Our first priority is what’s good for Australia

China seeks to be the regional ­hegemon and the dominant military power in the western Pacific. The US is pushing back and is in a trade war with China.

The Australian government generally has responded thoughtfully and, if it follows the traditions embedded in our foreign and strategic policies, is well placed to meet the challenge.

An essential starting point is that we do not think in terms of a trade-off between our strategic and economic interests. To do so is to compromise sovereignty. Even if Australia did not have an ­alliance with the US, China’s actions in the South China Sea, and North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, would have us reaching across the Pacific, just as we did in December 1940 when we opened our first independent diplomatic mission in Washington, DC.

In Donald Trump’s “America first” world, it is more important than ever that we actively work across the US political spectrum, the US business community and beyond the Washington beltway in support of our relationship with the US.

The alliance does not compromise our decision-making, as demonstrated in the decisions to proceed with the Trans-Pacific Partnership without the US, to sign up to the Regional Economic Comprehensive Partnership, which includes China but not the US, and to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank over the specific objections of the US.

Despite legitimate concerns about China’s approach to trade and investment, it would be a mistake to follow Trump through every twist and contradictory turn in the US-China trade war. And attacking China’s development status in the World Trade Organisation is more a case of jumping at shadows then substance.

Given China’s changing face under President Xi Jinping and its regional ambitions, it is only natural for Australia to seek to ­enhance its relations with countries such as South Korea, Japan and India. It is called balance. And in a different world we would be reaching out to China.

What then of our relationship with China? Scott Morrison is right to stress the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Words, yes, but a useful overarching framework.

But it’s obvious that the relationship will remain a mix of shared and conflicting interests. Because we need to be true to our own values and interests, we should continue to speak out on areas of difference such as the South China Sea and human rights. But anything said publicly should be deliberate and with a purpose. Loose ministerial lips, whether about China or Trump, do not serve the national interest.

We should have boundaries, however blurred, about unacceptable foreign interference, recognising that all governments seek to influence and that government entities, worldwide, are fair targets in the cyber game. We cannot blame others for taking advantage of our own failures to protect that which is important.

Australian naval vessels should, from time to time and without fanfare, sail within 12 nautical miles of artificial features in the South China Sea. Such features do not, under the Law of the Sea, generate territorial waters.

Where, then, are the potential positives to add substance to the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership? The first thing is to ­remove unnecessary negatives, recognising that the paranoia evident in the nostrils of some commentators is no basis for sensible policy. It is in our interests that quality Australian businesspeople are ­involved in Chinese investment and companies. “Links” or “connections” to the Chinese Communist Party should not surprise anyone with half a brain and should not be used to question the loyalty of good Australians.

There is a lot we can do in co-oper­ation with China: clean ­energy technologies, as then prime minister John Howard and president George W. Bush initiated; academic research in engineering, agriculture, medicine, sports ­science and other non-defence ­related areas; humanitarian and disaster relief; joint anti-pir­acy ­patrols in the northwest Indian Ocean; selected defence co-operation; and targeted joint development co-operation ventures.

The US-China relationship is fundamental to the politico-­strategic environment in which Australia lives. But within our near region of the South Pacific and Southeast Asia we need to have a sharper sense of our own national interests and draw on our own traditions.

Long before we started to think of a “rising China”, prime minister Billy Hughes in 1919 fought hard at the Paris Peace Conference for Australia to take responsibility for German New Guinea, we supported Indonesia’s independence in the 1940s, we initiated the South Pacific Forum in 1971, we became ASEAN’s first dialogue partner in 1974, we initiated the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation in 1989, we played a critical role in the Cambodia peace process in 1991, and we played a leading role in East Timor’s independence in 2000.

In other words, we do our best in the South Pacific and in Southeast Asia when we pursue and ­develop relations in their own right, and not solely or principally through the prism of China. We will waste money and inhibit ­relationships if we become too China-centric in our near neighbourhood.

Dennis Richardson is a former secretary of the Department of Defence and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and a former ambassador to the US.