Could culture be one road to peace?

How Australia and China fell out, and could reconcile

The Australia and China relationship has turned sour in recent years, and many people around the world are asking: why? How can it be repaired? Can a reconciliation between these new friends help prevent a war between the USA and China, which would be catastrophic for the world?

I appeared on The Duran this week on a show titled, China, AUKUS and control of Asia-Pacific w/ Jeff Rich (Live) to discuss these questions. (Thanks to all the readers who subscribed to my Substack after watching the show ❤️❤️ 🙏🙏.) Host Alexander Mercouris asked me these questions. The world thought you were the best of friends. What went wrong? Why? Does Australia fear China?

Let me offer some further thoughts in writing rather than talk format.

Why did Australia and China fall out?

Australia and China have had a long-term relationship all the way back to the nineteenth century. Since the 1970s, and the belated recognition of the People’s Republic of China as that civilization’s one legitimate national government, after Nixon and then Whitlam went to China, the Australia and China relationship has flowered.

Many around the world even looked to Australia as a mediator of the tensions between the rising China and the declining America. For a time under Prime Minister Bob Hawke (1984-1991), the US leadership relied upon the Australian political leadership, which they believed had the best access to the new reforming Chinese leaders of Deng Xiaoping, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang.

The opening of China to diplomatic relationships, the world economy and the hearts and minds of the West led to three decades of a prosperous relationship. Cold War rhetoric subsided. China became Australia’s top trade partner, and climbed to become the largest economy in the world, when measured in purchasing power parity terms. Leadership dialogues were institutionalised. Social connections became broader and deeper. In a country where nearly 30 per cent of people were born overseas, Chinese Australians are the third largest migrant group. Today 597,000 people born in China live in Australia, although this has declined since 2019 and COVID. Travel and cultural exchanges increased, although Asian language learning languished in Australia despite many efforts to spark it into life. Still, Australian universities boomed for decades with fee-paying Chinese students. By 2020 university education was one of Australia’s largest export industries, with China being over 40 per cent of the market.

But since the 1990s the Australia-China has flowered too much like a hothouse orchid spike, rather than in a thousand blooms. Trade and business came to dominate the relationship while the economic complementarity boomed between China, as the workshop of the world, and Australia, as its supplier of ores, food and some skills. Universities relied on Chinese student income, but lagged on integrating these students into the university experience. Occasional outbursts of nativist sentiment, such as Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, pierced the broad consensus in favour of multiculturalism. The pioneers of Asian studies and language learning grew frustrated with the slow progress with the deepening of cultural ties. The growing domination of the cultural sphere by American influencers starved the flowering relationship of nutrients, and the resurgence of overheated American exceptionalism after the end of the Cold War over time shrivelled political and diplomatic exchanges. American political leaders grew increasingly suspicious that the growing trade with China might sap Australian loyalty to America and the liberal rules-based order. They began to lose faith that China would become another American franchise, or part of Chimerica, and that American leadership of the world depended on containing China and ‘locking in’ Australia, as Obama’s and Biden’s China Adviser, Kurt Campbell said. The US told Australia it was time for us to put our weapons where our money was. Since 2012 and Xi Jinping’s Presidency, China has asserted its choice to develop in its own way, without American tutelage. The pressure on Australia to make a China Choice grew.

In these conditions, it is not surprising that the mood music of Australia-China diplomacy would change. So it did from 2008. International debates on the global financial system, collective security in the multipolar world, and climate change transitions increased tensions between the USA, China and Australia. Levels of cooperation through BRICS grew, and old ideas of a “Group of Two” of China and the USA faded. From 2015, the Australia and China relationship soured dramatically, to the point that Australia was frozen out of diplomatic contacts for several years. Decisions to exclude Huawei and other foreign investment affected Chinese interests. Laws against foreign influence targeted China, but not the USA. Australia’s decision to form an Anglo-American bloc in AUKUS, and to acquire nuclear submarines which would lurk off China’s coast, brought the bad blood between the former friends to global attention. Australia’s AUKUS deal was repeatedly reprimanded in diplomatic communiques issued by Xi Jinping and other world leaders.

Why did this happen? Was it a result of American pressure on a suborned Australian leadership? Was it a reactivation of the fears of isolated Anglo-Australians that they would be abandoned by their great and powerful friend? Was it a response to intimidation and threats by China, and its so-called ‘wolf-warrior diplomacy’ and, in the view of some experts, growing nationalism and authoritarianism in China? Was it a result of political contagion from America, spread by Donald Trump and energised by the need in a divided society to find a common enemy in China? Or, was it a result of ingrained racism in Australia, with its legacy of the White Australia Policy, abandoned in the late 1960s?

There is lots of scope for discussion of these questions and I do not have a settled view. I am inclined to think, as I said on The Duran program that the deteriorating relationship has been driven by political, media and defence elites, not broad public attitudes. It reflects the political and defence establishment’s craving to be America’s loyal first mate, more than the general public’s fear and loathing of the Chinese people. But I could well be wrong, and hope to talk to some guests on my show soon who can offer me some deeper insights.

Recommended books on Australia and China

However, I would certainly recommend thinking about this question with the benefit of an excellent history book. The story of the blossoming and shrivelling of this relationship is expertly told in James Curran, Australia’s China Odyssey; from euphoria to fear (2022). It focuses on the top level political relationships and diplomacy between the countries, rather than the wider social and cultural influences, but contains many exceptional insights. I highly recommend this book, from which I learned a lot about the nuance of the relationships between China and Australia over the decades since World War Two. It is a profound reminder, for example, that for Australia the Cold War was always as much a frozen fight with China as it was with the Soviet Union; something commentators too often forget today, perhaps because some cold war warriors never quite gave up on the fight.

At the outset of the book, Curran provides an admirable correction to the “Red Threat” and “Stand up to China” rhetoric that has dominated public discussion of the Australia-China relationship since 2015, and contributed to years of cold shoulders by Beijing. He notes that Australia has to take responsibility for its own contribution to the shrivelling of the relationship in three ways.

First, he notes the China Threat rhetoric has taken off because “a world without American global leadership is beyond Australia’s imagination” (p. xviii). Australia has locked itself into the American world system, just as previously it had locked itself into the British world system or empire, and their goals to dominate Asia. As a result, “Canberra’s choices have been narrowed, viewed only through the prism of what they mean for countering China’s reach.”

Second, he reminds Australian elites that it takes two to tango and to fight. It is too easy to blame Chinese intimidation. Australian governments and society bear responsibility for the conduct of their relationship with China. Those relations carry a difficult legacy, and contain many shadows and “over a century of historical, cultural and racial baggage in terms of its relations with Asia, and China in particular” (p. xix). We are entering a new era when Asia, indeed Eurasia, will be led by the Asians, not the Anglo-Americans, who have aspired to control the World Island for 300 years. In an interview I did this week with Sam Roggeveen of the Lowy Institute this week (coming to podcast and YouTube channel next week), this leading defence policy analyst wondered: are we liberal democracies really prepared to let Asia be ruled by Asians? Curran poses a similar question about our complicity in racist, imperial and hegemonic practices over many years: “Does Australia have the courage to look in the mirror?” (p. xix).

Thirdly, he notes “the persistence of older assumptions and conceptual frameworks concerning the place of China in the national strategic imagination” (p. xix). He remarks on former Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s crude, if shrewd, private assessment to the then German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, that Australia’s relationship with China was motivated alternately by “fear and greed”. Greed drove the trade relationship. Fear drove the security relationship. Love was nowhere to be found. That fear has been long-standing and been mixed with xenophobic and racist sentiments. Curran argues that those sentiments have returned in much of the recent debate on China, which has been:

“clothed in older garb. Many of the paradigms and rhetoric of the late 19th century and the Cold War, especially those relating to ‘invasion’, ‘threat’, ‘subversion’ and ‘containment’, have been resurrected and deployed in the domestic political and foreign policy debate.” (p. xix)

There are two different paradigms and strands of rhetoric here. On the one hand, there is the late nineteenth century racism of the kind that underpinned Chinese labour exclusion, the White Australia Policy and much racial discrimination against Chinese Australians. On the other hand, there is the Cold War rhetoric of the communist, autocratic, dictatorial Red Threat. The strands are tangled. Cold War ideas are conveyed with old tired tropes, ambiguous language and sub-conscious imagery, as with the shameful recent “Red China” stories in the Channel Nine media in Australia that egged Australians onto war with China. Among different actors the motivations vary. It can be hard to tell whether racist or ideological fears predominate in each case.

However, my amateur judgment is that ideological fears and fanatical loyalty to American exceptionalism have most driven Australia’s latest wave of China Fear. My social experiences suggest to me that the underground racism has withered, and will not be brought back to life by New Cold War fanatics. I am however, but an amateur participant-observer, who can only see part of the picture. I may well be wrong, and will be exploring this topic in weeks ahead.

The Closing of the Australian Mind to China

I am also given pause by the judgement of Australia’s most experienced diplomat to China, Stephen Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was Australia’s first ambassador to Beijing, and was given his instructions by Prime Minister Whitlam in 1973. Fitzgerald’s assessment of the opportunities for a blossoming of the relationship between China and Australia have guided several generations of Australian political leaders. Understandably he is saddened by how low Australia-China relationships have sunk in the last decade.

Fitzgerald has written an important essay,, “China and the opening of the Australian mind” in the collection of essays, Engaging China: how Australia can lead the way again, edited by Jamie Reilly and Jingdong Yuan. He wrote:

“No one in politics and few elsewhere talked any more of expanding our intellectual horizons or our world view; almost no one talked of being part of Asia, let alone enmeshed, and the study of Asian languages had been in decline for many years. We were again inward-looking, frightened, staring at shadows, stricken with what Allan Gyngell [a leading Australian foreign policy intellectual] has called ‘fear of abandonment’ by the United States, a return to the mentality of Fortress Australia. It was closing once more of the Australian mind.” (p. 286)

Fitzgerald argues that race fear and prejudice, and instinctive antipathy towards China have been reactivated by Australian leaders since the 1990s, and have overwhelmed strategic, foreign policy and defence decision-making, especially over the last decade.

He argues Australian leaders need to abandon the old race card, however much it is concealed up their sleeve. It must drop the antipathetic rhetoric and fearful sentiments about China, and allow kinder emotions, other than fear and greed, to come into play. Otherwise, “the underlying racism against China and the concomitant stigmatising of Chinese Australians” will keep returning like our repressed shadow.

He calls for an opening of the Australian Mind, and the beginning of a long walk down the cultural road to peace and reconciliation. He believes this opening of the mind must begin with a “dramatic circuit-breaker”, like Nixon and Whitlam going to China. Such a carefully crafted, high-profile political event would:

“open our minds, jolt us out of our complacency and self-referencing, confront our attitudes to race and demonstrate the great contribution of Chinese Australians to the Australian story in our history and today, and the benefits of talking seriously and productively with China.” (p. 294)

I too believe we need an opening of the Australian Mind. I also believe we need to rethink, not only our attitudes to race, but also our dependency on American culture, politics and American leadership of the world. If we drop only one of James Curran’s two strands of the recent China threat - 19th century racism and Cold War rhetoric - we will remain entangled in the mess we are in. If we embrace China alone, and not the other parts of the multipolar world, we will repeat our old mistake of being first mate to the most powerful nation on earth. We will not find a new kind of strength in a broader interdependency of more equal nations, none of which are exceptional and none of which are hegemons.

In today’s decentralised culture, I also believe we do not need to wait for our national leaders to bring us grand political events that serve as circuit-breakers. We can find our connections in society, culture and trade, and not only politics. Each of us can start walking down the long road of peace and reconciliation, with one small step, like reading James Curran’s book or Stephen Fitzgerald’s essay.

On this topic you might also like to read my essay in Pearls and Irritations, “Australia’s aborted decolonisation” (5 October 2023), and my longer substack piece, Global Decolonisation 2.0.

On China and the current tendency in elite circles to caricature China, you may like to read my review of Tania Branigan, Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution (2023).