China's Tweet on Australian Soldier Worsens Diplomatic Row

Australia-China relations hit a new low after a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman tweeted a doctored image of an Australian soldier holding a knife to the throat of an Afghan child — a barbed reference to an ongoing war crimes probe. The diplomatic row between China and Australia just keeps getting worse, with no obvious off-ramp to the downward spiral in relations between the two key trading partners.

Ties have been fraught since 2018 when Canberra barred Huawei Technologies Co. from building its 5G network on national security grounds. They went into the deep freeze earlier this year after Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government called for an international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus.

Beijing has rejected Morrison’s demand for an apology, accuses Canberra of being a puppet of the U.S. and of meddling in its internal affairs. China has hit Australian barley and wine with crippling tariffs and told traders to stop buying commodities including coal, copper, sugar, timber and lobster. Canberra says it won’t be cowed by “economic coercion’’ and is considering taking China to the World Trade Organization. It’s a marked reversal in the once cordial relationship that saw Australia host a state visit by President Xi Jinping in 2014 and sign a comprehensive free-trade agreement a year later.

As the world’s most China-dependent developed economy, Australia is showing other nations the steep cost of standing up to Beijing. The ongoing reprisals mean Canberra needs to diversify its export markets by boosting trading ties with Asian powerhouses such as India and Indonesia and by inking new deals with the European Union and U.K.

The growing spat shows China’s propensity to use trade as a diplomatic cudgel and demonstrates its brand of aggressive “wolf warrior” diplomacy that’s also strained ties with countries including Canada and the U.K. The economic offensive against Australia is meant to deter others, including the EU and Japan, from siding with U.S. efforts to counter China’s rise. But with Joe Biden vowing a more multilateral approach after Trump’s “American First’’ doctrine, Beijing's strategy risks backfiring.

There are already signs that regional groupings such as the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network and the U.S.-backed Quad are being revived. And Beijing’s treatment of Australia may spur like-minded democracies to pull closer together to counter China’s expansion.

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