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Australians see benefits of strong China ties but want Chinese apps banned, survey finds
- A majority of survey respondents said they saw the advantages of bilateral relations, but most are also in favour of banning WeChat and TikTok
- More than half also said they supported more defence spending amid China’s growing military might, and see China as a security threat to Australia
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Su-Lin Tanin Singapore
Australians remain wary of the security threat China may pose, even as they back efforts by the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to stabilise ties with Beijing, a new survey has found.
Many in Australia continue to show “a mixture of apprehension and ambivalence” towards China, according to the April survey of 2,000 people by the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) and the Centre for Business Intelligence & Data Analytics (BIDA) at the University of Technology Sydney. Nearly 40 per cent of those surveyed say the current government is managing Australia’s relationship with China well, a five-point increase from 2022.
It also found that 63 per cent of respondents saw the benefits of Australia’s relationship with China – a three-year high – but a majority also wanted to ban Chinese social media apps WeChat and TikTok, supported more defence spending amid the growing might of China’s military and said they saw China as a security threat to Australia.
“The Albanese Labor government’s policy of ‘stabilising’ the relationship with Beijing appears to be aligned with public sentiments,” said ACRI’s Elena Collinson and BIDA’s Paul Burke, the authors of the report.
“The Australian Labor Party is gaining domestic political advantage from being seen as the better party to manage the relationship, and statecraft is perceived as preferable to megaphone diplomacy in terms of how the relationship is conducted in public.
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