China is a mobile and authoritarian national security threat says politician Andrew Hastie

In comments that represent the strongest condemnation of Beijing by any member of the Morrison government, Andrew Hastie said "choices will be made for us" unless Australia confronted the reality of China's ambitions.

The former SAS captain also took a swipe at political leaders, arguing there was "more to be done" to deal with Beijing's military expansion in the Indo-Pacific region.

The Liberal MP warned of an erosion of "our sovereignty and our freedoms" if Australians did not understand the challenges China's behaviour posed for state and federal Parliaments, corporate Australia and universities.

"The West once believed that economic liberalisation would naturally lead to democratisation in China. This was our Maginot Line. It would keep us safe, just as the French believed their series of steel and concrete forts would guard them against the German advance in 1940. But their thinking failed catastrophically. The French had failed to appreciate the evolution of mobile warfare," Mr Hastie wrote in an opinion piece for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

"Like the French, Australia has failed to see how mobile our authoritarian neighbour has become. Even worse, we ignore the role that ideology plays in [Beijing's] actions across the Indo-Pacific region."

Mr Hastie said the West had made the same mistake before in believing the actions of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin "were the rational actions of a realist great power".

"It is impossible to forsake the United States, our closest security and investment partner. It is also impossible to disengage from China, our largest trading partner," Mr Hastie said.

[link to www.smh.com.au (secure)]