Yeah, this thread
["Across Asia, Beijing's Star is in Ascendance"
has a link to a NYT article that discusses Aussie-Chinese economic ties pretty well.
What I don’t understand about the gutless policies of countries like Australia is that they haven’t yet woken upto the fact that Taiwan is China’s largest trading partner.
Moreover many of the “Chinese” companies buying raw materials from Australia are in fact owned and operated by Taiwanese.
Australia is one of the last country in the world able to do anything concrete for Taiwan. Empty promises and moral persuasion is the last thing Taiwan needs. How about giving some real money to Taiwan? As Taiwan look at what trade it does with Australia and look at how much trade China is doing with Australia?
In recent years China has increasing make Australia rich by buying all sorts of raw materials from Australia, eg iron ore, nickel, tin, zinc etc etc.
Australia even agreed to allow China to built new railways to deliver the ore to the coast because they couldn’t come up with the capital themselves. In other words China is a major investor in Australia as well as a major buyer. Australia will become increasingly dependent on China because in the future no country will consume as much Australian raw materials or commodities as China - not even US-. How dependent China will be on Australia will depend upon whether it can source the same raw materials from Brazil or South America/Europe.
Now under such a situation do you see Australia one day telling China, Please stop, stop being mean to Taiwan or else we won’t sell you any more raw materials , we will nationalise all your companies In Australia ( as if Australia does not want to see dairy products, its other exports etc to the biggest consumer market in the world). Even the US cannot afford its factories in China to be shut down.
The prices of commodities are at their 20 years high. And the recent highs in the Australian stock exchange ( and you can check this out yourself ) has been companies that sell commodities, eg Rio Tinto , BMP etc…
Look at the amount of steel China is making and exporting as well as the amount being imported. google.
Unless Australia can be a very different country ( not a commodity base one) Australian support for Taiwan can be totally ignored. Australia went to Iraq when the US asked. I don’t think China is Iraq. 
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Agreed, but it is worth noting that Australia’s largest individual export buyer is China Steel.
Just in case others didn’t know, due to the anachronistic KMT way of naming things in this country, “China” Steel is a Taiwan company.
Does Australia need China more than China needs Australia?
This is the question as framed; however, I think that is very simplistic reasoning. As I posted Taiwan is China’s largest trading partner, but apparent arch rival. China could cut off Taiwan tomorrow through trade embargos, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t because it needs the investment to make it a stable country internally.
Australia is a dunce to open itself to China’s begger thy neighbor strategies which it applies to its idealogical enemies.Ultimatley economic growth and nationalism are the only trump cards China’s regime has against being toppled internally. However, in China’s case these are two opposing strategies.China can use Taiwan as a rallying point for nationalism, but in doing so it threatens economic growth. A quick invasion of Taiwan could well be a disaster for economic growth and consequently the regimes ability to hold power into the future. Comments like those coming from Downer only encourage China. It allows the Chinese to think wrongly in my book that Australians won’t stand up for Taiwan when push comes to shove. It wouldn’t be very difficult to galvinize anti-Chinese sentiment in Australia. You can galvinize anti-anything in Australia barring the footy, cricket and sauce on meat pies. That’s how Howard has survived for so long. If there ever was a war between Taiwan and China Australia would be the big losers economically, militarily, and politically.
Sorry to detract from your good post there Fox.
Thanks for the link to The Age, Hobart. Bruce Jacobs, the author, is based at Monash Uni and heads a collection of Taiwan studies types.
Now a heads up for the Aussie voters. Oh to be registered in a marginal seat!
Nothing wrong with this front page from Brisbane’s Courier Mail (via Media watch) as far as I’m concerned.
HG
Drambuie you are wrong as to why Australia had China finance the iron ore railways. The reason being that in the early 80’s in order to get China to buy Australian wool, Australia built huge holding sheds in China for the Aussie wool and gave China massive credit to buy the wool. The Chinese then filled the sheds and cut off demand. It was a brilliant move by the Chinese and broke the Australian wool industry that had foolishly built a stock pile of wool that took 15 years to sell down at rock bottom prices to of course the Chinese.
Nobody was going to fall for that trick again, so when it came to the ore they got the commitment first from the Chinese. You build the railway!
Of course we all know “China Steel” is a Taiwanese Company that also operates in China. It has been in the news recently because of its boss. Recently, the head of China Steel tried to visit his company in China via HK. He was as we all know refused entry by China because he supports Chan Shu Bian’s government! What an insult if you don’t mind my adding. Why don’t call yourself Taiwan Steel or DPP Steel or Taidu Steel? All perfectly acceptable. Why all the pretense to be China loving after that insult.
China Steel unfortunately is not the largest steel manufacturer in terms of “output tons” in the world. (This fact must really hurt the DPP supporters or hit them by surprise).
In my opinion demand for steel produced by such a politically tainted company as Taiwan/China Steel from China will also not continue long into the future unless the boss resigns soon and sell all his shares like the boss of Giordano who once criticised Li Peng, or the other option is renounce support for CSB and start kissing “left”.
The biggest manufacturer of steel in terms of output tons is now BaoShan Iron & Steel Worksa PRC company which is shortly going to IPO again in the Shanghai A share market - China’s largest stock market.
As China can now independently produce the highest quality or grade of steel for export etc, its need for companies like China Steel( Taiwan) is no longer a strategic issue. China Steel/Taiwan’s help is still needed only because the amount produced in China by all the steel companies combined is still below the phenomenal demand for steel in China.
Certain other industries of Taiwanese origin are still important to China as they serve as “role models” for example TSMC ( semi-conductor manufacturing) and only in the very high end sector - below 18micron-. TSMC wisely invested their latest technology in Singapore but I understand from the latest news that CSMC, its major PRC competitor in China is not even the slightest bit concerned about technology transfer.
China also buys more iron ore from Brazil than it does from Australia. The demand is so great that Chinese companies have had to ship iron ore from such far off place as Liberia and pay costlier freight charges. ( Reuter’s news).
In my opinion Australia is a country which is basically concerned about money. That’s all. This coming election will also be decided by the state of the economy. It is unlikely that such a commodity based country would withold iron ore from China- if it had spare iron ore to sell. Bauxite or Aluminium ore would be a better leverage probably as Brazil may not have as much or any.
Such is the enthusiasm to make as much money as possible in the shortest possible time that I think Australia or the Australians even asked China to help it get “the stuff out of the ground” by building the railway to transport the ore. You know it will not only be Chinese money going in to build the railway, it will be imported Chinese workers because Australia can’t find enough labourers willing to work at the prices necessary to complete the railway project. If Australia cared about politics/integrity or morality, more than they do about making money, it could have witheld selling anything now. May even be wise to: Lower the supply, push up the demand. The demand for iron ore or any commodity will just push prices even higher and if it chooses to sell later it would make even more money than now and would provide greater strategic leverage. But such “control” is just not happening.
Stock tip: It is a good time to be buying shares in Chinese steel companies - Not China Steel of course. After the recent crackdown and enforced cooling in April by the PRC central govt, which lowered the related share prices somewhat, the shares are climbing again mainly because of the phenomenal unstoppable demand.
[quote]CHINA RULES THE WORLD IN STEEL OUTPUT AND DEMAND The astonishing pace of growth in China has supported the global steel sector for the last few years. Official figures show that this trend continued - indeed, accelerated - in 2002.
The world’s largest steel-producing country is also a substantial importer. In 2002 China imported 24.5 million tonnes of finished carbon steel products, plus 2.6 million tonnes of stainless steel. These were massively higher than in the previous year - by 42 percent for carbon steel and by 39 percent for stainless steel. The only product area to show a significant decrease in imports was billets and slabs (down 44 percent), and this can be attributed to the enormous growth in domestic steel production.
We calculate China’s apparent crude steel consumption last year to have been approximately 210 million tonnes. That was an increase of 21 percent over the previous year.
There have been numerous predictions as to how long this surging growth in Chinese demand will continue. The country has embarked on a series of major infrastructure projects, which will consume considerable quantities of steel through to the middle of this decade. The current five-year plan period (2001-2005) includes the construction of large-scale gas and electricity transmission lines going from one end of this vast country to the other, as well as waterways to tackle China’s increasingly severe drought problems, plus railways and other transport projects.
Even with large-scale steel-intensive developments like these, it is clear that 20 percent-plus annual growth rates in steel consumption are not sustainable for the long term. There will probably be more major construction activity to come, but - certainly as far as imports are concerned - future growth is likely to be more in flat than long products. Figures for last year indicate that output of light and heavy long products (used largely in construction) increased more rapidly than those of sheets and strip.
The Chinese steel producers themselves are gearing up for a major expansion in the manufacture of products that are currently imported, notably heavy sections. A new mill to produce as much as 3 million tonnes per year within three years is being built in Shandong province. Growth in China’s imports of these products can be expected to slow down once these expanded capacities are in operation.
The country’s steel companies are not neglecting sheets in their expansion plans (notably at the Baoshan works). But they have a long way to go to catch up with demand.
Source: MEPS - International Steel Review
http://www.meps.co.uk/viewpoint2-03.htm
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[quote]Does Australia need China more than China needs Australia?
This is the question as framed; however, I think that is very simplistic reasoning. As I posted Taiwan is China’s largest trading partner, but apparent arch rival. China could cut off Taiwan tomorrow through trade embargos, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t because it needs the investment to make it a stable country internally. [/quote]
Oh Mr Fox… Thank you for reading my post. I once read your reply about the Australian economy or the exchange rate in the more “serious” business forum. I have decided I didn’t understand your reply then nor the replies to my recent post up above about Australia and Taiwan. So I can’t reply to your various questions.
G’day to you. 
Drambuie,
I don’t think Australia will be importing too many Chinese laborers to build the railway.
When reading my posts just try thinking and reading at the same time.