What do a prominent Hong Kong democracy activist, the former prime minister of Sweden and more than 200 parliamentarians from 19 countries have in common?
They are all drinking Australian wine to “stand against authoritarian bullying” in response to brutal trade tariffs slapped on the country by China amid an escalating diplomatic standoff.
Overnight, members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), a group comprising more than 200 lawmakers from 19 countries that aims to achieve “reform on how democratic countries approach China,” launched a campaign to encourage people to drink Australian wine this month.
Photo: Reuters
It follows Beijing’s decision to impose trade tariffs of up to 200 percent on Australian winemakers, a decision that Australian Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment Simon Birmingham has said would make the China “unviable” for exporters.
In a short video, lawmaker from a host of countries — including the US, the UK, Germany, Japan, Italy, New Zealand and Norway — said that Beijing’s decision to impose devastating tariffs on Australian winemakers amounted to “authoritarian bullying.”
In the video, Australian Senator Kimberley Kitching accused China of attempting to “bully” Australia into “abandoning its values,” saying the list of 14 grievances circulated by Beijing amounted to “an attack on free countries everywhere.”
Slovakian Member of Parliament Miriam Lexmann said the campaign to drink Australian wine was an attempt to “stand against [Chinese President ] Xi Jinping’s [習近平] authoritarian bullying.”
On Twitter, the video prompted support from other high-profile China critics.
Nathan Law (羅冠聰), one of Hong Kong’s most prominent democracy activists who fled to the UK in September following Beijing’s crackdown on the territory, said he had been “moved” to buy a bottle of Australian wine, despite the fact that he did not “really drink.”
Similarly, former Hong Kong lawmaker Raymond Chan (陳志全), who quit the Legislative Council earlier this year after he was one of seven pro-democracy politicians arrested for disrupting parliament, also weighed in to support the campaign.
“Not much of a wine drinker myself, but as my friend Louisa Wall & other MPs suggest, perhaps I can buy a few bottles as gifts to my lawyer friends who defended #HongKong protesters all year long,” Chan wrote on Twitter.
“They deserve some fine Australian wine this holiday season. Cheers,” he wrote.
That followed earlier support from figures including former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt, who wrote that it was “not a bad idea to buy some extra wine these days to show solidarity.”
Bildt, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said China was attempting to “weaponize trade in its political disputes” with Australia.
“Other countries must take note of the dangers in this development,” he wrote.
“It’s highly likely to backfire” on China, he wrote.
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