The art of improving our China ties

The $44m National Foundation for Australia-China Relations is quietly going about its business of supporting organisations that it believes promote better relations between the two countries.

Chinese-born film and theatre director Chen Shi-Zheng is staging Wagner’s Ring Cycle in Brisbane. Picture: Britta Campion

“A brilliantly executed practical joke” is how former foreign minister Bob Carr described it, but the $44m National Foundation for Australia-China Relations is quietly going about its business of supporting organisations that it believes promote better relations between the two countries.

While the political ties remain strained, the foundation walks a complex path in trying to support Chinese organisations and people in Australia by handing out grants to projects from opera to museums to think tanks, while always trying to remain apolitical.

After an initial $4m in grants was handed out over the past few months, applications have closed for another round worth $6m.

Grants have been given to a range of cultural organisations not obviously tied to the Chinese community, including Opera Australia and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

OA received some $100,000 in technical support and expertise for the Shanghai Opera for a digital production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle in Brisbane. The 15-hour epic production is being directed by Chinese-born and New York-based Chen Shi-Zheng.

OA, which performed Madam Butterfly in China in 2018, says the production explores “Wagner’s legendary tale through a futuristic lens”, imagining a “parallel universe where many cultures walk together”.

The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery has been given $50,000 for an exhibition of Tasmanian migrant stories, which will include a component on “the Contemporary Chinese Tasma­nian experience in which people who have moved to Tasmania from China will share their stories and experiences”.

Another $23,500 has been given to the Hurstville Museum and Gallery in Sydney, which commissioned six Chinese-Australian artists to produce work for an exhibition to start in July called Our Journeys, Our Stories.

The museum says the exhibition will “combine social history and personal memories through oral exhibitions and commissioned works” by the artists and “celebrate the long association of Chinese culture in this region”.

The foundation had a rocky start last year with the departure of its inaugural chairman Warwick Smith and some criticism of its board members.

The Chinese government has criticised the board for what it claims are “anti-China elements”. But chief executive Michaela Browning asks that it be judged on its desire to “bolster ties with Australia’s Chinese diaspora and its role in supporting practical engagement with China”, and not on its public comments.

Board members past and present include journalists Stan Grant and Rowan Callick, ANU vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt and NAB chair Phil Chronican.

First announced in March 2019 by Foreign Minister Marise Payne as a “high-profile platform” to “turbocharge our national effort in engaging China”, the foundation has since kept a low profile.

“The foundation’s job is not to engage in political-level discourse,” Ms Browning told The Australian. “We are building a ­national platform to support practical engagement with China.

“We’re also doing more to recognise and learn from the historic and current contribution of a great many Chinese-Australians and the many different Chinese-Australian communities, to (bolster) Australia’s development and our ties across greater China and the region.”