Now that Anthony Albanese has broken the unprecedented six-year deep freeze with China, it is tempting to imagine that all our disputes with Beijing will evaporate in short order. This would be a mistake.
In truth, Australia’s relationship with a changing China cannot be viewed in isolation. The challenges faced by our prime minister and the foreign minister, Penny Wong, are not dissimilar to those faced by his counterparts in Tokyo, Ottawa or Stockholm. And many of the factors that shape these challenges are beyond Canberra’s control.
Among these is the changing dynamic of US-China relationship. Ructions between these two geopolitical superpowers invariably affect our own relations with Beijing, as they do with the United States’s other Asian treaty allies and the 140 or so countries that count China as their biggest economic partner.
Moreover, Australia’s relationship with China is shaped by the emergence of a bipartisan US doctrine of strategic competition over the last five years, and will be influenced by future developments in US politics – especially if future presidential elections provide a launchpad for more isolationist candidates than we have seen in the past.
Our relations are also affected by China’s changing direction under its ideologue-in-chief Xi Jinping, who has steered his society towards the Leninist left through expanded party control, his economy towards the Marxist left through more decisive state intervention, and his country’s foreign and security more to the nationalist right.
None of this means Australia is without autonomy or agency in shaping our own future. But we must be deeply mindful of the constraints of the world as it is.
Without reflecting at length on Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton’s megaphone diplomacy toward Beijing, it’s clear that such rhetorical overdrive did nothing to produce a considered and substantive national China strategy, let alone an effective policy or operational response to meet the China challenge.
This megaphone diplomacy was ultimately performance art designed to secure political support within the Liberal-National coalition, coupled with a ham-fisted effort to wedge the Labor party as somehow weak on national security – a policy that failed spectacularly at the May election.
By contrast, the Albanese government has sought to bring down the temperature of the Australia-China relationship, an approach that has been matched by Beijing’s toning down of its own rhetoric towards Australia. By putting the megaphone away, both sides have taken a healthy step to restoring stability, and perhaps even the beginnings of normality, to the diplomatic relationship.
Albanese’s meeting with Xi in Bali last week ended the longest political freeze in senior contact between both sides in the 50-year history of diplomatic relations. It was unhealthy for all concerned and, given where the relationship stood six months ago under Morrison and Dutton, it is no small feat.
But the work ahead for the new government and their counterparts in Beijing is formidable.
It would certainly build new warmth in the relationship for the Chinese side to celebrate the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations on 3 December by drawing a line under the recent past and removing the trade sanctions levelled by Beijing against Australian industry.
This would help pave the way for normal diplomatic discourse across all the substantive questions that confront the bilateral relationship, including: China’s increasingly assertive behaviour in the south-west Pacific; its posture towards our strategic partners, Japan and India; its aspirations to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP); and our common concerns for effective global action on climate change, to which both our countries are especially susceptible.
It would also enable discussions on the continued incarceration on political grounds of Australian nationals including journalist Cheng Lei, held now for more than two years. Indeed, the early release of Cheng as part of our 50th anniversary celebrations would cast an enormously positive light on our overall relationship for the years ahead.
I argue we are capable of managing the challenges ahead in the Australia-China relationship while adhering to five basic principles: our unapologetic commitment to universal human rights anchored in international law; our unapologetic support for the US alliance, although this does not mean automatic compliance with every element of American foreign policy; maximising engagement to our mutual economic advantage; maximum cooperation through global institutions to meet shared challenges like climate change, global economic stability and nuclear non-proliferation; and finally, when we need to part company with China, we do so in a coordinated front with friends and allies. This is the same advice I gave Morrison when he consulted me early in his prime ministership.
The next five years will very much shape, and arguably determine, the future stability of the Indo-Pacific region. If we fail to navigate these years carefully, there is grave risk that we will find ourselves on the brink of an armed conflict of a scale not seen since the second world war, which killed tens of millions.
It is why our three countries – China, the United States and Australia – must apply every effort, for all our futures, to ensure a peaceful and sustainable future for us all. The alternative is too catastrophic to contemplate.
• Dr Kevin Rudd is a former prime minister of Australia. This article is based on his JG Crawford Oration at the Australian National University in Canberra on Monday
