Unless Australia stands up to a bullying China, it will just push to get away with more, Chinese-Australian artist says

Our response to Yang Hengjun’s jailing is inadequate and chilling. Chinese-Australians are Australians too! - writes Badiucao, a Chinese-Australian artist based in Melbourne.

China’s premier is visiting Australia and Li Qiang’s first stop was the Adelaide zoo, home to pandas Wang Wang and Fu Ni.

Beijing has enjoyed exercising “panda diplomacy” over the years, loaning bears to countries depending on its assessment of how well diplomatic relations are going.

The cute black and white animals present a softer, friendlier image of China – but they also represent something much darker.

They are found in present-day Sichuan province – once Tibetan territory. The national symbol is actually an unapologetic symbol of China’s own dark colonial history of the subjugation of the Tibetan nation.

I don’t expect any Australian official to point this out – despite this country’s special obligation to do so, given its own history with the Indigenous community here. Nor do I expect any official to ask Li about what has happened to the Uyghurs, the Turkic minority within China’s borders who have become targets of a national campaign that some human rights groups call a genocide.

Australians love to express guilt about our own history. We talk about it – then do nothing to speak up against present-day injustices. Instead our government decides trade is more important, despite the fact that China has repeatedly acted like a bully on trade matters, hitting Australian wine or lobsters whenever something upsets the Chinese Communist party.

Economically, Australia is a small country compared with China. But how did it come to this? Surely protecting the integrity of the country and protecting our citizens should be important.

A Beijing court tried the Chinese-Australian writer Yang Hengjun in a one-day, closed-door hearing on espionage charges and handed him a suspended death penalty. Canberra responded by saying it was “appalled”.

Now the Chinese premier is visiting and our government is installing temporary guardrails and isolation fences around the capital to shield CCP officials from seeing pro-democracy protesters. How can we possibly save our fellow citizen if we cooperate so easily with authoritarianism?

This is not just about Yang. This is personal. I’m an immigrant who chose to live in Australia because I believe in this country. For three generations my family were victims of the CCP. I wanted to escape that cycle. Now I am a target of Chinese transnational aggression, as are other Australians of Chinese-speaking origin who have dared to speak out about human rights and democracy and against the dictatorship of Xi Jinping.

I think of the writer and comedian Vicky Xu, the great novelist Murong Xuecun, the Hong Kong rights lawyer Kevin Yam. We do not feel safe exercising our right to free expression when we see our government unwilling to stand up for Yang, unwilling to fight for its citizens. The Australian government’s response to what has happened to Yang is inadequate and chilling. Chinese-Australians are Australians too!

Meanwhile, China is hardly rewarding Australia for our lack of a spine. It is doing what all bullies do – pushing to get away with more. It has changed Hong Kong’s vibrant open society and it keeps making suggestions that it will do the same for Taiwan, including constantly sending fighter jets in its direction. It has been picking fights with the Philippines in the South China Sea. These are unpleasant developments, so the Albanese government prefers to ignore them in the hope they will go away. But China is not going away.

I once drew a political cartoon depicting Anthony Albanese caught in a balancing act, trying to juggle selling wine exports with our Aukus submarine defence strategy. My message was that this approach is increasingly unsustainable – and dangerous. It’s a funny-looking cartoon but I hoped that Australians would see it and understand that if we choose not to be brave, to do the right thing, to stand by our principles, then the joke will be on us.