Master of ping-ping diplomacy

Dec 14th 2011, 9:35 by G.E. | BEIJING

IT IS not often that an ambassador to China who leaves his postchooses to hold forth—on the record, and on Chinese soil—about the ups anddowns of his former job. This is true for at least two reasons. First, Chinesegovernment officials here are not exactly thick-skinned (nor short of memory).Second, those with future business here, whether diplomatic or moreremunerative, tend to say nice things or nothing at all.

Few diplomats understand that better than Geoff Raby, who from 2007until this summer served as Australia’s ambassador toChina. He now runs an eponymous consultancy in Beijing that trades on theconnections he established over a career that took him to China in the 1980s,back to Canberra and back again. Little wonder that Mr Raby would hesitate totread on those relationships in Beijing last night, when he addressed agathering of foreign correspondents who sought to induce him into undiplomaticutterances.

Mr Raby, though outspoken, has a diplomat’s flair forstrategic candour. The most undiplomatic broadside he delivered while he wasambassador was targeted at his own boss, Kevin Rudd—theMandarin-speaking minister of foreign affairs whose tenure as prime ministerwas marked by rocky relations with China. Speaking earlier this year to agathering of Australian executives in Beijing, Mr Raby observed, among a seriesof remarks that were clearly aimed at Mr Rudd, that “to speakChinese is not to know China”.

Mr Rudd was prime minister during what Mr Raby described last nightas the annus horribilis of Sino-Australian relations, the year of 2009. Thatwas a time in which China was baring its fangs diplomatically, on the heels ofethnically charged riots in the northwest region of Xinjiang that summer and inTibet a year earlier. Mr Raby recalled how Chinese diplomats ham-fistedlyobjected to the screening at a Melbourne film festival of a documentary aboutRebiya Kadeer, an exiled Uighur activist whom Chinese authorities had tried tomake out as the leader of a separatist movement. Ms Kadeer herself was invitedto attend the screening, much to Chinese consternation.

　　“The Chinese consulate was just amazingly inept,” Mr Rabysaid. “They did such a good job—I mean no one’s heard ofUighurs in Australia, no one had heard of Rebiya Kadeer—they didsuch a good job that the organisers had to rent a much bigger hall to fiteveryone in who wanted to come and see the film.” Mr Raby said thatChinese diplomats have shown more sophistication on sensitive matters since,but he noted that the big decisions about how to engage with other countriesare never in their hands.

So it was with the most troubling Sino-Australian episode of 2009:the arrest of Stern Hu, an Australian citizen and then the de facto head ofChina business for Rio Tinto, a mining giant. Mr Hu was held initially onsuspicion of stealing state secrets. Eventually he was convicted of bribery andother offences, taking a sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment. Manyobservers saw the episode as a case of politically selective prosecution,partly due to China’s frustration with the rising price of iron ore, and partly asretribution for Rio Tinto’s abandonment of a multi-billion-dollar investment deal with theAluminium Corporation of China, or Chinalco.

Mr Raby, without referring specifically to the facts of Mr Hu’s case, didnot dispute questioners’ assertions that there was politics behind its prosecution.

　　“You can draw your own conclusions from the evidence, but you’re rightthat a lot of people give and receive gifts, and some get pinged and some don’t, and Ithink to my mind that’s the nub of the issue,” Mr Raby said. Inresponse to an earlier question on the Hu case, Mr Raby had noted an inherentdefect of China’s justice system: its lack of independence from politics.

　　“Here we know there’s a reason why someone’s pinged for corruption or someone’s not pinged forcorruption and usually there’s something sits behind it, so when there’s an anti-corruptioncampaign in Guangdong or Shenzhen, then it’s a fair bet thatthat’s somehow tied to elite politics, because why ping Person A and notB? And I think that is the context in which law is practiced here,” Mr Rabysaid. “There is rule by law here…But there’s no rule oflaw. There’s nothing that sits above the political processes of the [topleadership].”

Mr Raby said foreign governments can only hope to push patiently,persistently and diplomatically for “incremental” progress onits justice system and human rights. “I don’t thinkmegaphone diplomacy gets you anywhere in this space.”

Mr Raby noted that during his four years as ambassador China’s leveragein world affairs has increased dramatically, as it became, for example,Australia’s number-one trading partner. He said that China’s economicpower, combined with its authoritarian system, pose an historic diplomaticchallenge as China’s ambitions—including its military ambitions—continue to grow.

　　“We have never seen in world history, with Nazi Germany perhaps toone side, a global economic power that has stood so far apart from theinternational norms of social and political organisation, so it’s somethingdifferent. It really, really is different,” Mr Raby said. Helater assured me that when he uses this line in speeches, he throws in amention of Nazi Germany to pre-empt the nitpickers of history, not as a pointof comparison to China. That would be rather undiplomatic indeed.