China’s embarrassing backflip to Australia after promising to bring ‘economic pain’
- China appears to be in the process of backflipping from a policy designed to bring Australia’s economy to its knees.
- This week, independent reports emerged from both Bloomberg and Reuters that China’s ban on importing Australian coal might soon be lifted.
- The sudden 180 degree turnaround is reportedly as China faces the prospect of more power failures with some cities already freezing in the nation’s northeast.
- This will mark the first time since China waged its trade war against Australia that the Asian superpower has backed down and come crawling back.
- The ongoing ban has no doubt impacted the Australian economy — but it’s adversely affected Chinese citizens too.Australia bounced back quickly after finding alternate markets in India, Japan and South Korea, among others.Meanwhile, China experienced rolling blackouts for several months in the winter of 2022 but was unable to buy Aussie coal – which would have been an easy fix.
- The Australian Strategic Policy Institute estimated that China was screwing itself out of US$2 billion a week by paying for this premium price to receive the product through a third party.
