China was a state under pressure even before the emergence of the global financial crisis, impelled to maintain astonishing rates of economic growth in order to forestall the social chaos otherwise arising from an absence of political and social reforms. With the onset of the global financial crisis, and China's increasingly frantic search for cheap mineral resources to fuel continuing growth, those pressures have skyrocketed. Particularly frustrating have been the collapsed deal between Chinalco and Rio Tinto, and the vagaries of iron ore prices over the last few years. In addition, in 2009 a series of highly symbolic anniversaries for China and its autonomous regions has attracted both international and domestic attention to the way China is governed.

The result internally has been heightened tensions in many different areas and increased crackdowns on dissent. Within the last year, we have seen the arrest and subsequent imprisonment of well-known dissident intellectuals and, in 2008, more than a doubling of arrests and indictments for crimes of ''endangering state security'', thus quadrupling, according to the Duihua Human Rights Journal, the numbers over a three year-period. Inevitably, since the GFC, issues of economic security have increasingly fallen under this rubric. Finally, the brutal suppression of a peaceful demonstration by Uighurs calling for justice for their people in Urumchi, Xinjiang, from July 4, 2009, revived painful memories of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Internationally, by contrast, since the onset of the GFC leadership frustrations have focussed primarily on the area of economic security and the search for international scapegoats, in this case Stern Hu and his three Chinese colleagues as the vulnerable Chinese face of Rio Tinto.

Whether or not he sought under-the-table intelligence about China's bottom line in iron ore negotiations, Stern Hu is not the first former Chinese national or overseas Chinese businessman to be detained in China on suspicion of receiving state secrets. Former Chinese nationals are vulnerable to the unspoken charge of betraying the motherland. They are also more effective businessmen, being attuned to the realities of business in China, in which corruption is an enduring backdrop. Those previously arrested include Xiu Yichun, a key manager of Royal Dutch Shell, and US citizens Fong Fuming, Dong Wei and Li Shaomin (ex-AT&T). Notably, although Xiu Yichun was held for a year on state secrets charges, Royal Dutch Shell managed to secure her freedom by using her detention to delay further negotiations with China.

By detaining Hu and others under the flexible category of a suspicion of receiving state secrets, the Chinese state avoids the normal constraints imposed by its Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law, which help regulate how long it can detain a suspect without charge or access to a lawyer. Instead, it exposes them to the deliberate vagueness of the State Security Law. Even under Article 96 of the CPL, in cases involving state secrets, the criminal suspect has no right to hire a lawyer, but must seek permission to do so from ''the investigating organ''.

In detaining Hu, China is taking on in one stroke an individual, the community of overseas Chinese businessmen, a significant multinational resources corporation, potentially a whole host of other foreign resources companies, and a nation which has been one of its most stable resource suppliers. These are huge stakes. It may be that, as it has in the case of Chinese dissidents, China is hoping to use Stern Hu as a pawn in a bigger political game as well as to send a signal to its own restless citizens, and the prospect of his release may be dangled to extract some financial advantage. When the dust has settled, however, China's leaders may well regret the decision to detain Hu, or at least the very political way the detention has been handled. The official denial on July 14 that President Hu backed this action is one small indicator of that possibility.

A number of levers remains at the disposal of both the Australian Government and Rio Tinto, levers which must be utilised in a calm and graduated manner, without demeaning self-criticism and on the essential basis of bipartisan political support. One important lever, reflected in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's statements, is the fact that China's leaders care a great deal about international opinion, however much their current actions would suggest the contrary. China is learning about the world, but the world is also learning about China. Already, the February 2009 BBC/Program on International Policy Attitudes poll suggests that those countries through which the Olympic flame passed now have a lower estimation of China than they did the year before. Another potential lever would be if Rio Tinto followed Royal Dutch Shell's example and avoided further price negotiations until its team was released.

In making its approaches to Brazil, which may not succeed, China is already anticipating this possibility. A third possibility is provided by the State Security Law itself, whereby, under Article 30, ''if the violators of this law are from outside the territory of the People's Republic of China they may be ordered to leave the country within a specified time limit or be deported''.

Much of China's recent behaviour is not a happy fit with the image China currently seeks to project as a market economy which is peacefully developing under the rule of law and living harmoniously with its neighbours. It is to be hoped that China will rethink its actions in the light of that image, rather than dragging this case out into the abyss of international bickering and domestic court cases, only to end up with a conviction and, following some years of imprisonment, a sudden release of Hu without any further explanation.

Ann Kent is Visiting Fellow in the ANU College of Law and author of Beyond Compliance: China, International Organisations and Global Security (2007) and China, the United Nations and Human Rights: The Limits of Compliance (1999).