 The rise of China and Asia has sparked concerns war between the new superpower and the US is inevitable We spoke to Professor Paul Dib from a new College of Asia in the Pacific to gauge his views on the likelihood of the two countries being drawn into a full-scale conflict. It is very unlikely and whilst that knowledge that historically when a major new revolutionary ambitious party has come to power, like the former Pifters Germany or Imperial Japan, wars occur, there are now two distinct restraints that differ from those periods. First one is nuclear deterrence. Everybody knows that if major powers go to war and nuclear weapons are used, it's the end game. It's the end of those countries as modern functioning societies. It's great inhibition. The second one is economic interdependence. I know that that was an argument at the turn of the last century before 1914 but now, as we all know, it's on a scale of interdependence that we've never seen before. You know, take the iPhone. Whereas it invented the United States, of course, where else? We're a bit made for it in Japan. Where is it assembled? China, as long as it has low cost labor, but it isn't going to continue having low cost labor be able to take it by in given Vietnam. So, I don't discount the possibility of a miscalculation with something like the Senkaku Islands or somewhere in the South China Sea. But war between the major powers, for instance, China and the United States, it's very unlikely in life. In the unlikely event of war breaking out between China and the US, Professor Deb concedes Australia would be placed in a very difficult position. We've been in every war the Americans have been in and since the beginning of the last century. First World War, Second World War, Korean War, Vietnam War, First Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan. We are the ally of Khao Se, no. But in the event, for instance, such a war as unthinkable as I think it is, started over Taiwan and American troops were being killed by Chinese, then the Americans would invoke the Anzis Treaty. The Anzis Treaty says words of the event. In the event of an attack on either parties, that was American Australia's troops or citizens in the Pacific area, we shall immediately consult and say, as the NATO treaty did, an attack on war is an attack on war. And Taiwan in particular would be a very embarrassing and difficult choice in my view. In the end, would probably and reluctantly have to say yes. But it's a sort of question you've asked me that successive foreign ministers like Garrett Evans and Alexander Downer have said, that is a theoretical question we prefer not to answer. A new report by China's Parliament accuses the United States of human rights violations through failing to prevent its own citizens from gun violence. I think the Chinese and one has some sympathy with this. The Chinese get a bit fed up, I think, with American proselytising that only we in the West would human rights people than the Chinese are there. So I think it's part of that tip for Ted. The bottom line, however, remains that as much as our American friends do naughty things, China is still a repressive authoritarian machine that has, what do they call them? Education through labour camps. And where some of this stuff, not iPhones, but some of the silly little toys you get for your dogs and cats and so on, and other cheap products are probably made by slave labour in these corrective labour camps. How many are there in these camps in China? We don't know, unlike the former Soviet Union, but we did know, thanks to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the estimate I've seen for China is maybe 200,000 people. So, you know, those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.