title: Australian Engagement with China (1972-2018): A Cluster Concept Assessment
Creators: name: Davis, Michael John
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2018
Subjects: subject: Australia
subject: Asian century
subject: China
subject: China literacy
subject: Cluster concept
subject: Complexity
subject: Diplomacy in the marketplace
subject: Engagement

description: This study is in response to the persistent ambivalence characterising the Australian narrative on engagement with China. This ambivalence, between fear and friendship, can be framed as a tension between expected China opportunity and anticipated loss. Ambivalence is evident at the level of public policy development and implementation (the behavioural); at the level of popular policy endorsement (the attitudinal); and at the institutional level. This narrative of ambivalence includes the hopeful expectations of the Gillard Government’s 2012 White Paper, that ‘in this Asian century we [Australia] must enter a new phase of deeper and broader engagement’ with China. However, Australia and China have recently been assessed as moving in different directions. The significance of China for Australia, and globally, demands greater clarity and understanding — it demands assessment of the engagement process. This work seeks to redress this demand. In Part I of the study, engagement is identified as a cluster concept and a framework for its qualitative assessment is developed. This framework aims to redress the absence of a suitable assessment tool for engagement. The framework is employed in the Australian case studies which form the basis of Part II of this thesis. Each case study covers a discrete period of Australian Government stewardship of the China relationship. The Cluster Concept Framework makes it possible to assess the degree of consolidation, or ‘deepening’, of Australian engagement with China at the behavioural, attitudinal and institutional levels — a complex and continuing process. This thesis finds that, despite varying degrees of activity and fluctuating enthusiasm, Australia and China are beginning to move in different directions largely due to failure on the Australian side. Engagement is broadening but not commensurately deepening. The Whitlam ALP Government’s (1972–1975) diplomatic recognition of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1972 created a ‘watershed’ in Australian engagement with China. The Whitlam Government did not allow the warming of relations with China to obscure important areas of disagreement, such as nuclear testing, and this gave its engagement policy credibility, with China, and also attitudinally with the Australian people. The Fraser Government (1975–1983) continued and extended the bipartisan approach to China policy. Deepening engagement was indicated by the positions that Canberra shared with China on major international issues and the initiation of significant new relationship-building measures. Under the Hawke and Keating ALP governments (1983–1996), engagement with China, defined as comprehensive engagement, was predicated on economic interests. The relationship was not without its fragilities. By 1996, substantial sections of the Australian population felt alienated from the Keating Government’s foreign policy, particularly its perceived efforts to relocate Australia to Asia and resolve Australian identity. The Howard Government (1996–2007) experienced a bumpy start to its engagement with China. Consolidation at all three levels initially deteriorated; was restored and intensified between 1997 and 2002; then becoming more ambiguous, during which amity was mixed with unease. The benefits of trade were as visible to Howard as to his predecessors — differences centred on what needed to be done to realise and maintain China opportunity while managing varying levels of perceived China threat. This is at the heart of ambivalence in Australian engagement with China. Consolidation of Australian engagement with China during the Rudd-Gillard period (2007–2013) failed to live up to expectations. Engagement remained bipartisan but was caught in a paradox, potentially at more than one level. Fluctuating patterns of consolidation of engagement continued under the Abbott and Turnbull governments (2013–present), with evidence of a growing rhetorical war against China. The thesis identifies several critical areas where divergence is apparent. There is a complacency on Australia’s part towards China based on assumptions that China needs Australia to feed its growth, thereby immunising Australia from the impacts of failure at the behavioural level of engagement. This is a limiting perspective. This thesis concludes that a new phase of deeper and broader engagement with China requires greater understanding of China; greater Australian self-awareness of its own identity; plus the ability to see how China and other Asian nations see Australia. This requires greatly improved China literacy in Australia. The Cluster Concept Framework offers a means of understanding and assessing engagement between Australia and China in the context of the Asian Century.