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    Scott Morrison tells US Australia risks going to sleep on China threat after diplomatic ‘charm and flattery’

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    The Chinese Communist party hopes Western democracies “go to sleep on the threat” it poses to the international order, former prime minister Scott Morrison has told a congressional committee in the US.In a forthright appearance before the hawkish US House of Representatives select committee on the strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist party, Morrison said China had changed diplomatic tack after he lost the 2022 election to Anthony Albanese.“This included abandoning their economic and diplomatic bullying and coercion for more inductive engagement, laced with charm and flattery,” Morrison said. “That said, the PRC still continues to engage in intimidatory behaviour by their military against Australia when it suits them without remorse.”Morrison said while China’s diplomatic tactics had changed, its objectives were unaltered: to isolate US influence in the Indo-Pacific and weaken efforts at countering Beijing’s “potential security threat”.He said Australia should boost its defence spending to the 3.5% of GDP demanded of it by the US, arguing “the world has changed” and that Chinese leaders sought to “recast the world order to accommodate their illiberal objectives”.Morrison accused the current Labor government of scrimping on defence spending in order to pay for the Aukus submarine deal, which will cost $358bn to the 2050s.Morrison later told reporters Australian defence spending parsimony – in particular the “displacement” of funds to prioritise Aukus – had been raised by the US in its review of the agreement.Sign up: AU Breaking News email“It wasn’t [meant to be] ‘Aukus instead’, it was ‘Aukus as well’,” he said. “And ‘Aukus as well’ was at least going to add another half a percent of GDP, at least.”Morrison said Australia should raise its defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030 and 3.5% by 2035. The government spends a little over 2% of GDP on defence currently, with forecasts to lift that to 2.3% by 2033. To prioritise Aukus, significant cuts have reportedly been made to defence programs, training budgets and to senior defence ranks.Australia has already paid $1.6bn to the US as part of the Aukus agreement. However, the future of the massive nuclear submarine deal remains uncertain as the Pentagon undertakes a review to ensure it does not weaken US naval capacity or diminish America’s force posture to contain China.Morrison, whose leadership between 2018 and 2022 endured a low in relations with Beijing, told the committee it was vital for western nations to resist Chinese attempts to interfere in politics and curb free speech.Citing polling of Australians by the Lowy Institute, the former prime minister told US lawmakers that “for the first time in quite a number of years there is a greater value on the economic partnership with China than concerns about the security threat”.“That is an objective of the CCP [Chinese communist party], that western democracies go to sleep on the threat,” Morrison said.“You need to build the internal resilience, and that means an appreciation of the potential threat. And that is somewhat in jeopardy in Australia.”Morrison said the liberal world order faced a “rising threat from authoritarian states who, not content with absolute control over their own populations to preserve their regimes, also seek hegemonic control over their own regions and to recast the world order to accommodate their illiberal objectives”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The Chinese Communist party government of the People’s Republic of China is such a regime.”And Morrison said Western countries were “kidding themselves” if they thought dialogue would change Beijing’s pursuit of their objectives.“A free and open Indo-Pacific – that is a threat and a challenge to regime security in China,” he said.“Discussion is fine, engagement is good – it’s better than the alternative. But if we think that is going to produce change in the mindset of Beijing then we’re frankly kidding ourselves.”Appearing alongside Morrison before the committee hearing was Rahm Emanuel, formerly president Barack Obama’s chief of staff, mayor of Chicago and US ambassador to Japan. Emanuel is widely considered to be a leading Democratic contender contemplating a run for the White House in 2028.He argued the US – in a significant shift from the Trump administration’s “America First” doctrine – should lead a strong “anti-coercion coalition” along with allies like Australia to counter Beijing’s growing influence.He cited China’s trade sanctions on beef, wine and barley, imposed after Australia led calls for an inquiry into the origins of Covid-19, as examples of economic coercion, China’s most “pernicious and persistent tool”.“Australia is the best kind of blueprint of what you want to replicate worldwide. They did it on their own,” Emanuel said. “And China realised they couldn’t isolate Australia.” More

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      Scott Morrison to testify before US House panel on China

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      The former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison will testify at a US House panel hearing next week about countering China’s “economic coercion against democracies,” the committee said on Friday.Rahm Emanuel, the former US ambassador to Japan, will also testify before the House select committee on China.Relations with China, already rocky after Australia banned Huawei from its 5G broadband network in 2018, cooled further in 2020 after the Morrison government called for an independent investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 virus.China responded by imposing tariffs on Australian commodities, including wine and barley and limited imports of Australian beef, coal and grapes, moves described by the United States as “economic coercion”.Morrison was defeated in a bid for reelection in 2022. His successor, Anthony Albanese, visited China this week, underscoring a warming of ties.

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      The prime minister spent this week touring the country with stops in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu amid a period of geopolitical instability and escalating trade hostilities between the US and its trading partners.Albanese also sniped back at the opposition’s criticism of his “indulgent” six-day visit, pointing out the former Coalition government failed to hold a single phone call with the major trading partner for years.Reuters reported this week that Canberra is close to an agreement with Beijing that would allow Australian suppliers to ship five trial canola cargoes to China, sources familiar with the matter said, a move towards ending a years-long freeze in the trade. China imposed 100% tariffs on Canadian canola meal and oil this year amid strained diplomatic ties.Emanuel, who told a Chicago news outlet last month he is considering a run for president in 2028, has been a harsh critic of China, saying last year Beijing constantly uses coercion and pressures other countries, including Japan and the Philippines.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Economic coercion by China is their most persistent and pernicious tool in their toolbox,” Emanuel said in a separate speech in 2023.The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately comment. More

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      China’s Spy Agencies Are Investing Heavily in A.I., Researchers Say

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      A new report comes amid rising concern about how China will use new tools to power covert actions, as Western intelligence services also embrace the technology.Chinese spy services have invested heavily in artificial intelligence to create new tools to speed analysis, provide early warning of threats and potentially help shape operational plans during a war, according to a new report.China, like the United States, hopes that artificial intelligence will improve the efficiency and accuracy of its intelligence analysis, allowing it to collect more intelligence and analyze it faster and more cheaply.The study, by Recorded Future’s Insikt Group, which studies cybersecurity and other threats from nation-states, terrorists and criminal groups, comes amid rising concern about how Chinese spy agencies will use A.I. to power covert actions, as Western intelligence services also embrace the technology.The researchers reviewed patent applications by the People’s Liberation Army, publicly available contracts and other material to better understand how China’s military and intelligence services have invested in artificial intelligence.Recorded Future found that China is probably using a mix of large language models, technology that can analyze huge amounts of data and communicate its results in human language. Meta and OpenAI are thought to be among the American models that China is using, along with Chinese models from DeepSeek, Zhipu AI and others.The C.I.A. and other American spy agencies have stepped up their use of artificial intelligence, both to improve analytic work and to help overseas operatives remain undiscovered. One tool developed by the C.I.A. is designed to help analysts assess the positions of foreign leaders, creating virtual versions of the officials that are powered by artificial intelligence.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Trade and Tax Policies Start to Stall U.S. Battery Boom

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      Battery companies are slowing construction or reconsidering big investments in the United States because of tariffs on China and the proposed rollback of tax credits.Battery manufacturing began to take off in the United States in recent years after Congress and the Biden administration offered the industry generous incentives.But that boom now appears to be stalling as the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers try to restrict China’s access to the American market.From South Carolina to Washington State, companies are slowing construction or reconsidering big investments in factories for producing rechargeable batteries and the ingredients needed to make them.A big reason for that is higher trade barriers between the United States and China are fracturing relationships between suppliers and customers in the two countries. At the same time, Republicans are seeking to block battery makers with ties to China, as well as those that rely on any Chinese technology or materials, from taking advantage of federal tax credits. The industry is also dealing with a softening market for electric vehicles, which Republicans and Mr. Trump have targeted. The China-related restrictions — included in the version of Mr. Trump’s domestic policy bill passed by the House — would be very difficult for many companies to operate under. China is the world’s top battery manufacturer and makes nearly all of certain components.The Trump policy bill highlights a difficult dilemma. The United States wants to create a homegrown battery industry and greatly reduce its dependence on China — and many Republican lawmakers want to end it altogether. But China is already so dominant in this industry that it will be incredibly hard for the United States to become a meaningful player without working with Chinese companies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Oil Prices Surge and Stock Markets Stumble After Israel Strikes Iran

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      The military strikes jolted investors, raising concerns that a broader Mideast conflict would disrupt the world’s energy supplies.Israel’s military strikes against Iran shook global markets, as oil prices surged and stocks tumbled on worries that the attacks could set off a broader Mideast conflict that would disrupt the world’s energy supplies.Prices of Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, jumped nearly 9 percent to almost $78 a barrel in the hour following the Israeli strikes. As investors worried that rising oil prices might lead to more inflation and hurt the economies of oil-importing nations, stock markets fell broadly.The Nikkei 225 Index in Japan fell 1.3 percent in early trading Friday, while the Hang Seng Index dipped 0.7 percent in Hong Kong. Wall Street was closed at the time of the attack, but overnight futures market trading indicated that they could also fall as much as the Tokyo market.Iran is among the world’s largest producers of oil, and it sells almost all of what it produces to China, which consumes 15 percent of the global supply. Sales by Iran’s state oil company to China represent about 6 percent of Iran’s entire economy, and are equal to about half of its entire government’s spending.Iran’s exports have lagged in recent years as international sanctions have limited its ability to modernize its oil extraction and transportation technology.But Iran’s shipments have begun to recover in the past year on strong demand from China, which would be forced buy oil elsewhere if a broader conflict were to interrupt Iranian supplies. Beijing does have a large strategic oil reserve, accumulated through more than a decade of purchases and dispersed among numerous sites across the country. That could allow it to withstand weeks of an interruption in imports without difficulty.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pentagon Is Reviewing Deal to Equip Australia With Nuclear Submarines

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      The 2021 pact, meant to help counter China’s ambitions in the Asia Pacific, will be examined to ensure that it meets “America First criteria,” a U.S. official said.The Trump administration is reviewing whether a security pact between the United States, Britain and Australia meant to equip Australia with nuclear submarines is “aligned with the president’s America First agenda,” a U.S. defense official said on Wednesday.When the deal was reached under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration in 2021, it was billed as crucial for countering China’s growing military influence in the Asia Pacific. Now, its review appears to reinforce President Trump’s skeptical and transactional approach to longstanding alliances, including demands that allies spend more on their own defense.The Pentagon official said the review would ensure that the pact, known as Aukus, met “common-sense, America First criteria,” including ensuring that U.S. forces are at “the highest readiness,” that allies are doing their part, and that “the defense industrial base is meeting our needs.” The review was first reported by The Financial Times.Australia’s defense minister, Richard Marles, said both Australia and Britain had been notified about the review and that all three nations were still committed to the deal.“We’ve been aware of this for some time. We welcome it,” Mr. Marles said in a radio interview with ABC Melbourne on Thursday, Australia time. “It’s something which is perfectly natural for an incoming administration to do.”Australia sees the Aukus agreement as central to its defense strategy in the coming decades in a region increasingly shaped by China’s assertive military posturing. Nuclear submarines can travel much farther without detection than conventional ones can and would enable the Australian Navy to greatly extend its reach.Under the pact, Australia is scheduled to receive secondhand Virginia-class nuclear submarines from the United States in the 2030s while scaling up the capacity to build its own, using a British design. But there has been concern in both Washington and Canberra about whether the United States can build new submarines to replenish its fleet quickly enough for the older ones to be transferred to Australia.Elbridge Colby, the U.S. under secretary of defense for policy, said during his Senate confirmation hearing in March that he was skeptical about the pragmatic feasibility of the deal. The Financial Times reported that Mr. Colby was heading up the Pentagon review.“So if we can produce the attack submarines in sufficient number and sufficient speed, then great,” Mr. Colby said at the hearing. “But if we can’t, that becomes a very difficult problem.”Even before the review was announced, concern and anxiety had been building in Australia over whether it could continue to depend on its longstanding relationship with the United States, given the Trump administration’s treatment of allies.Mr. Marles, the Australian defense minister, said in the radio interview that he was confident the Aukus deal would proceed because “it’s in the interests of the United States to continue to work with Australia.”Michael D. Shear More

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      Trump trade deal shows how vital China’s rare-earth metals are to US defense firms

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      The draft trade agreement with China announced by Donald Trump on Wednesday would ease concerns from top US military suppliers about rare-earth metals and magnets that, if cut off permanently, could hobble production of everything from smart bombs to fighter jets to submarines and other weapons in the US arsenal.While the deal has not yet been finalised, it may reassure major defense companies such as Lockheed Martin, the largest US user of samarium – a rare-earth metal used in military-grade magnets – whose supply is entirely controlled by China.The issue of China’s export restrictions on the metals and magnets was so important that Trump specifically mentioned them as part of his announcement of a broader trade agreement with China that would reduce US tariffs to 55% and Chinese tariffs to 10%.“Our deal with China is done, subject to final approval with President Xi and me,” Trump wrote. “Full magnets, and any necessary rare earths, will be supplied, up front, by China.”Rare earths are crucial to the production of F-35 fighter jets, Virginia- and Columbia-class nuclear-powered submarines, Tomahawk missiles, radar systems, unmanned aerial vehicles and smart bombs, according to Gracelin Baskaran of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a thinktank.China in April imposed export restrictions on seven rare earth elements during the tough negotiations over Trump’s new tariffs. China also targeted the aerospace and defense industries by limiting 15 US entities with ties to the industry from receiving dual-use goods.“The United States is already on the back foot when it comes to manufacturing these defense technologies,” Baskaran said in an interview published by CSIS. “China is rapidly expanding its munitions production and acquiring advanced weapons systems and equipment at a pace five to six times faster than the United States. While China is preparing with a wartime mindset, the United States continues to operate under peacetime conditions.”Trump has amassed a team of foreign policy China hawks, including a number who have warned that the US should focus more on the pacing threat posed by China over the coming decades instead of current conflicts in Ukraine or the Middle East.“Even before the latest restrictions, the US defense industrial base struggled with limited capacity and lacked the ability to scale up production to meet defense technology demands,” she continued. “Further bans on critical minerals inputs will only widen the gap, enabling China to strengthen its military capabilities more quickly than the United States.”China and the US had agreed last month in Geneva to pause the implementation of sky-high tariffs that would have delivered a severe economic blow to manufacturers and consumers in the US, as well as exporters in China.But China maintained export licenses on rare-earth metals used by both defense producers and carmakers that threatened to upend global supply chains and imperil production in the US.In particular, China has a stranglehold on the production and export of samarium, a magnet used in combination with cobalt to provide highly durable magnets used to withstand the intense temperatures in military-grade tech. China produces the entire world’s supply of the rare-earth metal.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn particular, the magnets are important for the production of guided missiles, satellite-guided “smart bombs”, and aircrafts, including fighter jets, according to Apex Magnets, a supplier.Those supplies of weapons have been depleted through deliveries of missiles and other ordnance to Ukraine and to the Israeli military. Pentagon planners and other officials in the administration of Joe Biden, regularly squared off over whether foreign weapons deliveries expose a US vulnerability in case it faced off with a major military power.In order to break the deadlock, secretary of state Marco Rubio also abruptly announced plans to cancel hundreds of thousands of visas for Chinese students in the US. While publicly that was said as a plan to root out Chinese spies in US higher education, Axios reported that the visa ban was also motivated by China’s obstinance on resuming rare earths exports.The breakthrough comes as Trump is planning to display US military prowess at a parade in Washington DC this weekend that has been seen as an attempt to flex American muscle and reinforce the US president’s bonafides as a supporter of the military.Trump in 2019 ordered the Pentagon to find new sources of procuring rare earth minerals, in particular samarium, because the US did not have the capacity to produce them domestically. The initiative was “essential to the national defense”, he said then. More

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      Two Are Charged With Stalking an Artist Who Criticized Xi Jinping

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      The two men also unsuccessfully tried to illegally export sensitive U.S. military technology to China, prosecutors said.Two men have been charged with plotting to silence a Los Angeles artist critical of the Chinese government and trying to illegally export sensitive U.S. military technology to China, according to federal prosecutors.The defendants, Cui Guanghai, 43, of China, and John Miller, 63, a British national who is a permanent U.S. resident, orchestrated a harassment campaign against a U.S.-based dissident artist whom the authorities did not name, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. The two men also tried to smuggle restricted technology into China, the office said.The target of the harassment plot, the authorities say, was a Los Angeles-based artist who had publicly criticized President Xi Jinping of China. The artist planned to protest against President Xi during the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November 2023 in San Francisco. The artist had also created sculptures of President Xi and his wife that, according to a federal complaint, depicted them kneeling, bare-chested, with their hands tied behind their backs.Mr. Cui and Mr. Miller, who unknowingly hired two F.B.I. agents working undercover, arranged to place a tracking device on the artist’s car and have its tires slashed, prosecutors said in court documents. The two also planned to destroy the artist’s sculptures, though they were unsuccessful, the authorities said.Mr. Cui and Mr. Miller are currently in custody in Serbia, according to federal prosecutors. It is unclear whether either man has legal representation.“The United States will seek extradition of Cui and Miller and looks forward to working in partnership with the Republic of Serbia’s Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry of Justice,” prosecutors said in a statement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ancient Trees, Dwindling in the Wild, Thrive on Sacred Ground

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      The Putuo hornbeam, a hardy tree that thrives in the damp air by the East China Sea, could be easily overlooked by visitors to the Huiji Temple on an island in the Zhejiang Province.The tree has an unremarkable appearance: spotty bark, small stature and serrated leaves with veins as neatly spaced as notebook lines. But its status is singular. As far as conservationists can tell, no other mature specimen of its species is alive in the wild.The holdout on the island, Mount Putuo, has been there for about two centuries. And according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Current Biology, its setting may have been its salvation.The study found that religious sites in eastern China have become refuges for old, ancient and endangered trees. Since the early years of the Common Era, Buddhist and Taoist temples have sheltered plants that otherwise struggled to find a foothold, including at least eight species that now exist nowhere else on earth.“This form of biodiversity conservation, rooted in cultural and traditional practices, has proven to be remarkably resilient, persisting even in the face of modern civilization and rapid economic development,” said Zhiyao Tang, a professor of ecology at Peking University and one of the study’s authors.The trees survived at religious sites in part because they were planted and cultivated there. The report noted that Buddhism and Taoism emphasize spiritual association with plants and the temples tended to be left undisturbed, shielding the areas from deforestation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More