‘An antipodean Cambodia’: China’s goal for Australia - The Australian

This article exposes China's explicit strategic objective to reduce Australia to a vassal-state position analogous to Cambodia's dependency, signalling that China views political subordination—not military conquest—as the primary path to neutralising Australian resistance. If successful, such accommodation would collapse Australia's strategic autonomy, AUKUS credibility, and the Indo-Pacific coalition architecture, materially advancing Chinese regional hegemony.