{"id":362836,"date":"2018-05-26T01:24:10","date_gmt":"2018-05-26T00:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/us-china-tensions-expose-rifts-in-australian-ruling-circles\/"},"modified":"2018-05-26T01:24:10","modified_gmt":"2018-05-26T00:24:10","slug":"us-china-tensions-expose-rifts-in-australian-ruling-circles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/us-china-tensions-expose-rifts-in-australian-ruling-circles\/","title":{"rendered":"US-China tensions expose rifts in Australian ruling circles"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>US-China tensions expose rifts in Australian ruling circles<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    By<br \/>\n    Mike Head<br \/>\n    <br \/>25 May 2018<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>Intensifying US economic, diplomatic and military pressure on China, and the Chinese regime\u2019s counter-offensive, are fuelling rifts inside Australia\u2019s government and the corporate and political establishment as a whole.<\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration is threatening a trade war against China, while accusing Beijing of militarising the South China Sea and seeking to coerce North Korea into a deal that would endanger China\u2019s strategic interests. Under these conditions, the US military-intelligence apparatus is reinforcing its insistence that there must be no wavering by Australia from lining up against China, its biggest export market.<\/p>\n<p>Renewed accusations of \u201cChinese interference\u201d in Australia are being promoted in the media, to try to poison public opinion against China. These are in preparation for potential military conflict and to hit back against voices of concern in ruling circles about the impact on the multi-billion dollar profits at stake for Australian capitalism.<\/p>\n<p>Washington\u2019s push produced extraordinary scenes in Australia\u2019s parliament this week. First, on Tuesday, the chairman of the joint parliamentary intelligence and security committee, Andrew Hastie, a Liberal-National Coalition government backbencher, threw what the media called a \u201cgrenade\u201d into recent government efforts to overcome a chill in relations with China.<\/p>\n<p>Hastie, an ex-SAS military commander, used parliamentary privilege to accuse a prominent Chinese-Australian billionaire, Chau Chak Wing, of having \u201cco-conspired\u201d to bribe the president of the United Nations General Assembly, John Ashe, in 2013. Chau, whom Hastie declared had \u201cextensive contacts in the Chinese Communist Party,\u201d became an&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2018\/05\/25\/auch-m25.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 US-China tensions expose rifts in Australian ruling circles By Mike Head 25 May 2018 Intensifying US economic, diplomatic and military pressure on China, and the Chinese regime\u2019s counter-offensive, are fuelling rifts inside Australia\u2019s government and the corporate and political establishment as a whole. The Trump administration is threatening a trade war against China, while [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-362836","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}