China’s global ambition ‘like the rise of Nazi Germany’, Government MP says.
Explosive comments from the head of the powerful intelligence committee comparing China to Nazi Germany’s rise have sparked fury.
China’s embassy in Australia has responded with fury to explosive remarks made by a Liberal MP and the head of parliament’s powerful intelligence committee.
West Australian backbencher Andrew Hastie today compared China’s growing global ambition and militarisation to the rise of Nazi Germany in an opinion piece for Channel 9 newspapers.
The pointed remarks sparked anger from China, which said Mr Hastie had threatened relations between Australia and the Asian superpower.
Mr Hastie’s warning of the unprecedented economic and national security risk posed by China has divided the Coalition.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton gave him something of a slap-down while Prime Minister Scott Morrison sought to water down the seriousness of the situation.
“The West once believed that economic liberalisation would naturally lead to democratisation in China,” Mr Hastie, who is chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, wrote.
“It would keep us safe, just as the French believed their series of steel and concrete forts would guard them against the German advance in 1940. But their thinking failed catastrophically.
“The French had failed to appreciate the evolution of mobile warfare. Like the French, Australia has failed to see how mobile our authoritarian neighbour has become.
“Even worse, we ignore the role that ideology plays in (China’s) actions across the Indo-Pacific region.”
https://www.news.com.au/national/politi ... f837325dd1
08 Aug 2019, 12:47 am
