Australia’s deputy prime minister defended the government yesterday against suggestions it is too close to Beijing, calling the opposition’s attacks “absurd.”
Last week, Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon admitted that he had failed to declare two trips to China that were paid for by businesswoman Helen Liu, a Chinese-Australian property developer who is also a long-standing friend, as he is required to do under parliamentary rules.
Fitzgibbon apologized for failing to declare the trips, taken in 2002 and 2005 when he was an opposition lawmaker with a limited travel budget. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he was displeased with Fitzgibbon but that he would keep his job.
But the opposition seized on the trips to question whether Rudd’s government is too close to Beijing. Last week, senior opposition lawmaker Joe Hockey told Seven Network television that he was “concerned about the pattern of behavior,” citing trips by several government officials to China.
Yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard acknowledged that Fitzgibbon had made an error in judgment by not declaring the trips, but said the opposition’s attacks on the government’s China connections were ridiculous.
“This is all getting ... a little bit absurd,” Gillard told ABC television. “We now have the opposition carrying on as if there is some huge conspiracy here. That if you ever met a Chinese person, that if you’ve ever discussed an issue in relation to China, that if you’ve ever spoken a word of Mandarin, then apparently this is all some huge conspiracy against Australia’s national interest.”
Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat to Beijing, and Treasurer Wayne Swan also took trips to Beijing sponsored by Chinese business interests before they were elected to government in 2007.
Both declared the trips.
China is Australia’s largest trading partner and Beijing’s demand for mineral resources such as iron ore helped fuel a 17-year economic boom that ended late last year with the global financial downturn.
Amid intense debate in Australia over moves by Chinese state-owned entities to buy into the country’s vast resource base.
Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull has accused Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of acting like a “roving ambassador” for Beijing.
Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner said Turnbull was running a populist line he believed would resonate with sections of the Australian public.
“China has a vested interest in acquiring our natural resources at low prices,” Turnbull said. “The question is how much has Mr Fitzgibbon not told us.”
“It’s both absurd and it’s a blatant attempt by Malcolm Turnbull to play to latent antagonism toward China in the Australian populace,” Tanner told Sky News.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS