Transcending politics to strengthen ties with China
A government foundation to foster Australia-China relations is seeking to rise above tensions with Beijing, with grants that strengthen ties with the diaspora.
Studiously avoiding worsening Beijing-Canberra tensions, the nascent National Foundation for Australia-China Relations has delivered on its first round funding to a diverse range of cultural, scientific and social institutions. Their common theme? Strong ties with the Chinese diaspora in Australia.
The $44m foundation, set up just more than a year ago to replace the Australia-China Council, quietly has begun handing out grants in a fashion some have described as soft diplomacy.
Having doled out more than $4m in the past 12 months — including to the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Opera Australia, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Lowy Institute, the Australia China Business Council, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and a museum in the Sydney suburb of Hurstville — it is now sorting through a flood of applications, which closed last month, for a second round of funding worth $6.5m.
Based in Sydney’s Australia Square, with a staff of about 20, the foundation has had a rocky start — wrestling with early criticism that some of its board members are anti-Beijing, which has angered official China, and the early departure of its inaugural chairman, Sydney businessman and former federal minister Warwick Smith.
The body also has been inundated with requests for funding from local groups with ties to the varied Chinese diaspora across Australia.
“The foundation’s job is not to engage in the political level discourse,” chief executive Michaela Browning, Australia’s former consul general to Hong Kong, tells The Australian.
“We are building a national platform to support practical engagement with China. We are 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 Australia’s development and our ties across greater China and the region.”
She says the foundation is building a “national platform” with links to state and territory governments, as well as to business, cultural and community groups.
The foundation’s predecessor, the Australia-China Council, was founded in 1978 and played a critical role in the early days of Australia-China relations. It supported visits to China by prominent Australians, including novelist Thomas Keneally, and brought many Chinese to Australia. It facilitated many first-time visits on both sides and encouraged cultural exchange as the relationship grew.
But as ties deteriorated, Foreign Minister Marise Payne announced the establishment of the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations in March 2019. It was billed as a “high-profile platform” to “turbo-charge our national effort in engaging China”.
Officially, the Chinese government is critical of its board structure. Asked its view of the foundation, the Chinese embassy in Canberra sent The Australian a transcript of a comment made in August last year by Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Wang Wenbin.
“If the Australian side does hope this institution will play a positive role in enhancing mutual trust and expanding exchange and co-operation with China, it shouldn’t allow anti-China elements to be part of it,” Wang said.
“Such arrangement runs contrary to the original purpose and mission of the foundation and sends gravely wrong message to the outside world. We hope the Australian side will immediately rectify its wrongdoing, demonstrate sincerity and contribute more to mutual trust and co-operation between the two sides, rather than doing the opposite.”
Former Labor foreign minister and NSW premier Bob Carr, the inaugural director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, has called the foundation a “brilliantly executed practical joke by members of Canberra’s security agencies who wanted to demolish Australia-China bilateral relations”.
“The appointment of anti-China zealots to the foundation was capped with disarming bravado by the appointment of a Falun Gong member,” he tells The Australian. “The message to Beijing was unmistakable: Australia didn’t take China relations seriously and was quite happy to downgrade the relationship to impress Washington.
“That this occurred around the same time the Foreign Minister referred to ‘weapons inspectors’ in connection with an inquiry into COVID just completed the impression that Australia is putting its hand up to become the most adversarial towards China of any US ally.”
One Chinese Australian tells The Australian: “Its main role is to counter the influence of the (Chinese government’s) United Front in Australia” — a comment that is part joking and part serious.
Others argue that it has the potential to pave the way for quiet diplomacy, out of the public spotlight of the tense official relationship.
“The foundation has made a reasonable start although it seems to have been in hibernation,” says Smith, now an adviser to Kerry Stokes.
Smith was critical of the role of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in overseeing the foundation and resigned in April last year after what he calls a “tortuous and unspectacular start”.
Nevertheless, he tells The Australian it is important to have a foundation that can be involved in “soft power” diplomacy.
“It is important to keep some soft diplomatic activity going,” he says. “Governments come and governments go, but it is in Australia’s interests to support such a foundation.”
The foundation’s role will be to organise some official Australia-China diplomatic events including the annual Australia-China High-Level Dialogue.
Smith was replaced as chairman by Pru Bennett, a former Hong Kong executive with US global fund manager BlackRock, who has kept a low profile in the role — as has the foundation itself.
A planned launch celebration a year ago that would have included NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian did not go ahead, partly because of the bushfires.
Then the pandemic closed down meetings and travel around the country and, as Payne told a Senate estimates hearing in October last year, the time for a launch celebration had passed.
But despite its low-key official start, the foundation has been popular with those seeking grants for China-related or Chinese diaspora-related projects, with more than 500 applications received for the initial round.
In a significant move, the first grant last year of $600,000 was to the Peter Doherty Institute in Melbourne, which Browning says is for “research collaboration on immune response and vaccine efficacy work related to COVID in collaboration with long-established Chinese partners”.
Other grants include $200,000 to the Foundation for Australian Studies in China for its biennial conference; $100,000 to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for masterclasses with high-profile Chinese and Australian artists; $50,000 to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery for curating stories “of the contemporary Chinese-Tasmania experience”; $200,000 to Astronomy Australia for joint workshops and engaging in space research with China; $100,000 to Opera Australia for a production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle in Brisbane by Chinese director Chen Shi-Zheng; $267,000 to the Australian National University’s East Asian Bureau of Economic Research for joint workshops with the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges; and $389,957 to the Lowy Institute for a research program on bilateral trade with China.
The Australia-China Business Council has received $170,000 for workshops and industry summits for companies doing business with China, while Asialink has received $300,000 to help build the capacity of small and medium companies to engage with China.
The University o fSydney has received $150,000 to help support the “mental health and study experience” of Chinese international students while a museum and gallery in the Sydney suburb of Hurstville, which is home to many people of Chinese origin, has received $23,500 for an exhibition on Chinese migration and the contribution of Chinese Australians to the local area.
One grant that has raised some eyebrows is $72,018 to the Australian National University’s National Security College for a webinar to “raise awareness and strengthen understanding of China”. The college is headed by Rory Medcalf, who is also a member of the foundation’s advisory board.
Members of the board include ANU vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt; long-time China expert John Fitzgerald, who is a fellow with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute; The Australian’s former China correspondent Rowan Callick, and Chinese-born Peter Cai who has returned to the Lowy Institute this year after a stint as a senior executive with Virgin Australia.
Journalist Stan Grant, who has worked in Hong Kong and China, was a member but resigned recently after taking up a full-time job with the ABC.
National Australia Bank chairman Phil Chronican joined the committee in October last year following the departure of Dig Howitt, chief executive of bionic ear company Cochlear, which has operations in China.
Howitt’s spokespeople have said his departure was due to work pressure during COVID and denied suggestions that he left after the foundation’s board was criticised by the Chinese government for its anti-Beijing elements.
Board members Maree Ma, general manager of Chinese language newspaper group Vision Times Australia, who has rejected media allegations that she has been associated with the Falun Gong, and former Curtin University academic Wai-Ling Yeung, and a Perth-based researcher, have both been critics of the influence of the Chinese Communist Party in Australia.
“These are the first grants to be made since those made by the Australia-China Council in 2018,” says Smith, who was chairman of the council before it was succeeded by the foundation.
“Most of the grants on health are good. Most of the others are fine.” He supports grants made to support the Australia-China Youth Dialogue and for the Australian studies centres in China. But he would like to see more funding for the Chinese diaspora and greater board membership from that community.
Payne says the latest grants will include a focus on “major events and activities” that could take place next year if Australia’s international border is open.
James Laurenceson, who took over Carr’s role as head of the Australia-China Relations Institute at UTS, says the foundation was set up to improve relations with China “but the government clearly never had the confidence to allow it to operate as an independent entity”.
“It was a deliberate choice for the Foreign Minister’s office to play a central role in appointing the advisory board and to locate it entirely within DFAT. This is not the approach the government has taken to supporting engagement activities with other countries,” he says.
He says the approach smacks of a domestic political concern that it will be embarrassing for the government if the foundation supports work by individuals or bodies that can be seen as linked to Beijing.
“The consequences of the decision to establish the foundation as a politicised entity, at least in terms of perceptions, are now being seen,” he says.
“As the bilateral political relationship has tanked, securing the engagement of Chinese partners is undermined.
“And even Australian entities are left wondering whether they will have to toe the Canberra line or at least align with Canberra’s priorities if they are to have any hope of securing the foundation’s support.”
The foundation’s supporters say its role is to develop ties with a broad range of groups with interests in China as well as connections with the Chinese diaspora in Australia, some of which will be critical of some aspects of the official policy of the Chinese government.
But they argue that it also has the potential to become a platform for ongoing soft diplomacy, quietly maintaining people-to-people ties, ready for when official ties may improve.
As Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary and former Australian ambassador to China Frances Adamson told a Senate estimates hearing in October last year: “The real test (of the foundation) will be how does it look in 10 years’ time (and) 20, 40, 50 years, because that’s how long it’s going to need to do its work with, I hope, bipartisan support.”
Boosting ties
Highlights of round one of National Foundation for Australia-China relations grants
● Peter Doherty Institute: $600,000
● Foundation for Australian Studies in China: $200,000
● Melbourne Symphony Orchestra: $100,000
● Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery: $50,000
● Astronomy Australia: $200,000
● Opera Australia: $100,000
● Australian National University’s East Asian Bureau of Economic Research: $267,000
● Lowy Institute: $389,957
● The Australia-China Business Council: $170,000
● Asialink: $300,000
● University of Sydney: $150,000
● Hurstville Museum and Gallery: $23,500
● ANU National Security College: $72,018
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