Australia and Japan Join Forces to Hold Beijing Accountable for Its Economic Bullying
Australia and Japan will join forces to oppose China’s economic bullying, as both countries continue to lose patience with Beijing’s aggressive international behavior.
In a statement following a joint virtual meeting on June 9, Australia and Japan’s foreign ministers, Marise Payne and Motegi Toshimitsu, and defense ministers, Peter Dutton and Kishi Nobuo, announced that both countries “would commit to opposing coercion and destabilizing behavior by economic means, which undermines the rules-based international system.”
Japan and Australia have become increasingly concerned over China’s behavior, as both countries have been on the receiving end of Beijing’s belligerent push to become a global power.
Australia has experienced increasing levels of economic coercion from the Chinese communist regime through its use of trade tariffs on eight major exports, including wine, beef, and barley. At the same time, Japan has been forced to increasingly defend its territorial waters from Chinese encroachments, using coast guard vessels and what has been dubbed a maritime militia—a point that Japan and Australia made in the joint statement, noting they were also strongly opposed to the behavior China has displayed in the East and South China Seas.
“We express our objections to China’s maritime claims and activities that are inconsistent with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS),” the statement said. “We reinforce our strong opposition to any destabilising or coercive unilateral actions that could alter the status quo and increase tensions.”
The allies also called out Beijing for its human rights abuses against the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
