra’s reluctance to pursue closer relations with Taiwan can be seen as a form of collateral damage of its fear of being returned to Beijing’s ‘sin bin’. Yet Benjamin Herscovitch of the ANU’s School of Regulation and Global Governance notes that ‘Beijing claims that the Taiwanese government isn’t entitled to join groupings like the CPTPP because the world shares China’s view that Taiwan is simply part of the PRC.’ He argues that ‘these claims misrepresent the supposed international support for China’s preferred one-China principle, gloss over the diversity of one-China policies, and ignore how commonplace it is for free trade agreements and other groupings to include entities that aren’t recognised as de jure sovereign states.’

Taipei has long requested the exchange of military attaches, but Canberra has not agreed. According to Richard McGregor of the Lowy Institute, ‘Australia won’t have the luxury of keeping its head down on Taiwan indefinitely.’

For Australian politicians to be able to speak to their PRC counterparts, and the slow return of trade affected by the 2020 sanctions, is a relief – but it cannot be perceived as an advance in terms of where the relationship stood only eight years ago, when the Australia-PRC FTA came into force, or before that, when mutual visits by political leaders were common. Xi Jinping, last visited Australia in 2014, when his side-trip to Tasmania completed his travels to every state over the years.

The PRC ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, said in March in Brisbane: ‘We have basically stabilised the relationship between the countries… There is not a single area where China and Australia have to confront each other… (China’s) policy towards Australia is a friendly policy.’ He spoke of working together towards a ‘new frontier’ of economic relations and on climate change, and said that ‘we are open to welcome Australia to come back to the Belt and Road (Initiative)’ to which the Victorian government committed itself in 2018, but which the federal coalition government required it to leave under the Foreign Arrangements Scheme of December 2020.

And yet… much remains problematic in the relationship. The straightforward access for Australian goods and some services that was agreed with the signing of an FTA, whose core aim is to shelter commerce from political swings, has yet to be fully restored, although current moves are in the right direction. Trade Minister Senator Don Farrell’s Beijing visit on May 11-12 comprised such a step, but the resulting progress was more rhetorical than practical, except for timber exports. Australians Cheng Lei and Yang Hengjun have been incarcerated since August 2020 and January 2019 respectively, without any public trial or even a clear account of why they were arrested in the first place. So much official pressure was placed on Australian journalists covering China that the last ones left in 2020, so that there is now no direct coverage of events or trends there by Australian media.

Ambassador Xiao readily obtains non-curated access to Australia’s mass media and social media, as well as live audiences, in a way unavailable in China to our ambassador Graham Fletcher – although this has long been the case, and is not unique to Australia. A majority of Chinese Australians regularly use the strictly censored WeChat platform, owned by Chinese giant Tencent.

The European Union, Canada, Britain and the US have applied the Magnitsky Accords, or similar sanctions against those responsible for human rights abuses against Chinese citizens responsible for oppressive actions in Xinjiang. Canberra has held back from following suit. However, greater distance from the PRC is now entrenched in the strategic space, with AUKUS and the Quad becoming core Australian commitments.

Most of the Australian population remains concerned about the PRC. Lowy Institute polling last year found 75 per cent of respondents thought it somewhat likely that China would pose a military threat to Australian in the next twenty years. China was described as more security threat by 63 per cent and 33 per cent as more economic partner. At the same time, a perception has grown among Australian politicians and political analysts, that voters of ethnic Chinese background will penalise parties that are deemed to be ‘anti Chinese.’ The Communist Party of China (CPC), which claims that it represents China’s history, culture and population (including people of Chinese ethnicity living outside China), fosters the perception that to criticise it, or its policies, is racist.

Recent statistics show that although people born in the PRC comprise the second largest group of permanent migrants to Australia, they come only tenth among those groups to have taken the opportunity to become citizens, with just 36 percent doing so. Voting trends among people of Chinese ethnicity remains a complex and little explored issue. But insofar as the perception is becoming entrenched among politicians and their advisors in Canberra and the state capitals that public criticism of the PRC or CPC can provoke electoral pain, this will impact Australian political behaviour.

While priority is given to full restoration of relations with the PRC, the question remains as to whether security and trade can be considered separately. The risk remains, that further – perhaps even inadvertent – political infringements as perceived by Beijing, may see markets again blocked. If Beijing over-extends its ambitions to seize Taiwan, the resulting sanctions would replicate – at least – those that have hit Russia and its commercial partners since the Ukraine invasion. It appears especially important now for corporations and governments – both federal and state – to audit their economic vulnerability.

A related question is whether interests can or should be disconnected from values. For Xi himself, for whom the party encapsulates every corporate virtue and who focuses fully on the ideological landscape, that is impossible: ‘Government, military, civil society, schools, north, south, east, west, and the centre – the party leads all.’

In the immediate term, perhaps the most elevated goal is for Prime Minister Albanese to tread, 50 years on, in the footsteps of his predecessor Gough Whitlam’s ground-breaking visit to the PRC from October 31 to November 4, 1973, presumably with the aim of engaging with Xi in the Great Hall of the People. Kevin Magee, a former representative of Australia in Taiwan, has summarised: ‘In order to get this far with Beijing, the Albanese government has dialled down its rhetoric on China but has also provided concessions on sensitive issue for China such as Taiwan, Magnitsky sanctions, Port of Darwin review etc.’ [1] Visits and meetings are important, though their significance can understandably be over-weighted in the diplomatic world.

What is less clear is the bigger-picture aim, where the relationship with the PRC is ultimately headed. It’s a conundrum, in both policy and rhetoric terms. But might the framework of a ‘new Australia-China accord,’ as China expert John Fitzgerald describes it, be already falling into place, unselfconsciously? [2] One that might be emerging from a ‘Fear of Abandonment’ as the late and much lamented Allan Gyngell’s influential book of foreign policy history and analysis is titled – only not, as originally framed, fear of abandonment by Western partners Britain or the US, but now by the PRC?

An important element in such framing, a core goal of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is the successful deployment of discourse power.

Much relief has been evinced at the claimed end of ‘wolf warrior’ rhetoric from PRC spokespeople. That’s probably as true for MFA’s many professional diplomats, as for those who had been on the receiving end. But harsh words remain part of the armoury, as demonstrated recently by the PRC ambassadors to the Netherlands and France.

Two years ago the PRC’s Politburo held a study session at which General Secretary Xi emphasised the need ‘to form international discourse power that matches our comprehensive national power and international status,’ creating a favourable ‘external public opinion environment.’

Recent remarks by Paul Keating appear to have given permission for a new wave of criticism of Australia and its Asian friends and Western allies, while taking less note of what is said and done by the PRC/CCP or its leaders. Such debates are natural in transparent societies, and they underline a core difference from the Cold War era, when Soviet engagement with Australia and rhetoric favouring the USSR were negligible. But longer term complexities are mounting as China’s ‘rise’ – perceived formerly as inexorable – instead flatlines as its economy matures and demographic decline comes into play. For prosperity, which was until COVID-19 a sufficient domestic legitimising force for the CCP in itself, is now sublimated beneath security issues by Xi and his team, in both policy and presentational terms.

Australian Labor politicians have rightly been commended for the discipline of their PRC discourse. It is also important, however, to reserve the right to speak up for Australian values and interests as their leadership roles require.

Tone matters. But if the tone adopted by Australia morphs into one which is perceived to defer to PRC discourse power, that will be time for a review before it becomes a habit.

Consul-General Zhou Limin described ‘a correct understanding’ as ‘the prerequisite for the sustainable development of China-Australian relations.’ He is right, of course, about understanding. The problem is that while Australia sustains myriad versions of political correctness, Beijing’s perspective, especially under Xi, is singular.

It’s sad that such reservations are inevitable when grappling with a polity as pervasive and ambitious – and important, of course – as Xi’s CPC. Roll on the day when we can enjoy less conditional, unclouded relationships with our many friends, and their businesses, universities and other organisations in China. That day may come, and Australians will applaud it, but it’s not going to dawn as a result of Canberra’s efforts alone, welcome as they may be.

References

[1] Kevin Magee, Australia China Relations Brief, February 15 2023

[2] Cited with John Fitzgerald’s permission from a post by him on the private Chinapol platform

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Is this the hour when Australia’s business leaders should stand up and be counted on Australia’s relationship with the People’s Republic of China? Michael Clifton, the rightly well-regarded chief trade commissioner in China for six years, certainly thinks so.

Now president of the Australia China Business Council in NSW, and stepping down after seven months as chief executive of China Matters, a Sydney based organisation that “strives to advance sound China policy”, he has contributed helpfully to this debate with a policy brief published by the latter. His brief is well-timed. And it comes, by coincidence, soon after I had a couple of long personal conversations with important figures deeply immersed in this area, one based in China and another in Australia, who were asking this very question.

My response is very different from Clifton’s, however.

Mine is that this is a good time for Australians who do business in and with PRC counterparts to focus especially strongly on those relationships, to watch more attentively how markets are changing in both China and Australia, and to adjust their business plans correspondingly.

Clifton, who was senior advisor to Simon Crean when he was Regional Development Minister in the Julia Gillard government, urges our business leaders to highlight the importance to Australian wellbeing of the PRC, to establish a formal China business lobby, to arrange an annual business summit with Chinese counterparts, to press Beijing for a better trade and investment relationship, and to press Canberra for a China Advisory Council reporting to the Prime Minister.

Nothing is stopping any of this happening already. The crucial questions are: what would these business people say, and what would they wish these bodies to achieve?

Many in the business world and beyond, who urge a “re-set” of Australia’s relationship with the PRC, appear to believe that “engagement” is an end in itself, and that “understanding” will lead to a wish for closer formal ties — although it may instead lead to greater guardedness.

I have argued, and continue to argue for engagement with the PRC, inevitable with a country of its size and with our multiple levels of contact, including prominently economic links. I also support the idea that Australians need to understand the PRC better, for the same reasons.

But if Australian business leaders other than Twiggy Forrest and Kerry Stokes, who have prominently and frequently promoted their views, are to press for a change in Australian policy regarding the PRC, they need to articulate why and how they wish this to happen — and especially, in what new ways we should engage the PRC, while bearing in mind that the effectiveness of this engagement would be limited unless China reciprocates.

“Laying low is no longer an option for business leaders,” says Clifton. But the trading relationship is not exactly on the rocks; it remains very busy, despite COVID constraints. And laying low appears to be the preferred option for most Chinese counterparts of Australian business leaders. When did we hear PRC business people publicly call for changes in their own government’s policies, or urge their newly militarised diplomats to withdraw damaging threats and return to more truly diplomat language? Even if they might wish to do so, stepping out in such a way would place them in considerable peril.

Australian business people are routinely requested by PRC contacts to replicate traditional talking points, including that: to criticise the PRC is to be racist, the Chinese Communist Party cannot be separated out from China and the Chinese people whom it has ruled for 71 years; criticism of party-state policies or actions amounts to “abuse”; the rise of the PRC to global dominance, especially economically, is inexorable; and to criticise the PRC is tantamount to fawning on the US and endorsing President Donald Trump unquestioningly.

But this is a ritual required by box-ticking cadres. For the most part, genuine business people in the PRC not only choose to lay low themselves, but they like their international partners to do the same. At a time when the PRC is facing considerable global pushback as a result of its increased international assertiveness, and with Beijing also feeling under economic pressure as unemployment grows and capital slides, Chinese business people especially value closer links with trusted partners. This provides them with a welcome degree of predictability. Public assertiveness is not part of such appeal, it instead adds peril.

If it is timely for any particular part of the Australian population to play a greater public role in discussion about how to respond to the PRC’s advances, it is not so much business people — insofar as they might cooperate to comprise a lobby — as the many Chinese Australians, who of course also include business people too. Chinese Australians may not comprise a “community” because of the diversity of their origins and motivations for migration, but do mostly have some skin in this game and do have helpful understandings.

Clifton is right when he says that too few Australians have developed their formal Chinese business partnerships, which “demands patience, perseverance and opportunities for genuine dialogue that encourage more than a perfunctory recitation of well-worn talking points.”

One of the reasons for this is that extremely few senior Australian business people have experience of living and working in China, or in Asia generally, and most boards of Australian companies contain no directors with such experience. Meanwhile most Australian businesses have invested scarcely in China, if at all, excising that prime driver for true PRC understanding.

That’s a good reason to use this already fraught COVID era to deepen business understanding of clients, suppliers and markets, to become better informed generally. Such a period, when virus anxieties are being exacerbated by the frenetic but also relentless PRC political opportunism that has included the subduing of Hong Kong, and by the wolf-warrior aggression conducted on a truly global — absolutely not Australia-specific — front, is not a rewarding time to advocate vociferously, the tailoring of policy to prioritise business interests over security or more broadly, community values. A growing majority of the Australian population appears prepared to suffer economically rather than to submit silently to such opportunism, and it may not be in the best interests of businesses to associate themselves vociferously with a contrary view, that may be read as “support” for PRC interests extending well beyond commercial relations.

In the Lowy Institute’s well-respected poll this year, just 23 per cent of Australians said they trust China somewhat or a lot “to act responsibly in the world”, a 29-point fall since 2018. Confidence in Xi Jinping has almost halved, to 22 per cent, in those two years. The federal government should help “find other markets for Australia to reduce our economic dependence on China” according to 94 per cent of people surveyed, and 82 per cent would support the government “imposing travel and financial sanctions on Chinese officials associated with human rights abuses.”

Many Australians now feel sufficiently well-informed about the PRC’s governance to adopt views of their own, even if some China-experts wish for deeper understanding. These increasingly widespread views are to a significant degree reflected in positions taken in Canberra, these days largely in consensus by the Coalition and Labor.

But the language used by top Australian political leaders about the PRC remains overwhelmingly moderate and precise rather than, as Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas described it in May, “vilification”. And despite the occasional rhetoric that Australian politicians should do or say something that will lead to the restoration of convivial visits to the Great Hall of the People, this “carrot” held out for Canberra if it were to become more PRC aligned, simply now lacks the attraction it once held. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said he is “not waiting by the phone” for an invitation. And within Australia, blame is more broadly attached to the PRC side than to Trade Minister Simon Birmingham for his failing to find someone to answer his calls.

How valuable would it be for Australian business people to call publicly for a shift towards “supportive” PRC relations, if potential results were, for example, to arouse criticism by Australian consumers and shareholders and to provoke political antipathy, while only adding to Chinese business counterpart anxiety? Clifton rightly says “the change in behaviour of the PRC is a key factor in the waning of business influence.” This requires a review by business of how it operates in and with the PRC — in which the Australian chambers of commerce there can provide invaluable inputs — without expecting that the business community or even its Chinese partners have any chance of changing that PRC behaviour.

As Alan Kohler wrote a few months back in The Australian, “for Australian businesses that have China as their plan A, they should start thinking about plan B.” That doesn’t mean they dump plan A. But there does need to be a lot of thinking, studying, and quiet talking going on, including with Chinese business partners.

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Tragically, the New York Times’ most distinguished China correspondent has just been booted out of the People’s Republic. Married with a student daughter, he returned early this week to Sydney. The reasons will never be made public, but no doubt include the tit-for-tat war of accreditation for journalists between the United States and China, and the general deterioration of their relationship as the two countries continue to decouple.

Underlying the expulsion, however, is the fact that Buckley’s presence had become hugely inconvenient to the brittle Powers That Be in this increasingly authoritarian polity.

Over the last 15 years he has broken more scoops about and produced more credible analysis of events in the People’s Republic than any journalist in the world. This naturally makes him a hero for many Chinese people — at least, those who can gain access to his writings via VPNs or other means — but a palpable target for ambitious apparatchiks.

Reporting in and on China requires a level of attention and perseverance considerably more intense than virtually any other field.

Buckley has become famous telling the world about a party-state whose inner workings have become ever more secret. Who makes which decisions and how, comprises a black box open to endless conjecture but into which virtually no light enters or leaks out. The size and positioning of photos and the regularity of the mention of names in People’s Daily, have as a result again become grist to the mill of China-watchers, as back in the 1950s and 1960s.

But Buckley, an unusually modest, reserved and determined journalist and scholar, has consistently found people within the system who are willing to talk with him about what they know.

He travelled to Wuhan on the day it was locked down in January and stayed there for 76 days as COVID-19 ravaged the population. He criss-crossed the city constantly on rented bikes and reported on life in the eye of the storm until in mid February his press accreditation ended, and the authorities refused to renew it. He then had to face the frustration of remaining in the city at the centre of global attention but unable to report on its resilience.

Xinjiang papers

Buckley’s most recent big scoop was the publication six months ago in the Times of the Xinjiang Papers, 403 pages of internal state documents about the campaign of repression in Xinjiang that were obtained and passed on by an official who obviously could not be named, and who did so “to prevent communist party leaders, including [general secretary] Mr Xi [Jinping], from escaping responsibility for the program.”

The papers cite Xi as urging officials to use the “organs of dictatorship” and show “absolutely no mercy” in suppressing “terrorism, infiltration and separatism” in the region where Uighur public servants, students and teachers are currently being prevented from fasting during the holy month of Ramadan.

The papers also cite the region’s party secretary Chen Quanguo — who was transferred by Xi from Tibet, which he was credited with effectively pacifying — as instructing cadres to “round up everyone who should be rounded up,” a phrase echoing that of the corrupt prefect of police Louis Renault in the film Casablanca: “Round up the usual suspects.”

The road to China reporting

Buckley’s first degree was from Sydney University. The thesis for which the ANU awarded him a PhD in 1997 was on “Social mobility and stratification in urban China from Maoism through Reform.” He then shifted to Renmin (People’s) University in Beijing, studying communist party history, before shifting from academe to journalism.

He has worked in China for almost all the time since then — including as a researcher for the New York Times, followed by a long period as a Reuters China correspondent.

During this period he was often prominent in asking questions at Foreign Ministry press conferences, and was invited to ask one at the annual Premier’s press conference at the conclusion of the annual session of the National People’s Congress or parliament in March 2012 — which elicited the dramatic news from then Premier Wen Jiabao presaging the downfall of Politburo member Bo Xilai.

His transfer to the Times as a correspondent in late 2012 coincided with the publication by the newspaper of a report by David Barboza that relatives of Premier Wen secretly controlled $US2.7 billion assets.

The issuance of a new visa for Buckley as a Times correspondent consequently kept being delayed, until finally he had to leave Beijing at the start of 2013. He reported from Hong Kong until a minor thaw in relations led to his being accredited for the Times and returning to Beijing.

Since then, his journalism — especially about elite politics and about Xinjiang and other regions — has soared.

Australia’s China correspondents

Australia has produced a succession of extraordinarily capable China correspondents since George Ernest Morrison, born in Geelong, was appointed as the first permanent journalist covering China for the London Times in 1897 — doing so through the tumultuous years until 1912, when he became the political advisor to the new President Yuan Shikai. Morrison was the first cousin of the great grandfather of The Australian’s present Foreign News Editor, James Morrison.

Robert Thomson, today the chief executive of News Corp worldwide, was formerly a China correspondent. So was the well-credentialled author and China scholar Richard McGregor, now at the Lowy Institute, and influential China consultant John Garnaut.

The widely respected BBC China correspondent Stephen McDonell, formerly ABC correspondent there, now succeeds Buckley as the doyen of Australian journalists still working in China, who include the ABC’s versatile and authoritative Bill Birtles.

The ranks of Australian journalists in China are being rapidly depleted. In February, Philip Wen — who as Fairfax correspondent had pioneered, with Garnaut, the investigation of China’s influence in Australia — became the first Australian reporter to be expelled directly during the 70 years of the People’s Republic.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne responded then, through a spokesman: “Australia believes firmly in the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and a free press. It is our view that journalists should be able to carry out their work without unreasonable impediments.”

Wen was one of three Wall Street Journal correspondents told to leave China, following the newspaper’s publication of a commentary by Walter Russell Mead, who is at the Washington think-tank the Hudson Institute, which was headlined “China is the real sick man of Asia.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said that, although the expelled journalists had nothing to do with the commentary: “Media agencies that run articles blatantly insulting China … and maliciously smear China must pay the price. We are not interested in the division of work within the WSJ. There is only one media agency called the WSJ, and it must be ­responsible for what it has said and done.”

Controlling the media

Of course, there is only one effective owner and controller of all media agencies in China: the communist party. Four years ago, Xi told Chinese media workers that “Party must be your family name.” From late last year, Chinese journalists are required to pass tests on Xi and Marxism in order to receive accreditation to persist in the profession. They are allowed to re-sit the exams just once.

Many Chinese officials and commentators believe that Australian journalists are somehow government directed, so that they too follow a party-line. Thus journalist coverage from China tends to bear the added burden of being perceived as carrying the weight of state approval and policy.

There is no true institutional comparability between Australian and Chinese media organisations, and attempted formal links tend to lead to misunderstandings. The recent round of expulsions from China follows revisions by Washington of the rules for Chinese media staff working in the United States. The US issued 425 visas for Chinese nationals working for non-American media in 2019. In 2018, it had issued 1,768 visas for media (I-visas) staff from Britain.

In March this year, four state media organisations — Xinhua news agency, China Global Television Network, China Daily and China Radio International — were instructed to reduce their Chinese employees in the US from 160 to 100.

Beijing in response revoked the credentials of almost every American working for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post.

The total number of foreign correspondents accredited by China is believed to have approached 1,000 in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics in 2008, but has declined since then to just 536 in 2019.

This week, the US further tightened its rules, limiting the length of visas for Chinese journalists not employed by a US company to 90 days.

China had earlier begun reducing, for correspondents who had caused displeasure, the visa periods from one year — with interviews required with Foreign Ministry officials reviewing all foreign journalists’ performance, before renewal — to shorter periods, including for some, just one month. ABC correspondent Matthew Carney was given a visa of just 10 weeks before he left China at the end of 2018.

China’s party-state does not make itself accountable to media — those of the rest of the world, or its own. Caixin, a media group founded by the politically-connected Hu Shuli, uncovered much revelatory material in Wuhan about how COVID was tackled, but could only publish half of it.

Unsurprisingly, there are many courageous, skilful and independent-minded Chinese journalists in China. But they encounter almost insurmountable barriers in having their work published freely in the way they would like. And they are prevented from working as correspondents for overseas media, which is explicitly prohibited for Chinese nationals.

The National People’s Congress meets for just a fortnight every year, and provides only limited media availability. Access to courts is rare. There are very few press conferences, government or corporate. There are virtually no phone interviews, on or off the record, with senior officials in party, government or companies. The Internet is severely constrained and censored, with restricted access to many international sites as China imposes its “cyber sovereignty”. Diminishing numbers of academics and other analysts are prepared to be quoted directly, or especially to be filmed.

Last year, the annual survey of members of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China reported that 82 per cent of respondents had experienced interference, harassment or violence while reporting in China over the previous year.

The Press Freedom Index run by Reports Without Borders ranks China at 177th out of 180 countries.

Usually, Australian or other media seeking to report on places where they have no correspondent, or where they wish to deploy the skills of a specialist reporter to augment their coverage, send journalists there on short-term assignments. That is not possible for China, where journalist visas are only obtainable through the explicit sponsorship of a party or state agency, or via officially orchestrated visits.

So, massive kudos is due to Chris Buckley, the 19th foreign journalist expelled in the past 12 months, for helping the world understand China better, against so many odds, over the last couple of decades.

Such understanding just keeps getting harder.

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