From Silent Invasion (Clive Hamilton, 2018) pp253-4
In 2016 the CSIRO entered into a partnership with China to establish in Hobart a new centre for research into Southern Hemisphere oceans. China will contribute $20 million. CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall, who in the same year was widely excoriated for slashing climate science research, was excited to announce the new collaboration.
Through its largesse and growing role in the Antarctic, China seems to have cultivated a cohort of scientific and policy boosters for its efforts. The director of the Australian Antarctic Division, Nick Gales, finds the growing collaboration ‘incredibly exciting’ and is enthusiastic about expanding the PRC’s work in the Australian territory.” Nengye Liu, law lecturer at the University of Adelaide, has taken a recent interest resulting in a string of articles praising Australia—China cooperation and describing the PRC as historically a rule—taker rather than a rule— maker (avoiding mention of instances where it is a rule—breaker).92 China sees the Antarctic as resource—rich but, he reassures us, it will not start mining ‘in the foreseeable future’.
David Leary at UTS’s law faculty believes that, while stories of future V conflict make good newspaper copy, a ‘sober analysis of international law’ suggests a new era of cooperation. Just like other states, China’s interests lie in strengthening international law.94 Against all of the evidence, including the PRC’s manifestly illegal annexation of territory in the South China Sea, Leary believes that ‘China is no different to any other state’.95
Another lawyer, Julia Jabour from the University of Tasmania, lent support in an address to the Confucius Institute at the University of Adelaide.96 She began by saying she had never heard of the Confucius Institute before but was happy to speak about China’s intentions in Antarctica (and advise the Australian government accordingly). We demonise China because we don’t understand it, she said, just as we did over its actions in the South China Sea. Her entire lecture was devoted to defending China against those who doubt the sincerity of its public posture. Because the PRC is ‘legally bound by the rules of international law’ those doubts are not justified, she said. Mining could only occur if all treaty parties agreed to overturn the ban, and that is not going to happen. In Jabour’s world, what is not possible legally is not possible and ‘provocative, dramatic headlines’ about China’s mining intentions are alarmist.
Australia’s Antarctic policy wonks appear not to want to know what Chinese experts and officials are saying among themselves. The CCP regime has allowed the ruination of China’s natural environment, and takes a cynical view of international law, ignoring it when convenient. It attacked the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea when an international tribunal deemed unlawful China’s annexation of islands in the South China Sea. The decision was dismissed by China as ‘nothing more than a piece of waste paper’.97 It is violating the Hong Kong Basic Law guaranteeing the city political autonomy. And it is already ignoring the 1991 protocol banning mineral explorations.
Despite efforts by the major powers to welcome China into the international system as a ‘responsible stakeholder’, it must be evident that at bottom the PRC does not accept laws and norms that don’t suit it. In Canada, The Globe and Mail editorialised, China ‘plays along with the international system’ but then acts as if it wants to overthrow it. , ‘What China wants, it gets.’98 If the PRC has overridden the internationally endorsed sovereign claims of its neighbours to its west, south and east, why on earth would we believe it will respect international law in the Antarctic, where sovereignty claims are agreed only by convention? After all, the PRC regards the Antarctic Treaty as part of the world order created by the postwar powers, and it has said it wants to make a new global order. Brady argues that although the Antarctic Treaty will serve the PRC’s interests for the next twenty to thirty years, it will seek to rewrite it when it comes up for review in 2048. By that point it will be fully prepared to begin extracting the continent’s resources.
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