Engaging China: How Australia Can Lead the Way Again book review – Who’s to blame for China tensions?

Authors of a new book argue a sharp deterioration in bilateral relations is Australia’s fault and has almost nothing to do with Xi Jinping.

Authors of a new book argue a sharp deterioration in bilateral relations since 2019 is Australia’s fault and has almost nothing to do with the nature, actions, rhetoric or ambitions of Xi Jinping, pictured. Picture: AFP

If you think Australia’s relations with China have deteriorated in disturbing ways and that this is the fault of Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison, the defence and intelligence arms of the federal government and the Murdoch press, this book will strongly reinforce your ­disposition. By all means read it. It will not challenge your preconceived opinion in any way.

If, conversely, you think that the actions of the Chinese Communist Party-state are the key problem and that our foreign influence legislation, our call for an independent inquiry into the origins of Covid-19 in Wuhan and our alignment with the United States, Japan and India in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and with the United States and the United Kingdom in AUKUS are justified responses to that problem, the book will be confronting. You should read it – closely.

Many of the contributors are household names, at least in the China studies field: Stephen FitzGerald and Geoff Raby, both former ambassadors to China; Bates Gill, formerly of China Matters and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute; James Laurenson, Wanning Sun and veteran journalist, editor and sometime China correspondent Glenda Korporaal, all three of whom are senior members of the Australia China Relations Institute at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Their tone is resolutely that the sharp deterioration in bilateral relations since 2019 is our fault and has almost nothing to do with the nature, actions, rhetoric or ambitions of Xi Jinping and his regime. There is no attempt at what might be called balance or nuance, ­although Geoff Raby at least concedes “bad behaviour” on China’s part and Stephen FitzGerald accepts that China seeks regional dominance.

In many ways, these two former ambassadors are the torch bearers for a mood of frustration and dismay that what had been a thriving economic relationship and a reasonably sensible diplomatic and security one has deteriorated so quickly and so precipitously. They express bewilderment. While their concern is entirely understandable, their bewilderment does them no credit. They and their fellow contributors would have done better to acknowledge that we and other countries have justified concerns about Xi Jinping’s actions and intentions.

Raby, for instance, expresses astonishment at expressions of alarm about a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan “despite the unlikelihood of that occurring in any relevant policy-planning time horizon”. Who is he reading on that subject? The best-informed analyses consider that danger acute over the next five years.

Channelling Paul Keating, Raby writes, “As President Truman might have said, Australia talks loudly and carries a toothpick”. It was Theodore Roosevelt, not Harry Truman, who declared that the United States spoke softly but carried a big stick. That kind of historical slip is also characteristic of Keating.

Raby also takes a swing at the recently departed Japanese ambassador, Shingo Yamagami, for allegedly having “intervened in domestic politics to assert, wrongly, that Japan was in the same position as Australia in its relations with China”. He needs to sit down and have a talk with Michael Green at the US Studies Centre, author of Line of Control, about Japan’s concerns. Ambassador Yamagami was not intervening in Australian domestic politics. He was making clear where his country stands.

There are, let it be said, many reasons why Stephen FitzGerald and other contributors to this volume understandably like to believe we can get along with China if we just try harder. But their criticisms of what has been said and done in or by Australia at no point include critical observations about how Xi Jinping has positioned China itself: his relentless repression, massive military build-up and U-turn on reform and opening.

James Laurenson and Glenda Korporaal provide illuminating profiles of Australian business ties with China, but do not address the sharp shift in China’s economic policy setting under Xi. Wanning Sun pleads that the Australian media have been too ­sensationalist in headlining alarm about CCP influence operations, hacking, espionage and interference. She offers not a word of criticism of the CCP’s monopoly media and its behaviour.

One could add many other observations about the essays in Engaging China. But I don’t wish to discourage anyone from reading it. Quite the contrary. Though I am doubtless among those whose views these people dismiss as racist and xenophobic, my opinions are neither and I am in no doubt that we, as a country, need to engage in this debate about our relations with China in full earnest.

I am deeply concerned about the trends in geopolitics and tensions with China. I welcome this contribution from the other side. Read it. But then read Alex Joske’s Spies and Lies (2022), John Fitzgerald’s Cadre Country (2022) and my own Thunder From the Silent Zone: Rethinking China (2023) – none of which is referenced by any of the contributors to Engaging China – and Chun Han Wong’s Party of One (2023).

Paul Monk is the author of a dozen books, including Dictators and Dangerous Ideas (2018) and Thunder From the Silent Zone: Rethinking China (2nd edition, 2023).

Engaging China: How Australia Can Lead the Way Again
Jamie Reilly and Jingdong Yuan (eds)
Sydney University Press, Nonfiction
320pp, $50