My guiding principles for Australian foreign and security policy have been consistent throughout my professional life. They are pretty simple:
I support universal human rights as defined in the UN Universal Declaration, adopted in 1948 by Australia, the United States, China and the rest of the world.
I support the sovereign right of nations, including our own, to self-determination under international law.
I support the right to national self-defence and also to engage in collective security arrangements as provided by Article 1 of the UN Charter.
I also support international cooperation, trade, investment, diplomacy and dialogue as an antidote to conflict.
And, call me old-fashioned, but I’m against war — a view also expressed in the very first sentence of the UN Charter: “We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind…”
For these reasons, at the National Press Club last week, I urged greater international collaboration to deter anyone from shattering the fragile peace in Asia and igniting a pan-regional conflict that could kill, maim or impoverish millions.
But if you only read Wanning Sun’s caricature of my address in Crikey, you might come away with the opposite impression. Crikey bizarrely advertised the article online like so: “Kevin Rudd backflips on AUKUS stance, peddling China ‘threat’”. The uncomfortable truth is that I did neither. Indeed, the article was a clumsy attempt at character assassination built on fabrications, half-truth and good, old-fashioned smear.
First, on my supposed “change of mind” in support of AUKUS. This is demonstrably false.
In September 2021, the day after AUKUS was cackhandedly announced by Scott Morrison, I publicly outlined the four conditions on which I could support it: first, no Australian nuclear industry; second, no nuclear weapons on Australian vessels; third, no foreign bases in Australia or home-porting for nuclear missile submarines; and fourth, upholding Australia’s obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. All these conditions are met in the AUKUS agreement and its supporting statements.
Sun isn’t the first to level this false accusation. The Murdoch media tried to undermine my ambassadorship with the same smear. It was forced to correct the record. I now look forward to the same from Sun, as Crikey has undertaken to do as her publisher.
Second is the imputation that I characterised China as a “threat” to Australia. This too is false.
I used the word “threat” only once during a 4,200-word address. And that was in the context of artificial intelligence: i.e. weapons systems operating without human control; states and/or criminals launching cyberattacks on civilian infrastructure; and rogue AI agents escaping their laboratories to wreak havoc online. These are real threats to Australia. They are not unique to any particular country.
Why then frame me as a China “threat peddler”? Probably because, for more than 30 years, it has been commonplace in PRC official media to dismiss any criticism of Chinese foreign and security policy as simply spreading a false “China Threat Theory” (中国威胁论). It’s a “one-size-fits-all”, catch-all insult designed to demean critics through personal invective, and to exonerate the conduct being challenged, irrespective of the facts.
Fact 1: China’s military budget has tripled over 15 years. But whenever China’s neighbours upgrade their own defences or conduct joint exercises, they are accused by commentators like Sun of “hyping the China threat”.
Fact 2: This is not a new tactic. Back in 2009, my government’s planned acquisition of a fleet of diesel-powered submarines was also attacked as “close to the most severe ‘China threat thesis’ ever”. No. We were just replacing an ageing fleet of six Collins-class subs because we were a maritime power which happened to have the sixth-longest coastline in the world and the third-largest Exclusive Economic Zone.
Meanwhile, China has acquired the world’s biggest navy, producing 17 nuclear-powered submarines between 2001 and 2025, including at least five armed with nuclear missiles. My plan was for just 12 diesel subs, and the replacement AUKUS plan is for eight vessels (albeit more advanced ones along with the sovereign capability to build them). Context is important.
Fact 3: According to the official statements of the CCP, denouncing the “China Threat Theory” is part of the party’s “meticulous work in foreign propaganda”. Nice to know Sun is replicating the script.
Does that mean criticisms of China are never unfair? Of course not. But Australians can have those debates based in the facts, not on the basis of propaganda slogans. That’s not how democratic debate works.
Sun then tries to smear my professionalism by citing “substantial criticism” of my book, On Xi Jinping, from my fellow China scholars. The book is based on four years of academic research at Oxford University, for which I was awarded a DPhil in 2023. Nobody’s academic work is perfect. Mine certainly isn’t. Nor should scholars always agree. But those who have positively reviewed my book include, to name a few: Dr Rana Mitter, S.T. Lee Professor of US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School; Mark Wu, Director of Harvard’s Fairbank Center; Kerry Brown, Director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London; Rush Doshi, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations; Jude Blanchette, Distinguished Tang Chair in China Research at RAND; Elizabeth Economy, Co-chair of the Hoover Institution’s Program on the US, China and the World; Meghan O’Sullivan, Director of the Harvard’s Belfer Center; Geremie Barmé, Editor of China Heritage; Anthony Saich, Director of Harvard’s Ash Center; Graham Allison, Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School; and Richard McGregor, Senior Fellow for East Asia at the Lowy Institute.
So who are these detractors that Sun invokes, and what do they say?
One is Alfred Chan from Western University in Canada. His review is hardly excoriating. He described my book as a “valuable”, “substantial and ambitious work” that is “forceful and detailed”. Even so, Dr Chan argued that my thesis was limited by leaning too heavily on some influences (like Chinese Marxism) and not enough on others (like Confucianism). His feedback is entirely normal among scholars and taken in good faith.
The other critic is — so far as we can tell from Dr Google — not an expert at all, but a recent graduate of China’s Tsinghua University who works as an executive assistant. He has no scholarly articles to his name, and self-published his book review online. I won’t embarrass this young man by naming him. But suffice it to say, he is not what Sun claims.
Sun might be respected in her field of media and communications studies. But her article is pervaded with misrepresentations of so many elementary facts about foreign and security policy which demonstrate an embarrassing lack of depth and understanding.
Sun suggests Australian joint military facilities have only become potential targets for foreign adversaries because of AUKUS. This reflects a woeful ignorance of the Soviet Union’s attitude to ANZUS throughout the Cold War.
Her article then suggests that Australia’s only legitimate defence interest is to prevent the “invasion of Australia”. Too bad about Australia’s expansive territorial waters, and too bad for our island friends across Melanesia and Polynesia who routinely look to us for security support.
Sun puzzlingly asks why Australia would order advanced submarines for delivery next decade, since they would not be available immediately. The answer is that submarines are the most complex machines ever invented — they can’t be popped out of a blister pack like chewing gum whenever you need them, as Australia discovered to its near-existential peril during World War II, having shut its eyes to global events during the 1930s.
She urges officials like me to engage in reckless public commentary about how Australia would respond to a hypothetical future Taiwan Straits crisis. The reason professional diplomats don’t do that is because there is a near-infinite number of Taiwan scenarios (as China’s array of military exercises demonstrate), leaving aside how any such crisis might come about in the first place.
Sun bizarrely believes that Australians might have abandoned the Australia-US alliance were it not for AUKUS “enmeshing” our militaries. This little doozy defies all Australian public opinion poll findings over the past 80 years.
Her piece argues that Australia has no role in supporting collective regional deterrence in order to preserve the status quo? Really? That’s not the view in South East Asia, where we have security treaties with Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Nor in the Pacific, where we have them with Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, the Solomons, Tuvalu and Nauru.
Furthermore, if bilateral US security guarantees were to vanish from the region, there is a risk that Japan would pursue its own independent nuclear deterrent, just as China did in 1964 amid its split with the USSR. And, in such circumstances, would Korea then follow suit? And what would Beijing and Pyongyang then do in response? Suddenly, the status quo looks pretty appealing.
Finally, there is a deep logic to deterrence which has served our region and the world reasonably well since 1945. We’ve managed to avoid a global war for more than 80 years. Let’s try and keep it that way.
I’m old-fashioned on all this. I just don’t like war.
