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Ex-Australian Minister Tom Kenyon Urges to Cut China Ties, Likens Xi Jinping to Mao Zedong

© AFP 2023 / FREDERIC J. BROWNThe national flags of Australia and China are displayed before a portrait of Mao Zedong facing Tiananmen Square, during a visit by Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard in Beijing on April 26, 2011. AFP PHOTO/Frederic J. BROWN (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN / AFP)
The national flags of Australia and China are displayed before a portrait of Mao Zedong facing Tiananmen Square, during a visit by Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard in Beijing on April 26, 2011.  AFP PHOTO/Frederic J. BROWN (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN / AFP) - Sputnik International, 1920, 03.04.2021
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Sino-Australian ties deteriorated in 2020, when Beijing imposed 80 percent tariffs on Australian barley imports in response to the Pacific nation's call for an international inquiry into the origins of COVID-19.

Former Australian State Trade Minister Tom Kenyon has urged Canberra to sever its economic ties with Beijing, drawing parallels between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong.

In an interview with the news outlet Weekend Australian on Saturday, Kenyon, who earlier backed a Chinese Consulate in suburban Adelaide, said that Australia "needs to begin disengaging economically from China or, at the very least, limiting" its "exposure to the Chinese economy".

According to him, relations between Australia and China have "fundamentally changed" since he served as trade minister in the 2010s.

Kenyon recalled that when he took the ministerial portfolio at the time, those were the final days of Chinese President Hu Jintao's term "and Australia, along with the rest of the world, had been engaging with China", expecting Beijing "to become more open and more collegiate".

The ex-trade minister argued that all this changed "within a few months when current and now-permanent President Xi Jinping took over, as well as continuing his role heading the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]".

© AP Photo / FileFILE - In this file photo taken in 1966, Mao Zedong waves at the beginning of China's Cultural Revolution. On May 16, 1966, the Communist Party's Politburo produced a document announcing the start of what was formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to pursue class warfare and enlist the population in mass political movements.
Ex-Australian Minister Tom Kenyon Urges to Cut China Ties, Likens Xi Jinping to Mao Zedong - Sputnik International, 1920, 03.04.2021
FILE - In this file photo taken in 1966, Mao Zedong waves at the beginning of China's Cultural Revolution. On May 16, 1966, the Communist Party's Politburo produced a document announcing the start of what was formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to pursue class warfare and enlist the population in mass political movements.
"Since that time, the CCP has become more aggressive, more hostile, and more likely to interfere in events in foreign countries. President Xi seems to be a genuine communist more in the mould of Mao Zedong than [former Chinese President] Jiang Zemin. This does not augur well for us", Kenyon asserted.

The founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC), Mao Zedong ruled as the CCP chairman from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976. He is notoriously known for launching the so-called Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960s to reassert his authority over the Chinese government, something that resulted in tens of millions of deaths from starvation, mass execution, and prison labour.

Australia-China Trade Row

As for Kenyon's remarks, they come amid strained ties between China and Australia, which deteriorated in May 2020, when Beijing imposed 80 percent tariffs on barley imports from Australia in retaliation for Prime Minister Scott Morrison's demand for an international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus.

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The row further escalated after China slapped similar tariffs on Australian coal, copper, wine, and lobster. In December 2020, Beijing banned timber imports from the Australian states of South Australia and Tasmania after some pests were detected in the inbound cargo.

China was Australia's largest trading partner in 2019, accounting for 27.4 percent of Canberra's overall trade, according to the Pacific nation's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

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