Back in April a boat of 66 Sri Lankan asylum seekers slipped into Geraldton harbor. By the afternoon half the town had assembled for a gander. One woman's indignation was tempered with relief: What if they'd been terrorists?
Now in reality, no credible threat would attempt to invade a Pacific middle power with an annual defence budget in excess of $20 billion and strategic ties to the US via a boat that was remarkable only for staying afloat. But the woman's fears hadn't come from nowhere. Politicians avoid the term 'invasion' to frame the issue of asylum seekers, but only just. We are regularly told we have 'lost control of our borders', that our sovereignty is imperilled and, by way of debacles such as the Sayed Abdellatif affair, that asylum seekers are wolves in sheep's clothing.
The irony is that, quite apart from campaign slogans and the issue of asylum seekers, Australia may be entering a geo-political reality where serious questions will be asked of our national sovereignty.
The imperial mandarins learnt the hard way that sovereignty is not inviolable. For centuries China boasted the world's largest economy and superpower status. The Treaty of Nanjing of 1842, which concluded the First Opium War, wounded this sense of preeminence. Having missed out on the industrial revolution, the Qing dynasty was little match for the industrial war machines of Europe. The treaty excised large chunks of China to the foreign powers and was the first of many significant defeats China faced over the next hundred years.
China specialists Orville Schell and John Delury argue that the treaty has become year dot for modern China. In an exhibition in Nanjing city commemorating this capitulation, a panel records: 'Those unequal treaties were like fettering ropes of humiliation that made China lose control of her political and military affairs ... [It] has become a symbol of the commencement of China's modern history.' Why would the Chinese Communist Party want to commence its modern history here?
The exhibit concludes: 'It is hard to look back upon this humiliating history ... But the abolishment of the unequal treaties has shown the Chinese people's unwavering spirit of struggle for independence and self-strengthening. To feel shame is to approach courage.' To an outsider that might all sound simplistic, even glib. Isn't that the plot of Karate Kid? — an innocent suffers a crushing humiliation, the adversity surfaces a hitherto unknown strength of character, and redemption