Australia China tensions.

[ACP230]

Any country that makes and enjoys the vile stuff called Vegemite should not be messed
with. You never know what the Aussie's might come up with next, eh?

[Joe in PNG]

Any country that makes and enjoys the vile stuff called Vegemite should not be messed
with. You never know what the Aussie's might come up with next, eh?

It's a nation where the people still hike the Kokoda Trak for fun.

[TGS]

Who the hell gave that up?

To be fair, we put airstrips on almost every major atoll group in the Pacific during the 30s and especially 40s. The vast majority were abandoned following WWII, many more following the advent of longer range air travel in the 50s, wth the final nails in the coffin after the weather and radar stations became obsolete during the 60s and 70s. It would have been counter-productive to "keep" them, especially considering they were built on the land of sovereign nations which successfully petitioned the US Gov't during the 50s, 60s and 70s to be released from territorial status of the United States. Among probably close to a hundred other spots, the same is true for Kanton (the island in question here).

All this is just to point out that nothing about us "giving up" Kanton was unusual. It would have been an exception to keep it, actually.

[Suvorov]

Don't worry- I'm sure Biden is up to the challenge!

Yep - who’d of thought we would ever be on the side of China against Australia? 😉


I get a fair amount of my international news from Australian sources (they are nice to listen to like the Brits but aren’t as hopelessly woke) and yeah - it really seems like Perth and Beijing are at odds. I’ll hand it to the Aussies - they have known this was was brewing for a while and have been doing what the can to modernize their military.

Any country that makes and enjoys the vile stuff called Vegemite should not be messed
with. You never know what the Aussie's might come up with next, eh?

Dude - the Aussies don’t have anything on the Chinese (at least vegemite isn’t known to have caused any world pandemics)!

[HeavyDuty]

To be fair, we put airstrips on almost every major atoll group in the Pacific during the 30s and especially 40s. The vast majority were abandoned following WWII, many more following the advent of longer range air travel in the 50s, wth the final nails in the coffin after the weather and radar stations became obsolete during the 60s and 70s. It would have been counter-productive to "keep" them, especially considering they were built on the land of sovereign nations which successfully petitioned the US Gov't during the 50s, 60s and 70s to be released from territorial status of the United States. Among probably close to a hundred other spots, the same is true for Kanton (the island in question here).

All this is just to point out that nothing about us "giving up" Kanton was unusual. It would have been an exception to keep it, actually.

So it probably wasn’t recent. Got it, I didn’t research before I posted that. Thank you for the background.

[TiroFijo]

If Australia and NZ don't react quickly, they are going to enter China's event horizon... and be swalloded into their main sphere of influence.

Not only due to economica ties, the mainland chinese are the fastest growing inmigrant group, and many aussie friends tell me: "our future lies more with China than with anyone else".

[TGS]

I just wanted to point this thread out for everyone who poo-poo'd the USMC force redesign, saying they should still have tanks and think they should still be America's 2nd land army...

The USMC redesign obsoletes the Chinese idea of strategically placed, scattered pacific bases before they've even started construction.

Not to mention, it'd be a pretty easy target to neutralize anyway....

...and, failing all that, we could just do the simple thing and.....oh I don't know.....fly around it.

[5pins]

Sky News in Australia has been having a lot of coverage of the issue and seems to be taking it pretty seriously.

[TiroFijo]

Sky News is the Fox News of Australia, and politically the aussie population is becoming just as polarized as in the USA...

[Mark D]

Australia and New Zealand embraced close economic ties with China (and the test of Asia) a long time ago. The government of both countries are addicted to the steady stream of revenue brought by Chinese business investments, tourists, and students. Real estate has boomed too, partly due to cashed-up Chinese buyers. As Trio mentions, there's a ton of Chinese immigration as well. I don't think either country is positioned to do anything about China, except posture a little.

Australia and New Zealand both have long and distinguished military records (see ANZACs). Unfortunately, both governments are increasingly woke and that ultimately will undermine the effectiveness of their respective militaries.