Australian immigration rejects Chinese efforts to dictate its visa policy
September 03 2009 by Matt Jones
John Howard defends Australian immigration
Australia is standing firm on its position that it will allocate Australian visas to whomsoever it likes - whether China is happy about it or not.
Former Australian prime minister John Howard has criticised "clumsy" and "ridiculous" Chinese diplomatic efforts to instruct Australian immigration to deny visas to its exiled dissidents. At a business function in Sydney yesterday, Mr. Howard spoke about China:
"[China] can be very clumsy diplomatically. They've got this silly habit, if they don't want you to see someone, they say so - which means that you must see them."
Last month, China attempted to prevent exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer visiting Australia.
Mr. Howard commented: "Of course we had to give that lady a visa. Heavens above, you don't allow the Chinese, or any government - whether it's China or Britain or America - to tell us who we should give visas to."
China's response to Kadeer's successful application for an Australia visa was to cancel a senior minister's visit. China believes Ms. Kadeer to be a separatist who was incited unrest in North West China's Xinjiang region.
During yesterday's business function, Mr. Howard outlined some of the other diplomatic efforts by China to control the granting of Australian visas to its citizens. He cited the case of the Dalai Lama as an example and expressed his opinion that recent tensions between China and Australia probably stemmed from mining giant Rio Tinto's rejection of a US$19.5 US billion (S$28 billion) cash injection from China's state-owned aluminium giant Chinalco.
"I think they got their noses out of joint over the Chinalco thing and some of the things they have done in response have been conditioned by that reaction," he said.
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