You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker every morning to hear the latest episode. Just say play the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Wednesday, October sixteen. Anthony Albanezi says he's in politics for the long haul after the opposition suggested his purchase of a four point three million dollar beach house suggests he's planning for life after the lodge. The Greens have attacked the purchase, coming
as Australians struggle with the cost of housing. A gold mine proposed for Waddery Country in New South Wales was blocked after activists cited as evidence an artwork of a blue banded bee, but now links between the activists and the artists are emerging. Those stories alive now at the Australian dot Com dot a you. Kevin rad says the US and Australia must deter China's Shishinping from invading Taiwan with catastrophic consequences. Today a provocative book by a very
unusual diplomat. Well the BJ you are, You're a chump. Well how's you get by one hundred bay light way in. This is Kevin brad Way back in twenty eleven, doing a bit of a humble brag about his ability to speak Mandarin. He says, my Mandarin is very bad. It's getting worse and worse. I'm one hundred percent of foreigner, so I don't understand many Chinese characters. The host asks if you'd compare himself to famous Chinese leader Dang Zhao Ping,
who returned multiple times to the leadership. This was in twenty eleven. Remember when Julia Gillard had deposed Rudd and Rudd was cooling his heels as Foreign Minister. Oh no, no, chortles Rudd. Dung is a hugely influential figure who's changed the world. I'm just an Australian politician. Na shall rush for brother?
Sure that done?
Joping Pasha Tungwar. Rud did, of course come back again, knifing Guillard to become PM and lead Labor to defeat at the twenty thirteen election. He's not just your average politician. Rudd has been an academic and a diplomat, writing a pH d thesis on China's present leader Shi Shinping. Now he's Australia's ambassador to the United States, and he's turned that thesis into a book in a very undiplomatic kind
of way. Rudd's thesis is that she has fundamentally changed China and must now be deterred from invading Taiwan.
He argues, the danger period is now.
Joe Kelly is the Australian's National Affairs editor. He's reporting from Washington, DC, and he obtained an early copy of Rudd's new book.
The danger period will last as long as Xijinping is in power. This is an extremely hawkish interpretation of Xijinping and his influence on China, and the case that Kevin Rudd makes is that there isn't sufficient appreciation of Xijinping's ideological worldview and how that worldview has influenced all aspects of Chinese society.
Rudd says she isn't just another leader. He says the force of his personality and the totalitarian control of China is so great that he has fundamentally shifted the behavior of that nation. The biggest risk, Rudd says, is that she will invade Taiwan and fundamentally shake the world.
He says, if Xijinping is successful in reclaiming Taiwan, that his position will then be unassailable. Then the US will go into a period of global decline, and from that moment the path of world affairs will irrevocably change.
War whatever its outcome, would generate death and destruction at an unimaginable scale. It would also redefine Chinese, American and global politics and geopolitics in deeply unpredictable yet indelible ways.
However, if Jijinping fails, if he launches an attempt to retake Taiwan and fails, this will be seen as a moment of humiliation for him, a repudiation of his own beliefs,
and a letdown for China generally. He also says that if the United States and it's allies can engineer a situation where the stakes are seen to be too high for Jijinping to risk an attempt to reclaim Taiwan, it's unlikely that Jijinping's successor would try to take the island territory, and I think that is the trajectory Kevin Rudder is hoping will unfold in real time.
She's intention is not just to change China. It is also to change the international order itself, underpinned by an increasingly powerful China as the emerging geopolitical and geoeconomic fulcrum of that order.
Geoeconomic fulcrum is a classic Ruddism. It was this brand of hyper articulate, folksy geekdom that made an unlikely popular hero when he was first elected in two thousand and seven. Rud says, she's China has rewritten the rules. Its economy is so huge it can disrupt every market, and that's prompting the rest of the world to react by returning to protectionism to try to save their local economies. But change is coming. China's population growth is slowing. It's no
longer the world's most populous nation. That's now India.
The one child policy has produced an unprecedented gender imbalance within the country of more than thirty million after decades of male preference, sex selective abortion, and female infanticide. This has resulted in an unofficial policy of sending large numbers of unmarried men to the developing world to find partners, build businesses, and strengthen familial ties with the motherland.
All this is highly unusual from a diplomat.
Cavin RD is an unusual all person to have appointed as an ambassador. He has a great depth of experience. He is a former Prime minister, he is a former foreign minister. He is one of the leading experts in the world on Chinese foreign policy. And so that means that Kevin was always going to take a different approach
to this job. So I think when Anthony Alberanizi made that appointment, he would have known that it would have come with various political consequences, and he must have known that he would need to wear those political consequences.
Coming up. This means for Australia's relationship with China. He is the crux of Rudd's book. He says, Shi Shinping hopes that is owing topretation of Marxist ideology, a tightly controlled economy, a repressed population, and an aggressive form of nationalism can change the way the world thinks about democracy and human rights. Rudd says, one factor working against she is that he is, like the rest of us, mortal.
He would probably have to maintain power well into his nineties to appoint enough ideologically reliable, younger karters to enable his long term political strategy. To take root.
China is famously thin skinned and defensive, so could this trigger another trade war? Joe doesn't think so.
No, I don't think there's any risk Kevin Rudd's book will ignite that kind of retaliation. Kevin Rudd makes the point that China has deliberately changed its tactical diplomacy. A tactical decision was taken to try and better leverage Chinese influence in the world, that they would shift their approach, but this ultimately would be directed at trying to maximize
Chinese influence to achieve its long term strategic objectives. I think China will continue along that current path of normalizing relations because it sees that at the moment as the best trajectory towards its long term goals.
Joe Keilly is The Australian's National Affairs editor. You can read all the best analysis of China from our own Will Glasgow, the only Australian correspondent resident in China right now at the Australian dot com dot au