Australia needs to find allegiance with other nations willing to stand up to China’s coercive diplomacy.

In 2018, Australian beef and wine exports were left at the docks, unable to enter China. In 2019, Australian coal exports were held up at Chinese ports. Recently, following Prime Minister Scott Morrisons call for an independent international inquiry into COVID-19 outbreaks origin, China suspended beef imports from four Australian abattoirs, and slapped a crippling 80 per cent tariff on Australian barley.
Australia is far from the only country to suffer Beijings economic coercion tactics, and it is time to look for ways to work with other like-minded countries to put a stop to it.
How to deal with a coercive China and its authoritarian leader Xi Jinping?
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Although Australian officials deny it, industrial representatives, journalists, and economists have interpreted the events as Beijings attempts to punish Australia for its perceived political missteps. In some quarters of Australian business, the misconception exists that the punishment is deserved when Australia continues to upset China, but the reality we face is an emerging superpower growing more demanding by the day, and redefining what counts as upsetting.
Domestically, the Chinese Communist Party rules with an unyielding iron fist, throwing dissenters journalists, activists, ethnic minorities in jail on trumped-up charges. Now the regime is attempting to replicate the formula on the international stage, pushing back aggressively on claims it detests, and threatening those who make them.