Australia’s engagement with China: From fear to greed and back again
| Author | Nick Bisley |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702018792918 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essays |
Scholarly Essay
Australia’s engagement
with China: From fear
to greed and back again
Nick Bisley
La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Abstract
This paper examines how Australia has managed its relationship with China. It looks at
the broad trends in the relationship, with a focus on the decades after recognition in
1972. The second part examines the recent past, and particularly the ways in which
Australia’s active courtship of China has begun to be tempered by concerns about the
destabilizing security and strategic consequences of the country’s return to power.
It assesses the options Australia faces and the growing polarization of opinion between
security ‘‘hawks’’ and economic ‘‘doves’’ in public debate about Australia’s future,
and then charts where Australian policy is currently placed. The paper concludes by
explaining why Australia finds taking a nuanced position in relation to its engagement
with China so difficult.
Keywords
Australia, China, foreign policy, Asia Pacific, middle powers
Introduction
The year 2017 entailed a number of important anniversaries for Australia’s
international policy. It has been more than seventy-five years since the passing
of the Statute of Westminster in 1931, which made Australia a genuinely independ-
ent participant in international politics.
1
Up until that point the country had been,
in foreign policy terms, subordinate to Britain. The year also marks a full
decade since China replaced Japan as the country’s most important two-way
International Journal
2018, Vol. 73(3) 379–398
!The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702018792918
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Corresponding author:
Nick Bisley, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Melbourne Campus, La Trobe
Aia, Kingsbury Drive, Bundoora VIC 3086, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Email: n.bisley@latrobe.edu.au
1. On the early years of Australian foreign policy, see Alan Watt, The Evolution of Australian Foreign
Policy, 1938–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967).
trading partner.
2
This shift, perhaps more than any other, signified a sea change in
Australia’s international existence. Ten years have passed since Australia has had a
top trading partner that is not an ally, a partner of an ally, a democracy, or a
country that is culturally or politically similar to it. Most crucially, during that
decade, Australia’s economic and strategic interests have seemed to be headed on
separate and potentially conflicting courses. As each year has gone by—with the
exception of 2015—two-way trade has grown in value and as a share of Australia’s
total trade, while at the same time the security and strategic relationship with
Washington has become ever closer.
3
For many, these two core interests are diver-
ging, with potentially catastrophic consequences. The year 2017 also marks forty-
five years of formal diplomatic relations between Australia and the People’s
Republic of China (PRC). It is thus a good time to cast a critical eye over
Australia’s engagement with China.
The aim of this paper is to examine how the country has managed its relation-
ship with China. In charting Australia’s move from being fearful of a vast com-
munist power to having a self-styled ‘‘strategic partnership’’—though one tinged
with concern—the paper will be in four sections. The first provides an assessment
of the broad trends in the relationship, with a focus on the first three decades. The
second examines the past ten years, and particularly the ways in which Australia’s
active courtship of China has begun to be tempered by concerns about the desta-
bilizing security and strategic consequences of the country’s return to power. The
third section assesses the options Australia faces, and the growing polarization of
opinion between security ‘‘hawks’’ and economic ‘‘doves’’ in public debate about
Australia’s future, and then charts where Australian policy is currently placed. The
paper concludes by explaining why Australia finds taking a nuanced position on its
engagement with China so difficult.
Why should anyone not specifically interested in Australian foreign policy be
interested in the Australia–China relationship? First, Australia is a close ally of the
USA—among the closest allies Washington has in the world. Yet, its economic
interests seem to be pulling the country in a different direction from its strategic
ties. Like many other US allies in Asia, Australia is potentially torn between Beijing
and Washington. Analysis of the forces shaping its approach is of broader signifi-
cance because it is a situation common to many states in Asia, and indeed increas-
ingly the world. Second, the direction and character of Australia’s approach to
China reflect the complex interplay of domestic and international forces, structural
and agential, that defy the neat compartmentalization of grand theories of inter-
national relations. Assessment of this relationship can help contribute to debates
about the ways in which middle-ranking states manage their relations with great
powers. Finally, Australia’s engagement with China is the most important
2. David Uren, ‘‘China emerges as our biggest trade partner,’’ The Australian, 5 May 2007, http://
www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/china-emerges-as-our-biggest-trade-partner/news-story/
805457e7d980cf3b4462801320b63433 (accessed 16 October 2017).
3. Nick Bisley, ‘‘‘An ally for all the years to come’: Why Australia is not a conflicted US ally,’’
Australian Journal of International Affairs 67, no. 4 (2013): 403–418.
380 International Journal 73(3)
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