China Slams Aussie Lawmaker For Beijing Risk Claim

China has rebuked an Australian government lawmaker for saying it threatens to diminish Australia's sovereignty and freedoms.

Conservative Liberal Party lawmaker Andrew Hastie drew parallels in a newspaper column between China and Nazi Germany, in comments described in the media as the strongest condemnation of China by any member of Prime Minister Scott Morrison's coalition.

Hastie, a former Special Air Service officer who chairs an influential parliamentary intelligence and security committee, wrote that almost every strategic and economic question facing Australia in the coming decades would be "refracted through the geopolitical competition" between its most important security partner, the United States, and its biggest trading partner, China.

"The next decade will test our economic values, our economy, our alliances and our security like no other time in Australian history," he wrote.

He likened Australia's relationship with China to France's failure to recognise the threat posed by Nazi Germany at the outbreak of World War II.

"Like the French, Australia has failed to see how mobile our authoritarian neighbour had become," he said.

President Xi Jinping's view of the future is one in which "capitalism will be eclipsed," Hastie wrote.

The Chinese Embassy in Canberra said in a statement that they "strongly deplore" Hastie's commentary "which lays bare his Cold War mentality and ideological bias."

"It goes against the world trend of peace, cooperation and development. It is detrimental to China-Australian relations," the statement said.

"History has proven and will continue to prove that China's peaceful development is an opportunity, not a threat to the world," it added. (AP)