vlee29au comments

Should this be surprising if your leaders that you vote serve another master, willing and prepared to sacrifice your self interest (e.g. business, exporters) for geopolitical containment? Should this be surprising when your leaders treat your country as a forward base or an unsinkable carrier as target? Should this be surprising when your leader are more concerned about photoshoots with other leaders that you crave for attention?

I think the main reason for choosing France was due to the competitive evaluation process (the Royal Australian Navy strongly recommended the winner). There are of course some domestics (i.e. promoting local Australian jobs, developing the local industry) and political considerations. China's opposition to Japan's tender was acknowledged by the Australian politicians but at the end is not crucial or important to sway the final decision. Australians decide what is best for Australia.

For this reason, the Japanese government has no right to ask for an 'explanation' from Australia. The same arrogant way, PM Abe asked why President Widodo (Indonesia) chose the Chinese High Speed rail system.

Many people who fear, hate or worse still, pretend to be concerned about China have been predicting the demise and breakup of China for the past few decades. Still remember the book "The Coming of collapse of China" by Gordon Chang. The collapse was suppose to happen sometime before or during the Beijing Olympics. Well it should bear the title of "The coming financial collapse of the American or British Banks.". Despite being confounded and proven wrong, Mr Chang and others (many others) still peddle the doom and gloom mantra about China's unavoidable problems and ultimate demise. The problem with these people is that they have a one track or idealistic mind, almost oblivious to reality and persist in a fanatical hope of seeing China fall. China is certainly not without problems but the fact is this 'communist regime' has been particularly adapt in overcoming the economic obstacles ahead. Much better than many democratically elected countries (e.g. Iceland, UK etc). Contrary to the claims of these China doomsayers, the government DOES listen to the people (not necessarily the mob), is very realistic and does acknowledge the myriad of problems, particularly in a large and diverse country such as China. The country politically, socially and economically is slowly evolving. They are bent on tackling many problems (social unrest, injustice, economic problems, environmental issues, health, climate etc). Preaching idealistic and democratic slogans without practical wisdom is pretty useless.