Hi, thanks for the article.
I think I can provide some nuance. Some of your points are especially valid but there are a few factors overlooked.
I speak as former Australian Navy with my father, also Navy, author of the Australian Defense White Paper on China, Taiwan and the Spratly islands- way back in the 1980s. This topic was one for the dinner table growing up and indeed I have a Medium article about it.
1) There are no kind words one can say about Murdoch. Zero. Outside of Sky News, it tends to be much tamer in Australia than Fox in America. It gets the full Murdoch experience and you should never go full Murdoch. Australians seem to be a little bit better at picking up Murdoch BS so the tone is softer here. But that IS changing and we seem to be getting more and more infected with American populism. Things are more overt in America, us Australians are still in a bit of denial about our past and attitudes currently. Let's not forget we had the racist White Australia policy for 70 years while worrying about the "yellow peril" from Asia.
2) China can't invade Australia, in fact China can't even invade Taiwan. Again, not trying to self promote TOO much, but I lay out the reasons in my article. Bottomline, it would require landing ships much bigger in number than D-Day and currently has less than 10. Taiwan would be no push over and the American fleet would be less than a week away. Now the US army is pretty good but often finds itself in difficult insurgencies and urban combat trying to be more police than soldiers. It was designed for grand battles against clear enemies. However, where America really has an edge is its Navy and Air Force, so a fight over Taiwan would play to America's strengths. China still has what is called a brown water Navy, a big Navy but a coastal one. They are trying to change that but it will take decades. There is no scenario in the next ten years at least, where China could take Taiwan- and the Russian disaster in Ukraine and global response would also add to that pause. And the Russians didn't have waters with submarines and Pengyu island armed with 65,000 Taiwanese troops and every antiship missile system imaginable.
3) As for American bases, they were not put there with anything China related in mind. Most are leftover from world War 2. There is a certain truism that America has bases in Japan and Germany not to protect these countries as told, but basically to make sure they don't try any stupid sh*t again. That's the primary reason those bases are in the area, not about China. Plus of course in South Korea as deterrent to North Korea. You have to remember that the biggest bases close to China that would be a threat to China, Subic Naval base and Clark Air base in the Phillipines, were closed down some 30 years ago and never replaced.
4) China does do some shady stuff, especially about intellectual property, but also buying whole supply chains and key infrastructure points...and has its dodgy "generous" loans to developing countries who can't pay and then China siezes those assets. There is a certain amount of spying going on, from trade/commercial secrets to Defense secrets.
5) with China it is healthy to be alert but not alarmed. Fine to be wary. But there are also plenty of opportunities. Economically any conflict involving the US and China or even Australia and China is a lose- lose. We have a symbiotic relationship. Australia sells the metal to China who turns it into a fridge who then sells it to America. If the US economy fumbles, we all go down. If China's economy fumbles, we all go down. If Australia's economy fumbles...actually no one else would care.
Banging on about China is just lazy populism by people out of ideas. A convenient foreign boogeyman . America had its drug running rapey Mexicans coming for your job while somehow living on benefits. China and Russia have the big, bad west. North Korea, Iran and Russia stomp their feet every few years because we keep trying to forget about them and they want us to dislike them and worry about them. So they act up. China is an easy boogeyman, still calls itself communist but it is about as communist as Murdoch. But we have the whole fear of communism thing. Then they don't look like many of us and have a non latin based language. They have money and aren't afraid to use it, worse they have patience and timelines much longer than our own. They aren't in a rush, our guys are too worried about the next election cycle.
I do get short excepts from sky news at work in click baity articles. Almost all are ridiculous akin to " Did you know the average fossil fueled car causes less pollution than one of Greta Thunberg's farts? Maybe instead of banning ICE powered cars, we should ban Greta Thunberg." Chuckle or roll your eyes, don't click or watch is my recommendation.
