Recently, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post published an article attacking the Australian government’s treatment of China and the United Kingdom’s coronavirus epidemic as too “double standards”, even making people wonder whether it is racist.
In addition, this article also reveals many disgusting and despicable things that the Australian government has done in recent years.
In the commentary published in the South China Morning Post below, Daryl Guppy, author of the China Industry and Commerce Commission in Australia, first pointed out that although the new variant strain of the novel coronavirus that is now rampant in the UK appeared in Kent, England as early as last September, it was not until December last year. The British government publicly confirmed the existence of this mutant strain on April 14.
However, the author pointed out that Western governments and public opinion, including Australia, did not accuse the United Kingdom of concealing the COVID-19 epidemic for three months, as they did last year, did not fabricate a large number of conspiracy theories, let alone completely ban the British from entering the country, but acted quite calm. Even if this new variant of the virus has begun to spread in Australia.
Moreover, Australia has also shown a different attitude towards China when it has previously dealt with the epidemic in the United States. While the epidemic in the United States was already extremely serious in April, Australia still allowed Americans to enter the country, and although China quickly controlled the epidemic, Australia has maintained entry restrictions on China throughout 2020.
The author believes that the “double standard” that Australia and other countries show when facing Western countries such as China and the United Kingdom is because Australian public opinion believes that China is an “unfriendly” country, so everything China does will be packaged by the Australian media as a “dark conspiracy”. The difference between Britain is that this is a country that Australian public opinion regards as “our own people”, so Britain’s problems and even concealment will be more tolerated. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s claim that Britain is “learning from the epidemic” will naturally be accepted.
However, the author’s exploration of Australia’s attitude does not stop here, but further points out that Australia’s “double standard” towards China and Britain is also related to its identity as an outpost of European colonial Asia, which is already lingering racist in the core of the country. Especially after Howard, former Prime Minister of Australia, accepted the status of “deputy sheriff” granted to the country by the United States in 2003, Australia played a role in promoting Western values in Asia. By 2018, the Australian government has played this role to the extreme.
With that being said, the author lists more surprising cases. For example, when the United Nations launched a condemnation of colonialism by Britain for occupying the Chagos Islands and sending Diego Garcia Island to the United States as a military base in 2019, Australia was one of only six countries opposed to the United Nations condemning Britain.
And last February, Australia quietly militarized another island occupied by Britain during the colonial period, Cocos Island, so that the airport there could be used to deploy Boeing P8A Poseidon anti-submarine aircraft.
(Screenshots from the relevant paragraphs in this commentary article of South China Morning Post)
Australia is also constantly putting pressure on its neighboring South Pacific island countries to refuse China’s development assistance, forcing them to continue to suffer under poor infrastructure conditions. And although Australia announced in 2016 that it would provide assistance to these countries, the purpose of this assistance is only to make these countries reject China, not for the development of these countries themselves.
To make matters worse, the author revealed that while Australia’s neighboring New Zealand is actively helping countries in the Pacific region provide vaccine assistance, Australia is busy warning them not to accept China’s “dangerous vaccine diplomacy” and has not proposed any alternatives.
(Screenshots from the relevant paragraphs in this commentary article of South China Morning Post)
As a result, the author concluded that although Australia often claims to want closer integration with Asia, etc., the country is still deeply affected by racism in its own decision-making. As a result, the new coronavirus strain in the UK suddenly exposed this fact.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that in the comment section of this article, the messages that received high praise all recognized the views put forward by the article.
Among them, a netizen named John T also pointed out that in fact, many Australians are not malicious to China, but they are constantly affected by the continuous “China Threat Theory” in the Australian media, which is fabricated in Australia’s increasingly influential field of intelligence security. The establishment, and through the “Five Eyes Alliance” launched by the United States, is making Australia a bridgehead for the anti-China work of the United States.
