Joe Biden’s Indo-Pacific co-ordinator Kurt Campbell says China has indicated it will only become more assertive in coming years.Credit:Andrew Taylor
Campbell also flagged that Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping would soon hold their first face-to-face meeting since Biden entered the White House.
In a discussion with the Asia Society think tank,Campbell said he would have expected Beijing to soften its assertive style of diplomacy following Biden’s inauguration but that the rising superpower was instead doubling down.
“I’m not sure that they have the strategic thinking to go back to a different kind of diplomacy towards Australia right now,” Campbell told former prime minister Kevin Rudd,now president of the Asia Society.
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“I see a harshness in their approach that appears to be unyielding.”
Campbell said he believed Australians should be “settling in for the long haul” in terms of tensions with China,even as the Morrison government tries to repair the relationship.
“I see little yield,and if anything a rising sense of nationalism and a sense of aggrievement and a determination to continue to prosecute a very assertive case internationally across the board,” he said of China.